Is Eric Burdon One of the Greatest Rockers of All Time?

Eric Burdon, along with the Animals, were the first rockers to play behind the Iron Curtain. Burdon jammed with Jimi Hendrix – and was called by Hendrix’s girlfriend when Hendrix lay dying from a drug overdose. Burdon chased Jim Morrison from his home with the blast from a .44-caliber pistol. Once he was thrown into prison for allegedly associating with German terrorists. And rednecks expelled Burdon from Meridian, Mississippi, because he (and the Animals) promoted black music.

Yes, Eric Burdon is a true rock ‘n’ roll survivor - a walking, talking history book of rock’s formative years and beyond. But he may seem bitter at times, and perhaps you would be too, if you’d lived through the rigors of touring, recording and thieving managers for nearly five decades!

Now let’s look at the career of Eric Burdon:

In his autobiography, Eric Burdon wrote: “By now it’s all painfully clear to me: The nightmare part of the rock ‘n’ roll dream is the business – the money. The Beatles got ripped-off, even the savvy Mick Jagger and the Stones got screwed out of royalties in the early 1970s. The rock ‘n’ roll highway is dotted with the little white crosses marking the casualties, some literal, many more financial.”

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Unless otherwise stated, all quotes in the article come from Eric Burdon’s second autobiography, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, published in 2001 (his first was published in 1986).

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The rock group, the Animals, formed in Newcastle, England in 1962. Burdon was the lead singer and also wrote songs. While playing with the group one night in the middle 1960s, Burdon climbed atop an old piano onstage and began stomping on it with his thick-soled cowboy boots, the audience cheering him on. In the crowd were members of the High Numbers, soon to become The Who. Burdon thought guitarist Pete Townshend, perhaps watching the piano demolition, got the idea for the instruments smashing gimmick for which The Who would eventually became famous.

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According to an article in Wikipedia, Brian Jones called Burdon “the best blues singer to come out of England.”

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In 1963, Eric Burdon, while with the Animals, made a live recording with blues great Sonny Boy Williamson at a New Year’s show. Burdon thought it was the Animals best live recording; however, the band never received a dime in royalties from it!

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Burdon said that the Animals’ number one hit, “The House of the Rising Sun,” was one of the first rock tunes to have feedback in the recording, prompting artists such as Bob Dylan to “go electric.”

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The 45 rpm record, “The House of the Rising Sun,” was recorded in about ten minutes and cost about ten bucks to make. This sixteenth century English folk tune (originally written for a woman’s perspective) was re-written by all members of the Animals, but keyboardist Alan Price got writing credit for it because everyone’s name wouldn’t fit on the record. The band’s manager, Mike Jeffery, suggested they choose Price’s name, so they did. Unfortunately for Burdon and the other band members, Price got all the royalties for a record that sold millions of copies!

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In the fall of 1966, bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals quit the group and became, along with Mike Jeffery, part of the management team for emerging rock superstar, Jimi Hendrix.

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Shockingly, Mike Jeffery, a rather shady character, once had Hendrix abducted by the mob so he could take credit for getting him recued just hours later!

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Burdon became good friends with John Lennon, about whom he wrote: “I always liked John. He was a sweet guy and actually quite shy in private; he used the sarcastic façade to protect himself in public.”

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Incidentally, Burdon became the “egg man,” in the Beatles’ song, “I Am the Walrus.” Lennon gave Burdon that sobriquet after Burdon told him a story about a romantic encounter Burdon had with a Jamaican woman, who cracked an egg on his bare abdomen and then put her mouth to his body parts.

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Burdon also became friends with blues legend, John Lee Hooker, until Hooker died in the summer of 2001. Burdon wrote a song inspired by Hooker, some lyrics of which went went like this: “I was twenty-five and so full of life, John Lee took me by the hand. In a G.T.O. we did go into the fire heart of the ghetto land. Living in a land where a man is no man until he’s been to Hell and back. One thing you must understand you can’t kill the Boogieman.”

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At a concert in Meridian, Mississippi, the Animals, a band considered by the locals to be “n-lovers,” were forbidden to the play. The sheriff forced the band into an armored car and had them driven from town. Burdon couldn’t believe that such racism existed in his lifetime.

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Burdon claimed that the Animals’ manager, Mike Jeffery, screwed the band out of millions of dollars. Since they couldn’t afford to take Jeffery to the court, they simply fired him.

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Late in 1966, the Animals disbanded, and then Burdon formed the band, Eric Burdon and the Animals. Burdon chose guitarist, Andy Summers, who would later join The Police.

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Like many other people in 1967, Burdon took LSD for the first time. In fact, he took it with people such as Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles. About tripping, Burdon wrote: “My first trip transformed me, and, ever since, I have seen the world in a different, liberated light. My acid epiphany was that Fellini movies looked like normal documentaries. And do to this day.”

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During the 1960s Burdon documented the times in many of his songs, particularly “San Francisco Nights,” “Sky Pilot,” “Monterey,” and “Gratefully Dead.” They were his attempt at musical journalism. Later he added others such as “Sandoz” and “White Houses.”

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In San Francisco at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West, Burdon first ran into Jim Morrison, or Jim “Morestoned,” as people called him. It was Morrison who convinced Burdon to live in Los Angeles. Burdon moved into a house atop a hill in Laurel Canyon, where all the hipsters gravitated, people such as Joni Mitchell, the band Canned Heat, Frank Zappa, David Caradine, Alvinia Bridges, David Crosby, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, John Mayal and many others.

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In 1969, Burdon became friends with actor Steve McQueen, who had just starred in the movie, Bullitt. Burdon and McQueen liked to smoke grass and drive their motorcycles over the dunes at Palm Springs. Bette Davis once asked McQueen why he rode motorcycles, which seemed dangerous to her, and McQueen replied, “So I won’t forget that I’m a man and not just an actor.” Because McQueen was perceived as a rebel, he was popular with the late 1960s counterculture.

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By this time Burdon had formed Eric Burdon and the New Animals, and among their hits were “See See Rider,” and “When I Was Young.” But Burdon disbanded this group after the Tate-La Bianca murders in L.A. soured him on the hippie movement, and he began keeping to himself. For a needed diversion, Burdon began taking acting lessons at the Actor’s Studio in Hollywood.

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The next band Burdon formed was named Eric Burdon and War. Why did they call themselves War? Burdon wrote that “the idea was to take the most negative word we could find and turn it into a positive.” This was an R&B rock octet, with Burdon as one of only two white guys in the group, the other harpist Lee Oskar.

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The band soon moved into a mansion in Bel Air. Rock luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison often came over and partied with the band mates. At one of these parties, Jim Morrison wore out his welcome by sleeping on the floor with his numerous groupies. Fed up with Morrison and his entourage, Burdon fired his .44 magnum into the ceiling, scattering the lot of them. Shortly, Morrison fled to Paris, France to avoid going to jail on an obscenity charge and expired in a bathtub in 1971.

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Eric Burdon and War scored an immediate Top-Ten hit with the release in 1969 of “Spill the Wine,” a tune with a hip, poetic narrative and rousing chorus. A year later, the band released the double-album set, The Black Man’s Burdon. The assemblage continued into 1971, when Burdon quit War and formed The Eric Burdon Band.

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In order to keep the band touring, Gold and Goldstein, two execs at MGM, offered Burdon control of the final Experience show that Jimi Hendrix had played at the Royal Albert Hall in England. Gold and Goldstein, the two-headed monster as Burdon called them, assured Burdon that the film footage would be made into a movie. Unfortunately, the movie was never made. (Luckily, some scenes from the concert can be viewed on YouTube.)

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Burdon wrote this about Jimi Hendrix: “He made a quantum leap from being just another starving New York artist to being the toast of London, which hailed him as the Black Elvis. He was not only a brilliant and innovative player, but a riveting performer, and he took the Old World by storm. “

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On the morning of September 18, 1970, Burdon was at the apartment where Jimi Hendrix had fatally overdosed on drugs. He helped Hendrix’s two girlfriends, Monika Danneman and Alvinia Bridges, clean up the place before the cops showed up.

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After they had taken the body of Jimi Hendrix to the hospital, where he was DOA, Burdon found on the shag carpet a note written by Hendrix, the final stanza of which read: “The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye. The story of love is hello and goodbye . . . until we meet again.”

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About Hendrix’s death, Burdon had been mistakenly quoted as saying Jimi committed suicide. In his book Misunderstood Burdon clarified that the evils in the record business - his unscrupulous manager, Mike Jeffery, and all the accountants and lawyers killed Jimi Hendrix.

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In a more objective mode, Burdon theorized that Hendrix’s girlfriend, Monika Danneman, hoping to keep Jimi from flying back to America the following day, dosed him with perhaps as many as nine of her strong German sleeping pills, accidentally killing Hendrix. (Hendrix died with a large amount of barbiturates and wine in his system.)

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From 1972 to 1974, Burdon couldn’t work and wasn’t paid any royalties because he was trying to break his air tight contract with MGM. Meanwhile, War had moved to United Artists, considered a more artist-friendly recording company.

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While acting in the movie, Comeback, in West Germany in 1981, Burdon was arrested, per the country’s Emergency Powers Act, and thrown into prison for allegedly associating with members of the Baader-Meinhof gang of terrorists while hanging out in Munich nightclubs. But Burdon couldn’t recall exactly how he was linked to this gang. It took ten days and $65,000 in Deutsch Marks to spring him from prison.

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In 1975, Burdon was reunited with the original members of the Animals and they produced the album, Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted. Unfortunately, because of legal hassles, the album wasn’t released for two years, by which time the punk revolution had hit the music scene, killing interest in the record. In a London pub one night, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols told Burton that he and his band were “boring old farts,” a remark that started a fist fight with Burdon.

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In the early 1980s, the Animals reunited again, releasing the album Ark in 1983. And at the end of that year, the band recorded a live performance at Wembley Arena London entitled Rip It to Shreds.

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In 1991, Burdon met guitarist Robby Krieger while Krieger worked as musical director for Oliver Stone’s movie, The Doors. Burdon got a part in the movie playing a poet and father figure who inspires Jim Morrison (played by Val Kilmer). The 10-second scene took place at the famous Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood. About this work, Burdon wrote, “I hadn’t seen a script yet, but found myself thinking often about Morrison, a singer whose good looks always helped hide what an asshole he could be.”

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Shortly thereafter, Burdon toured with Krieger in North America. Then Burdon united with keyboardist Brian Auger, forming the Eric Burdon – Brian Auger Band, eventually releasing the live album, Access All Areas.

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The surviving members of the Animals got together again in May 2001, minus bassist Chas Chandler, who had died in 1996, and keyboardist Alan Price came along too. They were inducted into L.A.’s Rock Walk of Fame in time for Eric Burdon’s sixtieth birthday.

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Since the 1960s Burdon had become good friends with photographer Linda Eastman, who later married Paul McCartney. When Linda McCartney died of cancer in April 1998, Burdon attended her memorial, where he recited an elegiac poem titled “Wildflower” and sang, with piano accompaniment, a version of “The Long and Winding Road.”

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In the early 2000’s Burdon needed more exposure. He wrote, “It’s frustrating when your past is bigger than you are. The only thing that could change that for me, I believed, would be television.” So Burdon appeared on David Letterman’s show and made a couple videos, but they went nowhere.

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Then the head of MGM, Mike Curb, whom Burdon called “the Fat Man,” had an idea, but Burdon was skeptical of Curb’s intent. The Fat Man recorded some of Burdon’s new material and some classics such as “The House of the Rising Sun,” and then bootlegged the tapes to an Italian label called Disky. Burdon said that Disky's final mixing and mastering were terrible. It appears Burdon had been screwed again!

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Now wary of bootlegging and bootleggers, one night in Germany Burdon was halfway though a set when he noticed some kid holding a tape recorder aloft. Burdon brought the show to a halt and shouted, “You! You there! I want that cassette or the show’s over. No more song’ ‘til I get that fucking tape!” The kid fled the venue, dropping the tape player, which Burdon promptly grabbed and smashed to pieces.

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It seems appropriate to call Eric Burdon a legendary figure in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. He’s been there and done that and met just about everybody. His body of work is canonical, quintessential, anthemic and certainly iconic. And, after all these years, Eric Burdon still rocks!

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Some of Eric Burdon's videos can be watched below: