Last year, at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, Bruce Springsteen spoke eloquently about how The Animals were the most important band to shape his own musical vision.
They were the first group he had ever heard with “full-blown class consciousness” with a name that was “unforgiving and final and irrevocable” and a singer who looked like “a gorilla in a suit” but had a voice “like Howlin’ Wolf coming out of some 17-year-old kid.”
“I was in stitches,” says Eric Burdon, recalling the moment someone showed him a video clip of the speech. “I couldn’t believe that this guy could see exactly what I was going through, from a bit of television recording 50 years old: this little Geordie stuck in an iron suit, and he can’t get out. It was right on the button.”
For Burdon, however, still fierce and unsentimental at 71, The Animals were “the band that couldn’t live up to their name. It was trashed around and stomped on. I lost faith in The Animals a long time ago.”
This month, Burdon has released ’Til Your River Runs Dry, his first album since 2005 and his best in 25 years. Vigorous and committed, with a sharp, warm, rock and soul sound, weaving rich horns and vibrant guitars, the voice at its centre seems the same as ever: bluesy and direct, grappling passionately with things that matter to him in songs about politics, protest, defiance and remorse.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT GONZO
 | The Lost Broadcasts DVD - £9.99 |
 | The Animals And Beyond DVD - £9.99 |
 | Beat Beat Beat - Eric Burdon.. DVD - £4.99 |
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