THE ANIMALS – The Gov Saturday 13 May 2017.
Words & Photo Geoff Jenke
The Animals came out of Newcastle, England in 1963 and were renowned for their wild stage show and covers of great RnB songs by artist like Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker and many more. They hit the big time with their second single, House of the Rising Sun and were soon touring the USA and the rest of the world. While the Beatles and Stones came from the blues, they soon turned to pop and rock. Fronted by Eric Burdon on vocals, (and has often been labelled one of the best blues/rock singers ever) The Animals remained the backbone of the blues with their recordings and live shows.
Fifty plus years later, the band touring as The Animals consists of original member John Steel on drums, member in 1965, Mick Gallagher on keyboards, Danny Handley on vocals and guitar and newest member Bobby Ruiz on bass.
It didn’t seem to worry the people at the sold out show at The Gov that Eric Burdon was not present. In fact, as soon as the band hit the stage, the (naturally older) audience surged forward to greet them, cheering loudly. Launching into their first ever single from way back in 1964, Baby Let Me Take you Home, the crowd sang along with every word.
And from there the band produced hit after hit, with It’s My Life, Don’t Bring Me Down, Around and Around along with standards from the day like Jimmy Reed’s Bright Lights Big City.
The band were tight and John Steele’s vocal range excellent. During Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood he had the whole crowd singing the chorus of the song for him, while show casing his guitar playing. This song was easily the highlight of the evening.
Mick Gallagher was hot all night, covering the keyboard sound The Animals were renowned for. John Steele came down from the drum riser to tell a couple of stories about the songs and also how Mick Gallagher joined the band with 24 hours notice before a gig in another country. He made it to the gig with 20 minutes to spare and no time to practice. While Mick was only in the band originally for less than a year, he rejoined in 2003 and has been with them ever since.
The set concluded with a rousing version of We Gotta Get Out Of This Place that included brief solo’s from each member.
Would they come back for an encore? Silly question really as they hadn’t played “that song” yet. They soon returned for a brilliant rocking Boom Boom and unfortunately a disappointing version of House of the Rising Sun. The song just sounded flat compared to what they had played the rest of the evening.
The original Animals had 9 Top 40 singles in Australia and tonight they played 8 of them. Interestingly, when I got home and looked at the photo I took of the set list, there were 5 songs on it they hadn’t played. Disappointing, as they had only played for about 75 minutes and that is with the encore.
The band was tight. The crowd sang along, danced in front of the stage, clapped with gusto when told to and seemed to love every minute of the show.
In this age of nostalgic tours by bands from the sixties, I have seen some bands with less original members than this one. However most of these bands do have the original singer. Although it was great to hear all the classic songs again, for me, The Animals without the distinct sound of Eric Burdon’s vocals just wasn’t The Animals. At best this band was just a really good Tribute act.
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