The Animals: The Animals (180g, remastered) [ABKCO]

Why you'll love it

ABKCO's reissue presents the debut in mono on 180g vinyl, newly remastered. It went to No. 7 on the Billboard Top LPs and spent 27 weeks on the US chart, carried by the No. 1 hit "The House Of The Rising Sun."

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Mono

About the album

Newcastle upon Tyne is a long way from Memphis and Chicago, but you'd never know it from the way The Animals played. Eric Burdon sang with a growl well beyond his years, Alan Price's organ gave everything a smoky church-hall glow, and Hilton Valentine, Chas Chandler and John Steel kept it lean and loud.

Producer Mickie Most caught them in raw, live-sounding takes, much as they sounded on a sweaty club night back home. Alongside the band's haunting version of the folk standard "The House Of The Rising Sun," there's a stack of R&B and rock and roll they'd been playing in clubs: Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee" and "Around And Around," John Lee Hooker's "Baby Let Me Take You Home," "The Girl Can't Help It" and a grinding "Talkin' 'Bout You." Teri Landi handled session research for this reissue.

Burdon went on to front War, and Chandler went on to manage a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix, which, as career moves for a bass player go, is rather hard to top. Sixty years on, that Price organ still sends a shiver up the spine.

Also at Kops: more The Animals on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On ABKCO (cat# 9975-1), a reissue of the 1964 album.