Synopsis
To be young and interested in music and style in the late 50's in Britain was an exercise in frustration. In the early part of the decade post war youth had enjoyed it's first flush of rebellion and self-expression. "Teddy Boys" did not have their mode of dress dictated to them by the fashion moguls of the day. The many and varied styles were invented by the kids themselves and made- to- measure by horrified bespoke tailors to whom 4 button drapes in canary yellow with purple velvet collars were anathema. The music too was wild and undisciplined. Elvis Presley pumped out raw black blues music, Jerry Lee Lewis played the piano with his feet and Buddy Holly pioneered a quieter but no less unique musical style. On the home front, skiffle swept the country and thousands of kids in hundreds of church halls were making their own music. By 1959, Buddy Holly was dead, Elvis was in the army and big business was back in charge, inflicting the Italian style of short box jackets and winkle-picker shoes on an apathetic public. However in Newcastle upon Tyne a multi-faceted but like minded group of young people were ignoring what was being foisted on them by the music and fashion industry and finding their own way. The books of Steinbeck, Salinger, Keroac and Sillitoe, the poetry of Ginsberg, Ferlangetti, the films of Elia Kazan and black American blues from Leadbelly to Joe Turner were influencing them. At the same time, they were also absorbing their own folk music, which was enjoying a renaissance due to the earlier influence of skiffle. On the question of style, raggedness and self-expression were all. Clothing must be customised and well-worn, Army and Navy stores were the main source of supply. Anything that would horrify, shock, disgust or generally irritate the more conventional members of Society was to be pursued. If a spontaneous eruption of a change in the style and direction of a whole section of the youth of today were to take place it would be pored over by pundits and academics, branded as a movement and recorded as being of great significance. However, this storm in the sea of conformity went largely unrecorded. Invariably youth finds self-expression in music and any group of young people contains some aspiring musicians. This gang of rebels was no exception. Experimenting with music as uncompromising as their style in clothing and manners, these kids were definitely outside the mainstream of popular music. If the puerile lyrics of Cliff Richard's "Living Doll" or the asinine dance steps of the Shadows were a recipe for success they didn't want to know about it. They were too busy cooking up their own pie and if people didn't like the taste, too bad! But 'The Times They Were a Changing' as Bob Dylan was later to recount. By the summer of 1964, five young Geordies made musical history, topping the American charts with a single that was four and a half minutes long. The Animals had made it. This is the story of where they came from, what influenced them, and the people they met along the way.
From the Back Cover
A chance meeting in a Newcastle Art College led Eric Burdon and Johnny Steel to form the nucleus of a band of hell raisers and musicians who carved out a name for themselves in the North East of England. From jazz, to rock-&-roll, to rythmn-&-blues, they played, drank and fornicated their way through a decade that was intent on casting aside the traumas of the war years. Although their lifestyle was frenetic, the music always came first and led eventually to the formation of The Animals, a major musical phenomenon of the sixties. The story is told by one young man caught up in their hectic world while undergoing his own rite of passage in the era that was the fifties.
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