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Fact #106089

When:

Short story:

The Animals begin their first tour of North America at The Norfolk City Arena, Norfolk, Virginia, USA, with Gene Vincent. During the day, The Animals hold a press conference at The Golden Triangle hotel.

Full article:

Alan Price (keyboards, The Animals] : When I was touring America with The Animals in 1964, and we had a No1 record with House Of The Rising Sun, we played 40 cities in 40 days, which meant 40 flights, and my total focus was on having to get the next plane.

My fear of flying, I suspect, is a throwback to my father's death. Most phobias are deep-rooted, based on an experience you've suppressed.

To cope, I'd buy a bottle of vodka, go into the toilets and drink it before I went on board. The result was, I spent a lot of the time in an alcoholic haze just to anaesthetise myself. On one occasion I actually proposed to Joan Baez in a bid to avoid a flight to Sweden and, in the end, the pressure of it all led to a nervous breakdown, albeit a very minor one.

John Steel (drums, The Animals] : We did that tour with Premier Talent. We were headlining, and we picked up local support bands in each town. We set off from Norfolk, Virginia, on 23 September 1964. Eric and I were very pro-Civil Rights at that point and Norfolk was south of the Mason-Dixon line, and there's was still a lot of segregation going on.

Bob Levine, the guy who'd been the stage manager at The Paramount, became our tour manager and his roadie was a black guy called Sonny. So I remember crossing the Mason-Dixon line and getting into the hotel in Norfolk, and Eric and I were getting up to stunts like knocking on Sonny's door and standing there with pillow cases over our heads so we looked like Ku Klux Klan.

Dick Clark, the US tv deejay, was there, although it wasn't a Dick Clark tour, and we were talking to him in the hotel. We were sat in a semi-circle of chairs, and Sonny was there with us, and the door was open and a little dog trotted into the room. It sniffed its way along the line getting petted but, when it got to Sonny, it kind of dodged round him, and went on to the next white guy and carried on down the line. Sonny just looked at the dog and said, "Well, we sure as hell is in the south now." Which cracked us all up.
(Source : not known)