Fact #190002
When:
Short story:
House band, The Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo is playing in The Jazz Lounge, Club A-Gogo, Percy Street, Haymarket, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England, UK, Europe. The group will find greater success when it evolves to become The Animals. Peter Grant, the future manager of Led Zeppelin, and record producer Mickie Most both attend this show.Full article:
Peter Grant [later to become manager of Led Zeppelin] : Bo Diddley's maraca player, Jerome, and I went out to a blues club where a band called the Alan Price Rhythm And Blues Combo were performing. I was so impressed with them that I signed them up. I became their booking agent and co-manager (with Mike Jeffery) and they were rather successful … after they changed their name to The Animals.
Mickie Most : I'd been living in Africa for four years and one of the reasons I returned was to produce records so this tour gave me an opportunity to go around the countryside and visit clubs after the shows and see what music was going on, and soon as I walked in I heard this band playing and I said that justifies my 6,000 mile trip from South Africa.
John Steel (drummer, The Animals] : The way we rehearsed Rising Sun, at the A GoGo, Hilton put forward this guitar lick and Alan just didn't want it. He wanted it strummed, as it was on the Dylan. The rest of us said, 'No, let Hilton do it his way. It sounds good.' Alan stormed off in a huff, walked out of the club.
So we continued doing it with Hilton's guitar and, eventually, Alan came back and grumpily sat down and rattled off the keyboard part. Alan's arranging for the band really just consisted of working out the chord sequence. He'd work it out on the piano and tell the others. Then the rest of us would just chip in with whatever we felt was right for the song.
Mickie Most : They were absolutely fantastic, and I was mesmerized. They had their own sound, with Eric Burdon's voice and Alan Price's Continental Vox organ made a very distinctive sound, and they were very, very good players. Hilton Valentine was a great guitarist, they played their parts very well, they were very together and quite inventive, I thought. Anyway, after convincing them I was the man to produce their records, we did go into the studio and the first thing we made was a Top 20 hit, Baby Let Me Take You Home.
Eric Burdon : Alan had a band called the Alan Price Combo which would change line ups from time to time, and I was away on one of my forays looking for material in Paris or London, which you had to do. I had to buy records in Paris, that's where I would go. And I would bring back the material and my system was to let the band hear it once and then go, interpret that! And then I wouldn't let them hear it until after we recorded it. And they (say) Oh yeah, that's what the original sounds like, that was the system that got The Animals kind of off the ground. And I know that if John Steel reads this, he'd go, 'What a fucking lying bastard!', but that's the way I remember it.
And when I was gone, begging Alan to come with me to London to break into the music scene, he was working at a Government office, pensions office, and he had to stay there until his time was finished. Until he had something under his belt before he could go out as a... so he would play locally and with a group called the Alan Price Combo. And while we were getting The Animals together, sure some of The Animals that were going to be The Animals, because it wasn't yet a name, The Animals, would be working with Alan. But in actual fact, John Steel and I first found Alan playing in a band called the Thomas Hedley Band, in which he played guitar and sang, and I heard him play piano once. And I said that's it, man, you're a pianist. And so we brought him into the band.
(Source : not known)
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Mickie Most : I'd been living in Africa for four years and one of the reasons I returned was to produce records so this tour gave me an opportunity to go around the countryside and visit clubs after the shows and see what music was going on, and soon as I walked in I heard this band playing and I said that justifies my 6,000 mile trip from South Africa.
John Steel (drummer, The Animals] : The way we rehearsed Rising Sun, at the A GoGo, Hilton put forward this guitar lick and Alan just didn't want it. He wanted it strummed, as it was on the Dylan. The rest of us said, 'No, let Hilton do it his way. It sounds good.' Alan stormed off in a huff, walked out of the club.
So we continued doing it with Hilton's guitar and, eventually, Alan came back and grumpily sat down and rattled off the keyboard part. Alan's arranging for the band really just consisted of working out the chord sequence. He'd work it out on the piano and tell the others. Then the rest of us would just chip in with whatever we felt was right for the song.
Mickie Most : They were absolutely fantastic, and I was mesmerized. They had their own sound, with Eric Burdon's voice and Alan Price's Continental Vox organ made a very distinctive sound, and they were very, very good players. Hilton Valentine was a great guitarist, they played their parts very well, they were very together and quite inventive, I thought. Anyway, after convincing them I was the man to produce their records, we did go into the studio and the first thing we made was a Top 20 hit, Baby Let Me Take You Home.
Eric Burdon : Alan had a band called the Alan Price Combo which would change line ups from time to time, and I was away on one of my forays looking for material in Paris or London, which you had to do. I had to buy records in Paris, that's where I would go. And I would bring back the material and my system was to let the band hear it once and then go, interpret that! And then I wouldn't let them hear it until after we recorded it. And they (say) Oh yeah, that's what the original sounds like, that was the system that got The Animals kind of off the ground. And I know that if John Steel reads this, he'd go, 'What a fucking lying bastard!', but that's the way I remember it.
And when I was gone, begging Alan to come with me to London to break into the music scene, he was working at a Government office, pensions office, and he had to stay there until his time was finished. Until he had something under his belt before he could go out as a... so he would play locally and with a group called the Alan Price Combo. And while we were getting The Animals together, sure some of The Animals that were going to be The Animals, because it wasn't yet a name, The Animals, would be working with Alan. But in actual fact, John Steel and I first found Alan playing in a band called the Thomas Hedley Band, in which he played guitar and sang, and I heard him play piano once. And I said that's it, man, you're a pianist. And so we brought him into the band.
(Source : not known)