Fact #32518
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Mickie Most (producer) : The Animals had done House Of The Rising Sun on the night I first saw them in Newcastle. I remembered the song from when I was in skiffle groups in the 50s. Lots of people told us it was too long and it was set in a brothel in New Orleans and all that stuff, but we overcame all that and I got them into the studio.
John Steel (drummer, The Animals] : Eric changed the lyric, to make it a gambler rather than a prostitute because we knew we'd never get it on the radio if it was about a prostitute. Actually, I think it was Mike who pointed that out.
When the record first came out in 64, everybody said "Arrangement - Alan Price? What the hell is this?" All he'd done was play the solo. And Jeffery said, "Oh, it's just a technicality. We didn't have space to put everybody's name on the label. You'll all share equally just the same though." We were so green, we just went along with it. How dumb can you be? Alan was Jeffery's blue-eyed boy in the band.
Alan's on record as having said that he introduced me to the drum pattern on that track, which is bollocks. He said he'd heard it on Jimmy Smith's Walk On The Wild Side. Well, Eric and me were having a party one time in a little jazz bar in Ostend with a juke box, and that's where we found this track, Walk On The Wild Side, and we played it over and over again, and that's where I got the pattern. Alan was nowhere near it. He had nothing to do with it.
House Of The Rising Sun was recorded in the middle of the Chuck Berry tour. We closed the first half of the show on the Chuck Berry tour, and then raced down to London, I think it was from Liverpool.
They way I remember it was that Ready, Steady, Go! asked us to do a theme tune for them, and Mickie got us in the studio for that. By this time, we'd realised that Rising Sun was going down really well on the tour, so we insisted that we should record it as well. He didn't see it as a single at first. It was in the night. We came down, I think from Liverpool, and went into the studio after midnight.
Mickie Most : We recorded it virtually as a replica of how they performed it live. It was really a question of miking them correctly to get the sound.
John Steel : It was a mono studio, and I remember we just did half of Rising Sun to get the balance right, then we did it in one live take. Mickie said, 'That's it, come in and listen.' We went into the control room and Dave, the engineer, played it back for us, and Mickie said, 'Yeah!' and you could see that he'd only just realised how good it was. That's when the engineer said, 'Er, it's four and a half minutes long.' This was the era of the three minute single, and the radio wouldn't play anything longer. To give him his due, Mickie said, "Oh, the hell with it, let's go with it." Deejays loved it, because it gave them longer to go and make a cup of tea.
Mickie Most : I think the whole thing was done in 15 minutes and the studios then were
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John Steel (drummer, The Animals] : Eric changed the lyric, to make it a gambler rather than a prostitute because we knew we'd never get it on the radio if it was about a prostitute. Actually, I think it was Mike who pointed that out.
When the record first came out in 64, everybody said "Arrangement - Alan Price? What the hell is this?" All he'd done was play the solo. And Jeffery said, "Oh, it's just a technicality. We didn't have space to put everybody's name on the label. You'll all share equally just the same though." We were so green, we just went along with it. How dumb can you be? Alan was Jeffery's blue-eyed boy in the band.
Alan's on record as having said that he introduced me to the drum pattern on that track, which is bollocks. He said he'd heard it on Jimmy Smith's Walk On The Wild Side. Well, Eric and me were having a party one time in a little jazz bar in Ostend with a juke box, and that's where we found this track, Walk On The Wild Side, and we played it over and over again, and that's where I got the pattern. Alan was nowhere near it. He had nothing to do with it.
House Of The Rising Sun was recorded in the middle of the Chuck Berry tour. We closed the first half of the show on the Chuck Berry tour, and then raced down to London, I think it was from Liverpool.
They way I remember it was that Ready, Steady, Go! asked us to do a theme tune for them, and Mickie got us in the studio for that. By this time, we'd realised that Rising Sun was going down really well on the tour, so we insisted that we should record it as well. He didn't see it as a single at first. It was in the night. We came down, I think from Liverpool, and went into the studio after midnight.
Mickie Most : We recorded it virtually as a replica of how they performed it live. It was really a question of miking them correctly to get the sound.
John Steel : It was a mono studio, and I remember we just did half of Rising Sun to get the balance right, then we did it in one live take. Mickie said, 'That's it, come in and listen.' We went into the control room and Dave, the engineer, played it back for us, and Mickie said, 'Yeah!' and you could see that he'd only just realised how good it was. That's when the engineer said, 'Er, it's four and a half minutes long.' This was the era of the three minute single, and the radio wouldn't play anything longer. To give him his due, Mickie said, "Oh, the hell with it, let's go with it." Deejays loved it, because it gave them longer to go and make a cup of tea.
Mickie Most : I think the whole thing was done in 15 minutes and the studios then were