Fact #97709
When:
Short story:
The Animals sign an agency contract with Don Arden, in his Curzon Street, Mayfair, London, offices.
Full article:
John Steel (drummer, The Animals] : There was still that very sharp, show-bizzy, dressy scene going at the time. Tin Pan Alley. Don was the snappy, fast-talking Jewish Londoner, and he sat behind all these telephones and gave us this spiel about how he was going to take on one group this year and turn them into stars, and we were that group.
He told us he had Chuck Berry coming over later and he was going to put us on the tour with him. It was going to be our big break. Meanwhile, he was going to give us a lot of gigs. And he whipped out his pad and reeled off a lot of names of towns outside London - not just gigs in the Smoke, but, " I can put you in at the Broken Wheel in Manchester and Barbarella's in Birmingham," and so on.
He was doing it to impress us, I suppose, but Hilton (Animals' guitarist) took it all very seriously. At this point, he was terribly meticulous about everything - he never fell for patter, he had to have the truth. Don was spieling away and suddenly, Hilton was kneeling on the floor beside him with his little diary out, saying, "What were those dates again?"
Don was completely nonplussed. He had to go back and reel off the dates again with Hilton kneeling by the desk, laboriously copying them down.
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He told us he had Chuck Berry coming over later and he was going to put us on the tour with him. It was going to be our big break. Meanwhile, he was going to give us a lot of gigs. And he whipped out his pad and reeled off a lot of names of towns outside London - not just gigs in the Smoke, but, " I can put you in at the Broken Wheel in Manchester and Barbarella's in Birmingham," and so on.
He was doing it to impress us, I suppose, but Hilton (Animals' guitarist) took it all very seriously. At this point, he was terribly meticulous about everything - he never fell for patter, he had to have the truth. Don was spieling away and suddenly, Hilton was kneeling on the floor beside him with his little diary out, saying, "What were those dates again?"
Don was completely nonplussed. He had to go back and reel off the dates again with Hilton kneeling by the desk, laboriously copying them down.