The Animals

"The House of the Rising Sun" belongs to nobody.

It is a traditional American song of uncertain origin, old enough to sit in the public domain. Nobody collects for having written it, because nobody knows who wrote it.

But somebody does collect for the arrangement. Whoever signs off on how it sounds gets paid.

And on the label of The Animals' record there is a single name.

Fifteen minutes in the studio

They cut it on 18 May 1964, in London, in what was practically a single take. The whole business took a quarter of an hour.

Eric Burdon had not picked it up from a famous record. He had heard it sung in a Newcastle folk club by Johnny Handle, a traditional singer from the north-east of England. That is where it came from.

What they did was electrify it: Hilton Valentine's circling arpeggio at the start, Alan Price's organ underneath, and over the top a voice that begins held in and ends roaring.

Four and a half minutes, which for radio in 1964 was an outrage. In the United States the single was cut down to under three minutes so stations would accept it.

It went number one in the United Kingdom and number one in the United States. And it is worth dismantling an idea the myth keeps repeating: they did not rescue it from oblivion. It had been recorded over and over — Dylan had put it on his first album two years earlier — and what they did was make it definitive, which is a different thing and a harder one.

The name that fit

The five of them agreed to split the arrangement credit five ways.

When the record came out, the label read: traditional, arranged by Alan Price.

The explanation they were given was that five names would not fit in that space. And so it stayed.

Price left the band the following year. The royalties from the biggest song they ever recorded stayed with him, and he is still collecting them.

The other four played the same song, the same day, in the same room, on the recording that made them famous the world over. Not one of them has been paid a penny for it.

There was no theft: there was a small label and a verbal agreement. Which is, almost always, how these things happen.

What really did belong to others

Something similar happens with The Animals' two other great hits, though without the drama.

"We Gotta Get Out of This Place" was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, a married pair of professional songwriters from New York's Brill Building, the same factory-block where Neil Sedaka worked.

A song about escaping an industrial town with no future, written by two New Yorkers in an office, sung by a few lads from Newcastle who did know what it was talking about, and later adopted as their own anthem by American soldiers in Vietnam.

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" belonged to Nina Simone, who had recorded it that same year.

The Animals were extraordinary performers. As writers, they barely wrote. And there is nothing wrong with that, except when the time comes to divide things up.

What to remember

The Animals are proof that in music the small print matters as much as the lyrics.

Put on "The House of the Rising Sun", "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" or "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and you will hear the roughest, bluesiest end of the British invasion: Burdon's voice, Price's organ, and a band from an industrial city that sounded the way its city sounded.

And bear in mind the part you cannot hear. Of the five who walked into the studio that day, one signed the arrangement of a song that belonged to nobody, and that is why he was the only one who got paid for sixty years.

Three of those five are left: Chas Chandler died in 1996 and Hilton Valentine in 2021.

Remember it this way: the greatness lay in taking something that already existed and seeing it with new eyes. The problem was who put his name underneath.

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Sources

The Animals, a British rock and rhythm and blues band formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1963, made up of Eric Burdon (vocals), Alan Price (keyboards), Hilton Valentine (guitar), Chas Chandler (bass) and John Steel (drums). "The House of the Rising Sun" is a traditional American song of unknown authorship and in the public domain; Eric Burdon came to know it through the north-east English folk singer Johnny Handle, at a Newcastle club, and not through Bob Dylan's recording, which had appeared on his 1962 debut album. The band recorded it on 18 May 1964 in London, in a session lasting some fifteen minutes, and it went number one in the United Kingdom and in the United States; because of its four-and-a-half-minute length, the American single was issued in a version cut to under three minutes. As a public domain work, the rights belong to whoever signs the arrangement: the members have stated that they agreed to split the credit five ways, but the label carried only Alan Price, with the explanation that there was no room for more names. Price left the group in 1965 and has collected the song's royalties ever since. "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" was written by the married songwriting pair Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, of New York's Brill Building, and was adopted as an anthem by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" is a cover of Nina Simone's recording from the same year. Chas Chandler, who later discovered and managed Jimi Hendrix, died in 1996, and Hilton Valentine in 2021; the other three original members are still alive. They entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Neil Sedaka has his own profile in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Britannica, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and other coverage.