Chances are, when Pete Townshend wrote the cogent
phrase, “hope I die before I get old,” he didn’t expect to be
performing it nearly 50 years later!
2013 feels like 1964 all over again. The surviving
members of the Who are back out on the road. The Rolling
Stones are touring to commemorate 50 years together.
Best of all, Eric Burdon has just released a new album.
Burdon got his start as vocalist for the seminal
British Blues band, the Animals. The Newcastle quintet had
a series of tough-minded hits like “House Of The Rising Sun,”
“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” and “We Gotta Get Out Of
This Place.”
Other British bands had an affinity for the Blues, but
the Animals had Eric Burdon. His deep, stentorian baritone
growled with authority. More a product of the Mississippi Delta
than the river Thames.
When the Animals splintered apart in the mid-sixties,
Burdon relocated to California and fully embraced the psychedelic
hippie ethos. His chemically enhanced adventures influenced new
songs like “San Franciscan Nights” and “A Girl Named Sandoz.”
“Sky Pilot” was a reflection of Burdon’s vocal opposition to the
Vietnam War.
Burdon closed out the 60s fronting L.A. Soul-Funk
progenitors WAR. Their first single, “Spill The Wine,” shot
to number 3 on the Billboard charts.
Although Burdon has piloted many incarnations of the
Animals through the years, he has primarily been a solo artist.
He has also acted in a variety of films and written two
autobiographies.
Of course the Animals were inducted into the
Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1994. In 2012, Burdon was an inspiration
behind Bruce Springsteen’s keynote speech at the influential
South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Burdon
closed out the year recording a vinyl-only EP with Ohio
Garage rockers the Greenhornes.
Til Your River Runs Dry is Eric Burdon’s 17th solo
release. The album opens with “Water.” Powered by stinging
guitar chords, a muscular rhythm section and supple Hammond B-3
fills, the tune is an urgent plea for conservation.
The era of the protest song has long past, but Burdon
is still an instigator for change. Three songs here illustrate that
his passion for social activism remains undiminished.
The soulful “Memorial Day” marries a stutter-step beat
to a lilting, Reggae-fied melody. The lyrics rail against the futility
of war… “On Memorial Day, the hippies and the poets and the Spartans
say forget the reasons why we war, this is the season we’ve been
waiting for/Memorial Day, it’s a rich man’s war but the poor will pay.”
The slow simmering gumbo of “River Is Rising”
gives the devastation of Hurricane Katrina a personal spin.
Co-written with New Orleans’ based British musician Jon Cleary,
Burdon recounts the true story of how rescue workers came
upon Rock & Roll legend Fats Domino asleep in his flooded
Ninth Ward home and nearly mistook him for dead!
A funky funeral dirge, the track is steeped in traditional
New Orleans instrumentation: tuba, muted trumpet and Cleary’s
rollicking piano rolls.
Finally, “Invitation To The White House” masquerades
as a shaggy dog story but is really a pointed commentary on
immigration and our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The melody is playful and swaggering, but Burdon offers up some
sage advice… “I said you gotta open those borders, I’m talking the
North and the South, make friends with the Canadians, they got
more than just snow/And there’s a labor force waiting in the land
of Mexico.”
Two songs explore the legacy of Rock & Roll, “Bo Diddley
Special” and “27 Forever.” The former is a warm shout-out to Rock
& Roll pioneer, Bo Diddley (ne’ Ellas Otha Bates). Built on a relax-fit
clave rhythm (that Diddley christened the Bo Diddley beat), and
rattling guitar riffs that uncoil with reptilian grace, the track is an
elegant homage to one of Rock’s original guitar heroes. Despite the fact
that he was a huge influence on Burdon, they never met face to face.
The latter is a sober meditation on Rock & Roll’s
shocking mortality rate. The lyrics make oblique reference to
the infamous and untimely deaths of contemporaries like Jimi
Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, as well as the more recent
passings of Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain. Burdon also alludes
to his own substance issues. The slow and deliberate melody is
accented by a horn section and slippery guitar riffs.
Burdon steps out of his comfort zone on a couple of tracks.
Not only is “Wait” an honest-to-goodness love song, it’s also a
languid Samba anchored by a courtly Spanish guitar solo.
“Old Habits Die Hard” is positively swamp-adelic,
marrying voodoo rhythms and scorching guitar riffs to lyrics
that revisit Burdon’s colorful past.
Other highlights here include the Bluesy but slightly
mordant “In The Ground,” the backwoods balladry of “Medicine
Man,” and “The Devil And Jesus,” which is a sinewy delight.
The album closes with a trenchant cover of Bo Diddley’s
“Before You Accuse Me.”
Aside from the Bo Diddley track and Marc Cohn’s
“Medicine Man,” Burdon had a hand in writing every song.
He also co-produced the album with Tony Braunagel.
Musically, Burdon is ably supported by his crack touring band,
Billy Watts on Guitar, Terry Wilson on Bass, Wally Ingram on
percussion, Mike Finnigan on Hammond B3 and Braunagel on drums.
Til Your River Runs Dry is the triumphant return
of a guy who has never really gone away. During his brief tenure
with WAR, Eric Burdon caustically referred to himself as “an
over-fed long- haired leaping gnome.” He got that wrong, in the
History Of Rock & Roll, Eric Burdon is a giant among men.
