Eric Burdon & The Animals
Winds Of Change

THE REVIEW

The seismic epicenter of the psychedelic wave was San Francisco, where, in the second half of the sixties, the demands for change had Haight-Ashbury as the headquarters of the best minds of that generation, who genuinely believed that with peace, love, and brotherhood, they could change the fate of a world destined to extinguish under the weight of consumerist and selfish implosion.

And unfortunately, they were defeated.

Eric Burdon had just moved there permanently, disbanding the formation known until then as The Animals, authors of the most lascivious and murky blues among the wave of bands that marked the British Invasion of the early sixties. A completely atypical band in the English music scene of the period, because the Newcastle quintet was much more inclined to the rough and rambling American sounds of blues and rock 'n' roll, compared to the energetic and rigorous "mannerism" beat reigning among bands from the land of Albion. Authors of hit songs like "The House Of The Rising Sun", "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", or "We've Got To Get Out Of This Place", their popularity was much wider overseas than at home, and despite the new contract with Decca/London, "Animalism" (1966), their most compact and powerful work was released only in the United States, thus effectively putting an end to the experience (bassist Chas Chandler moved to New York and aspiring producer "discovered" the young guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bringing him to London and making history). As mentioned, Burdon (the guiding spirit of the group) decided to immerse himself in the kaleidoscopic life of Frisco and, surrounded by a series of trusted musicians (after some experiments also supervised by the young genius Zappa), released the manifesto of the Love Generation, "Winds Of Changes" (August 1967). Burdon became its spokesperson and the megaphone directed at the world, and the album opens with his abrasive voice that smoothly unfolds in unraveling the litany of the new winds of change taking place, laying it down on the magic carpet woven by the acidic violin of John Weider and the visionary guitar of Vic Briggs, in a hypnotic mantra guided by a visionary sitar that weaves in and out of the rhythmic mesh of Danny McCullogh's bass and Barry Jenkins' trusted drums, for the Lysergic Manifesto that is the title track:

"There are winds of changes blowing
Gathering leaves up in its path
And the people who are the leaves
Will remain in our hearts
With love, till eternity"

"Poem By The Sea" lives on noise that underlies Burdon's voice, which bursts into a melancholic desolate land, torn by a nomadic violin that takes the final scene to gently introduce us to the psychotic fury of "Paint It Black", a worldwide hit from a few years earlier by the Rolling Stones, that, despite the lyrics, the animals pour buckets of multicolored paint on, wildly indulging in a pagan orgy of purification. "The Black Plague" lives on a structure reminiscent of Gregorian chants and allows Burdon to recite his visionary surreal parable; before launching into the fiery blues of "Yes I Am Experienced" (it's superfluous to underline whom he addresses his response to...). The feelings for the city that adopted him are sublimated in the splendid love song that is "San Franciscan Nights", acid folk of the finest lineage, so much so that it climbs the sales charts while not selling out and competing equally with Country Joe & The Fish, Kaleidoscope (USA), The Byrds, Beau Brummels.

The second part of the album perhaps loses a bit of incisiveness, and the proclamation in perfect Leary-style "Man-Woman" musically is only a hint at vaguely tribal rhythms, with Burdon's proto-rap reminding us "This is the beginning of the end"; while "Hotel Hell" closely resembles the rarefied atmospheres of "Forever Changes" by Love, with Spanish-tinged moods, but without being as incisive as the work of Arthur Lee and company, who also return in the other hit of the album "Good Times", albeit bastardized by a (mersey)beat penumbra... as if Burdon didn't want to break the umbilical cord with his origins. "Anything" is a very soft ballad balanced between Bacharach's easy-listening from the box office and the more cultured one of Lee Hazelwood; the only track of the album to sound understated, before erupting into the Zappa-esque freakedelia of the concluding "It's All Meat".

Exhausted by the energy expended (maliciously defined by many as the furious hysteria of Burdon's experiments with LSD) even Eric Burdon & The Animals ended their activity, and our man assembled another formation for what would be his sublime swan song "The Twain Shall Meet" (1968).