Why The Animals' Eric Burdon is OK with Trump using "House of the Rising Sun"

A Son House version would have had a certain symmetry.

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Burdon’s face has some character. He looks more like the sort of guy who should be singing about sin and misery now than he did back in his fresh-faced youth.

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The Animals didn’t claim to write it. Their version is credited as “Traditional/
arranged by Alan Price”. Someone (apparently Burdon himself) owns the rights to that particular recording but you or I could record a version at any time without paying songwriting royalties.

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My copy of their 1964 recording gives writing credit to Chas Chandler

Seriously?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care a whit about his politics.

For me it’s more that a window into a man’s character Is reflected by how he treats the waitstaff.

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My copy of their 1964 recording gives writing credit to Chas Chandler

That’s odd because everywhere I can find it’s Trad/Arr. Price.

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I’ll recheck when I go home; but pretty sure

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An interesting take on it:

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It’s weird how it seems like this is true for all the songs the Republicans pick for events. Like, if anyone involved actually knew the lyrics they wouldn’t have picked any of them.

Still, they consistently provide opportunities for the (surviving) musicians to dunk on Trump.

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That picture makes him look a lot like “Sloth” in “The Goonies”.

Nina Simone has a distinctive voice, and probably style too. She did a lot of covers (as well as write some of her own songs), and she’s able to make the covers different from the originals. Not necessarily “better” but different enough that they are worth listening to as well as the originals.

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and world class piano chops that shouldn’t be overlooked

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“Well, I was gonna vote for Biden, but damn I really dig this tune.”

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Merveillus!

An online friend, a German-speaking European, said he really liked this, but that this is his fave version:

and I can’t blame him one bit. It really is gorgeous.

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Yes, seriously. It’s the same song, so of course there are similarities.

But Burdon sounds nothing like Dylan, he’d been singing it long before Dylan’s version, and the Animals version has a very dominant keyboard running through it that changes the entire dynamic of the song.

In any case, Dylan stole his version from Dave Van Ronk. Or rather, he based his version on Van Ronk’s and took it a new direction from there, just like the Animals made their version very different.

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Brian Johnson before his voice got shredded!

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I think I read that somewhere. Oh yeah the top of this thread:

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The earliest U.S. single just lists Alan Price, without the "Trad arr. by " part that’s on every other country’s release version.

One of the reasons Price left the group was that he claimed the arrangement credit when they all helped, but Price thought there wasn’t room to list all their names, and that started the in-fighting.

In the US in particular sometimes the arrangement of a traditional was treated as equivalent to writing for royalty purposes, so Price might have cleaned up by listing just his name.

But at no point did anyone in the Animals seriously contend that they’d written a song that had been familiar to the public for decades via various versions.

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I signed up just to thank you for this. I had this on VHS over 20 years ago, but it had long since fallen by the wayside, and I couldn’t remember the name of the comedian. Every few years, is try to google it, to no avail.

But I remember how talented he was and several of the bits quite vividly, like his Bob Dylan/Paul Simon impression. And for years, I myself have done the bit where I finally settle down to work, only to holler “Cookies!” and hop up!
I can’t await to watch it again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

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I saw the New Animals in concert, but he didn’t get pissed off and storm offstage. He was pissed, and as a result he fell offstage.

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