It's Alan Price's birthday today. Happy Birthday Alan. Did you get a card from Eric? Thought not.
You see, Alan Price shafted Eric Burdon. And Hilton Valentine. And Chas Chandler. In fact he shafted all his muckers in The Animals: in 1964 when they decided to record the trad blues number House Of The Rising Sun (a live favourite in their set) the band nailed it in one take. They were told at the time there wouldn't be room on the label to list all the band as arrangers so they decided to put Price's name on it and they'd sort the details out later. Oh dear. You don't need me to tell you what happened next. Oh, go on then. The record reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic and is still played on radio stations the world over some 40 odd years later. And who are the royalty cheques made out to? That's right, you guessed it. As Eric himself said in his autobiography Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood: "We realized we were all in for a fucking when the first check came in and Alan got every cent." Predictably, Price left the band shortly afterwards.
Anyway, here's a version that Price can't get his thieving hands on.
Woody Guthrie: House Of The Rising Sun
Never knew that, but I can honestly say that since childhood I've found Alan Price strangely repulsive. He bears out my theory that all men called Alan are horrible.
ReplyDeleteWord Verification:'PRIES'!!
How naughty!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough ISBW I too know a particulary nasty piece of work named Alan.
Freeman, Ball, Bennett, Carr, Partridge, Sugar, Rickman, Tracy? Mind you, one of those is dead and (at least) one's a wooden puppet.
ReplyDeleteCor ! that's a goody from woody and brings back lots of memories. But you know I'm married to an Alan and so far it's been OK - at least for the last 40 years anyway!!
ReplyDeleteYikes what a stiff up! Did you hear the tale that Linda McCartney only got a composer credit on Macca's early seventies releases to redirect some cash for Sir Thumbs of Kintyre, as his assets were frozen while the cat's cradle of Beatles finances were untangled over a five year period..
ReplyDeleteCarr...urghh
ReplyDeleteWooden muppet.
Naughty Alan Price: copied from a fan website:
ReplyDelete'However, by this time the stress of the group’s whirlwind success had brought Alan Price to the breaking point. A complex, moody character, prone to prolonged bouts of bleak introversion, he’d always somehow been slightly estranged from his colleagues. Although he shared the same no-nonsense working class roots and a fondness for drink, he wasn’t gregarious by nature and this caused ongoing problems within the group’s dynamic.'
Somewhere, I think maybe in an EMI coffee table book I've got there's a brilliant photo of the Animals Mk.I in front of a pub in London called The Rising Sun, looking like they'd just arrived, wide eyed off the train from Tyneside.
ReplyDelete