1977 the Comic

Lorraine gets to work solo! Typical of lead singers, eh? 🙂

Now to the comic title. I can remember back in the late 60s “discovering” the Animals’ version of “House” and can remember distinctly that it was a turnig point where I stopped listening to the Archies and headed down this hellish path known as Rock and Roll. But it was the 1970 version by Frijid Pink that really turned me on to hard rock.

This version, for those of you unaware of it, is rocked out with a fuzz driven Les Paul rhythm guitar, thumping SG bass and a dead-on Eric Burdon clone of the vocals. When cranked to 11, this song is a lot of noise that is classic hard rock. This song took me to the dark side and I’ve been a hard rock fan ever since.

There also seems to be some debate (and, uh, why?) over the meaning of the song. Some folks think it is a song about a prison named Rising Sun and most think it’s about a whore house. I lean toward the whore house as most bordellos were also gambling joints (whilst you waited for your favorite lady of course). The message is the same, once you go down the path to the dark side, forever will it consume you. Something I took to heart in about 1980 when I “cleaned” my act up and gave up the drinking and rock bands.

Trivia: apparently the Animals recorded their version in a SINGLE take and it was the first UK hit that was OVER 4 minutes. We bloody Americans clipped it rudely down to 3 minutes for AM radio stations (and the edits are harsh and obvious, ick). The single version is rarely heard today as, well, radio stations don’t give a crap about song length ever since “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” clocked in at just over 17 minutes back in 1968.

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