I had never seen the below video for The Animals version of House of the Rising Sun before and it’s awesome. Such a classic song deserves a classic video and this one doesn’t disappoint. Check out Eric Burdon here, just 24-years-old, but with the voice of a much older man.
House of the Rising Sun is one of those songs—like Ode to Billy Joe—where the listener has to project themselves onto the ambiguous lyrics because ultimately they never give up their mystery. Did the misery the lyrics speak of happen to the young man, to his father…? Is he in jail? Did he spend all of his money in a whore house? Gambling? Does it involve a woman? It’s difficult to say.
Luckily there is a Wikipedia enrty about the song, which tells various tales about how it came to be. The song’s roots might go back as far as the 16th century. Considering its status as one of the ur-songs of the 1960s, this wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Then again, maybe it was about a real brothel in New Orleans. Here’s an excerpt from the article as it relates to the Animals, but the entire thing is worth reading:
Recorded in just one take on 18 May 1964, it started with a famous electric guitar A minor chord arpeggio by Hilton Valentine. The performance took off with Eric Burdon’s lead vocal, which has been variously described as “howling,” “soulful” and “deep and gravelly as the north-east English coal town of Newcastle that spawned him.” Finally, Alan Price’s pulsating organ part (played on a Vox Continental) completed the sound. Burdon later said, “We were looking for a song that would grab people’s attention,” and they succeeded: House of the Rising Sun was a true trans-Atlantic hit, topping both the UK pop singles chart (in July 1964) and the U.S. pop singles chart (two months later in September 1964, when it became the first British Invasion number one unconnected with The Beatles; it was the group’s breakthrough hit in both countries and became their signature song. The song was also a hit in a number of other countries.
House of the Rising Sun (Wikpiedia)
