I got through the book in a couple of hot afternoons in a chair in the shade, slightly cooled by a south-westerly off Bass Strait.
Eric Burdon might not have been all that easy to get along with. He all but admits it in Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. He makes band decisions on the run, is often drunk or drugged, and lands in prison or goes bust more than once in the course of three hundred pages of the misadventures of a Geordie. He gets himself into trouble on just about every page. Or other people do.
There is little chronology. The chapters wriggle over the decades like the squirming, dying notes of 'House of the Rising Sun'. The book is essentially a series of anecdotes told in Geordie conversational. Burdon may be the least rock-star-like rock star in existence given the tone of the book. He doesn't even talk much about his songs, let alone rhapsodise. This is a good thing. Burdon is no bore pinioning the reader with the minutiae of recording sessions, or endless chronologies of the chart success of his songs. Mostly he talks about the disasters; the record company executives; the hangers-on and the shysters; the girlfriends and the drugs; his guilt over the death of Jimi Hendrix; and the Golds and the Goldsteins promising the earth and ripping him off blind.
And riding Harleys with Steve McQueen in the desert behind Los Angeles.
The whole thing works, like someone's flickering Super 8 projector spilling out long-forgotten random sections of memory onto a white cotton sheet stuck on a wall in a beach house on a long hot summer night.
One night Linda McCartney introduces Burdon to Nina Simone, the 'the strongest, the baddest' of the female stars of the time. Burdon is reluctant, but McCartney takes him backstage after Simone's show.
Towards the end of the book, in a transcendent, dreamlike chapter that still manages to retain its no-nonsense Geordie conversational tone, Burdon is invited to a party at the original House of the Rising Sun. On a hot, rainy New Orleans night, he stands outside looking in:
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Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Eric Burdon with J. Marshall Craig
Five Mile Press, Rowville Australia, 2003 (First published USA 2001)
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Instant Kitchen Hand review: Understated Geordie masterpiece. Find a copy and read it. (Published in the early 2000s, the cover of my second-hand copy boasted the period-style 'Includes bonus collectable CD'. Mine was missing. Someone kept the CD and threw out the book? Why?)
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Answer to quiz question in previous post: the Vox Continental organ.
Eric Burdon might not have been all that easy to get along with. He all but admits it in Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. He makes band decisions on the run, is often drunk or drugged, and lands in prison or goes bust more than once in the course of three hundred pages of the misadventures of a Geordie. He gets himself into trouble on just about every page. Or other people do.
There is little chronology. The chapters wriggle over the decades like the squirming, dying notes of 'House of the Rising Sun'. The book is essentially a series of anecdotes told in Geordie conversational. Burdon may be the least rock-star-like rock star in existence given the tone of the book. He doesn't even talk much about his songs, let alone rhapsodise. This is a good thing. Burdon is no bore pinioning the reader with the minutiae of recording sessions, or endless chronologies of the chart success of his songs. Mostly he talks about the disasters; the record company executives; the hangers-on and the shysters; the girlfriends and the drugs; his guilt over the death of Jimi Hendrix; and the Golds and the Goldsteins promising the earth and ripping him off blind.
And riding Harleys with Steve McQueen in the desert behind Los Angeles.
The whole thing works, like someone's flickering Super 8 projector spilling out long-forgotten random sections of memory onto a white cotton sheet stuck on a wall in a beach house on a long hot summer night.
One night Linda McCartney introduces Burdon to Nina Simone, the 'the strongest, the baddest' of the female stars of the time. Burdon is reluctant, but McCartney takes him backstage after Simone's show.
She was a tigress. Her eyes flashed as she looked me up and down and spat out a curse: 'So you're the honkey motherfucker that stole my song and got a hit out of it.' ... Apparently she'd heard my version of 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood'. I was thunderstruck. Lost for words – and beginning to think that I should have fled this scene long before. But after a silence, I came back at her: 'Hey, listen, if you will admit that the work sung in your set this evening probably belongs to the bones of some unfortunate buried in an unmarked grave in Angola State Penitentiary – then I'll admit that your rendition inspired us to record the song. Besides, the Animals having a hit with it has paved the way for you in Europe. They're waiting for you. You'll find out when you get there.' ... She turned in her seat and slowly stood up. ... 'My name's Nina Simone.' 'Eric Burdon,' I said. 'Well, pleased to meet you. Sit down.' ... Suddenly everyone in the room could breathe again.Cultural appropriation dealt with in a few short sentences, the two singers become friends. Later, Burdon becomes Simone's minder in London as 'everyone else was too unnerved ... .'
Towards the end of the book, in a transcendent, dreamlike chapter that still manages to retain its no-nonsense Geordie conversational tone, Burdon is invited to a party at the original House of the Rising Sun. On a hot, rainy New Orleans night, he stands outside looking in:
I looked back towards the main room of the house one floor up. Distinguished party guests stood inside under a crystal chandelier with drinks in their hands, talking, moving through the room. ... The place was coming alive for me. I imagined the human traffic that came through this place two centuries before ...Later, he escapes the dinner and wanders alone through the old ex-brothel, glass of wine in his hand.
The house was talking to me. The walls were breathing. I smiled to myself as I walked. Almost every night since I was twenty years old, I had sung a song about this very house, and now that I had found it I was happy to discover that it was a place of beauty. ... Soon, the party drew to a close and the guests were departing. I hung back, breathing in the Louisiana night.Conversational? Prose poetry.
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Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Eric Burdon with J. Marshall Craig
Five Mile Press, Rowville Australia, 2003 (First published USA 2001)
*
Instant Kitchen Hand review: Understated Geordie masterpiece. Find a copy and read it. (Published in the early 2000s, the cover of my second-hand copy boasted the period-style 'Includes bonus collectable CD'. Mine was missing. Someone kept the CD and threw out the book? Why?)
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Answer to quiz question in previous post: the Vox Continental organ.
My library has this, I checked. I will definitely read it.
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