Last week, I watched, sadly, as Eric Burdon performed at Sunset Station. Not that there was anything disastrous about the concert. Burdon's voice was in adequate shape and he delivered a contract-fulfilling, 70-minute set heavy on the songs he recorded for the first time about four decades ago: "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," "It's My Life," "Sky Pilot," "Don't Bring Me Down" and "House of the Rising Sun." Over the years, I've seen him play a dozen times, in a handful of states, and he's sung all of these songs every time.
The first time I saw an Eric Burdon concert, Ronald Reagan was president, and the former Animal already seemed completely sick of all of his hits. Before "House of The Rising Sun," Burden raged about how much he hated it and screamed that he would rather die than sing it again. Of course, he realized that the song would just be played at his funeral. So, he faced the inevitable and he sang "House of the Rising Sun" that night, and he has continued to offer it up through the intervening decades, including at Sunset Station. No surprise then that the all-consuming, brutal and raw vocal Burdon delivered in 1964, has—like a rough pebble slowly smoothed by the waves on a beach—become just a slack and perfunctory growl.
I knew it would be like that. Burdon's bored delivery has been a constant every time I've seen him in concert. The only difference this time was that he sat on a stool for much of the night. Fair enough, I didn't want to see him dance anyway. In fact, this show wasn't so bad. The room was full and the audience easily pleased by the hits.
I've seen some hideous indignities inflicted on this member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at other shows. In the '90s, I watched Burdon perform at a food festival in Minnesota as the opening act for War, his former backing group. Actually, it was a bastardized, touring version of War, without the original members largely responsible for the band's successes. There was no reunion that day on stage for "Spill the Wine," which in 1970 became War's first hit and Burdon's last.
So, why was I at Sunset Station, listening to him once again dodge notes on "It's My Life" and suffering through endless, bland solos by his journeyman players on "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"? Unlike the other fans, I have no nostalgia for the hits which were all before my time. (Though now almost 40 myself, it may have been one of the last times I get to be a youngster at a concert.) I think I keep going to see these shows because I haven't given up on Eric Burdon's music, even if he long ago stopped caring himself. I go looking for a glimmer, just a glimmer.
There is a soul to Burdon singing at his best that is still a mystery to me, though I hear it in all great singers. No matter how the voice ages, it is never lost. If you want to hear raw British blues in its finest hour, find the 1963 bootleg of the Animals ripping it up on stage a year before they were even signed. The Animals' essential recordings made them one of the few bands to give the Beatles and the Rolling Stones a decent run (at least for a couple weeks in 1964) for preeminence. Then there was Burdon's Otis Redding phase, knocking it out of the park with epic takes on "To Love Somebody" and "River Deep, Mountain High." His underappreciated discs with War were groundbreaking in their ambition and sound. I've listened to all these recordings for years with total pleasure.
But Burdon somehow lost that soul in his singing while keeping the powerful voice. There have been more discs, of course. At first, bland rock albums of new material ignored by all. Then, as the years went on, nothing but endless re-issued compilations and live recordings recycling the same hits. At Sunset Station, Burdon was selling the latest live recording (from Seattle in 2001), and next year a concert DVD will present Burdon singing his hits once again.
It was during these years of creative silence that, ironically, I discovered his truly great work. I am still hooked. So, no matter how redundant, I buy all the discs, and when he returns to Vegas next year, I'll be there again, to hear him sing "House of the Rising Sun." And I'll be looking for a glimmer of that kid who once sang it as if his life were at stake in this old man who performs it for a living.