Eric Burdon: War Was Too Soft For Me!

Ann Moses, New Musical Express, 7 August 1971

ERIC BURDON ANSWERS QUESTIONS FOR ANN MOSES IN HOLLYWOOD

ERIC BURDON is one of popland’s most fertile brains, one of its most exciting performers, and one of its most unpredictable stars. Nothing has been heard of him for some time, partly because he has become a nomad, literally, living in the desert and thinking about the great, great movie he plans to make — and knowing Eric he’ll do it some day — or bust.

Meantime, his managers have told him that to get into the film studios he has to become a pop star again. He tried to do it with War, but the outlook of Eric didn’t fit the outlook of War. So now he’s teaming with Jimmy Witherspoon. To get the latest on Eric for NME, our Hollywood correspondent met up with him and got all his latest thoughts from him…

ANN: To bring things up-to-date, can we backtrack a little and find out exactly what happened between Eric Burdon and War?

ERIC: We’ll, back tracking three years, I was totally disillusioned musically with myself and with the business. Living in L.A., all I saw were groups who didn’t mean anything going into the Whiskey with record company hypes behind them, with the exception of Chicago.

When I saw them perform it really made me want to get up and do something. But my end thing was to make a motion picture. I wanted to make a movie. I decided to give up rock and attack the movie business.

I’d written several stories that I thought would make good motion picture stories and I started to go the old square route with script under my arm, knocking on doors.

ANN: Did you also adopt a square look?

ERIC: No! No! I was more freaked out then than I am now. I lived out in the desert and I only came in to see these people and the things I’d written freaked them out to the point where they got rid of me as soon as they could!

Anyway, I couldn’t communicate with them in any size, shape or form, so I just locked myself away for two years. I was living with my road manager in Laurel Canyon and we had an El Camino pickup and a house between us. The girl I was living with was making pillow cases so we could eat.

She met Jerry (Goldstein) and Steve (Gold) (now Burdon’s managers) in their office in Beverly Hills. They bought pillow cases and asked her who she was living with and she said Eric Burdon. They asked “What’s Eric doing?” She told them “He wants to be a movie star.” So they said “Send him to see us.” I went down to see Steve and Jerry and told them I wanted to be in movies and they said “You’ll never make movies going around knocking on doors. You’re going to have to be a rock and roll star again.”

Tired

I said “But I don’t want to be in rock and roll again, I’m tired of the business.” They realised the quick way to get movies together is to utilize what you’ve got. They seduced me into thinking I should try it one more time. So I began to look for a group.

We went into a club in the San Fernando Valley and I saw this group working there, a typical spade nightclub act with four chick singers and white horn section and the black centre of the group were like cooking, doing Beatle tunes and things like that. But it was the rhythm section that turned me on more than anything.

So Jerry rapped to the guys and we got together with the leaders of the group. We kept the rhythm section, got rid of the chicks, got rid of the horn players, except for Charles Miller, who was just an exceptional horn player — and that was War.

I worked with War in the worst kind of crap houses from here to Alaska. We just kept building and building until eventually we were successful and had one hit album and then I started to get weak, because the movie thing seemed farther away. We slacked-off and made a really bummer album, A Black Man’s Burdon, a real piece of crap.

Then War started to flower by themselves and I realized it was time for me to sort of ease out and let their thing happen. Although we excited a lot of people and we did a lot of exciting concerts — like in France and Germany in January — it was like War was going this way and I was going that way. Even though we did some good shows, recording-wise there was so much conflict because I was so bull-headed and my statements were ones of change and revolution and wanting to do things and they didn’t feel that way at all.

Gentle

Their thing is soft, gentle, spaced-out Southern California black music, so I had to go through this trip of realizing that the American black I was looking for was not War.

Then I met Jimmy Witherspoon, who I’ve hero worshipped for a long time. I met him in a nightclub one night and asked him what he was doing. He said he wasn’t doing anything. I saw him at the Whiskey on the bill with Bill Cosby and what was happening there was terrible.

I figured Jimmy’s never, ever been recorded right in his life, so I wanted to get together and do this thing with ‘Spoon, and then I found out ‘Spoon was the real black man I was looking for. ‘Spoon is the old black cat that I understand and our heads are together because he is the essence of the blues. So I started working on this album with ‘Spoon.

ANN: Was your appearance at San Quentin planned or was it kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing?

ERIC: The San Quentin event was a freak thing. It was like he was doing a gig in San Quentin for prisoners and he just invited me to go up there. We were just going to jam and have a good time, but my manager Jerry Goldstein said “Well, if you’re going to jive and just have fun, why don’t we send along the 16-track recording truck.”

I said no, because it would spoil the vibes, but Jerry said we had to send the truck up. So what we got was Jimmy and I jamming with the prison band, which was pretty good despite the fact that none of the musicians had worked together before.

It was just like the old days, it was like back in Newcastle with Alan Price and all those dudes. We just completely understood each other and with the blues it just fell into place.

ANN: So, part of the album will be live from San Quentin and part will be from the studio?

ERIC: Playing at the prison is what triggered the idea to do a concept album about prisons. I had already been writing songs about prisons and prison reform and about the way I feel about prisons, and the fact that they’re bursting at the seams, and for no other reason except that people are being busted for things that they shouldn’t be getting busted for. The whole album is about prisons and it’s called Time Is Come.

ANN: What’s your aim with the record? Is it just to get your feelings across, to put over a message or are you trying to entertain also?

ERIC: It’s not music to entertain people! It’s music to disturb people, to make them get off their asses and do something about what’s wrong. At the moment it’s ‘Spoon’s old blues head, who’s seen the same thing happening since he was born in Arkansas and moved to California.

And it’s my head, who’s come to America and realised that America was bigger than life. And that the problems here are bigger than I ever expected them to be and that the great things here were bigger than I ever expected then to be.

It’s time to get rid of the bad things and groove on the great things — and the essence of the album, the main track, called ‘Soledad’ (which is also the single), is just an observation on why or how the hell anyone can be driving down the freeway in their air conditioned car listening to their 8-track stereo tapes, smoking dope and be free when just on the other side of the wire there are guys who are being beaten up and treated like animals for doing the same thing.

That’s how screwed up it is and that’s the single that will come out of the album. The whole album is just a complete rap down on the concept of the way prisons are today.

ANN: Are you working up an act with Jimmy or will it just be like San Quentin where you go on stage and jam?

ERIC: We’re going to present the album in concert. We’ve formed a group within the company called Uncle Tom, who will eventually back Jimmy as his group. Some of the musicians are on the album, and War worked on some of the tracks, and a lot of other musicians were involved, too.

The group to back Jimmy and I and who backed us up on most of the album tracks are out in the desert. I tried my best to disguise the sound of the group within the Jimmy Witherspoon album because it’s the first time these guys have played blues.

It was hard for them to come off the trip they’re on and it’s an incredible trip and it’s hard for them to come back and play simple blues, but they did it and I’m glad because the album sounds good.

ANN: What does singing or recording “the blues” mean to you?

ERIC: Blues is a discord. You see, if you have a piano and you play the chord of C, well, if you play a discord — I’m not a musician so I don’t know maybe I’m wrong — but if you play a discord it’s a tone that has another note working against it. That’s what the blues is.

The blues is love and love is working together like two people working together in discord, against each other. That’s what the blues is.

The blues is pain, the pain of life, the pain of love, the pain of living, the pain of life, like that’s one of the heavy dues that’s coming down in the public right now. They say “How the hell can B.B. King or Jimmy Witherspoon sing the blues when they drive in $4,000 cars?”

The thing is you’ve got to be hungry. You see, I’m not hungry for hamburgers or pizza, I’m not hungry for money or a house. I’m hungry for something more and you’ve gotta be hungry. When you’re hungry and starving for something you can express the blues.

I’m hungry to know myself completely. I almost know myself. I have visions of the way I will be and can be and I am at times, when I’m high and when I’m stoned and I’m feeling good and I’m around people who make me feel good and I am at peace within a circle of people. Then I see the way I am gonna be all the time, once I’ve created my first statement, which will be the movie I’ve been talking about.

The only thing holding me back is the fact that the baby hasn’t been born yet, which is the movie. The movie is my baby and that’s why no one is going to cut it up. It’s going to be from the ground up. We have to have the right to work alone and no company is going to have the right to cut it or stop what’s gotta be said in the motion picture!

ANN: Since War didn’t turn out to be the thing to launch you into the movies, is this album and your appearances with Jimmy another avenue to become a pop star again, as a stepping stone to films?

ERIC: Everything I do is a complete whore. I’m whoring myself to get to my end medium, which is motion pictures.

ANN: Why do you think people would want to come to see you in a movie?

ERIC: They won’t come to see me, they’ll come to see my movie. I want to direct it. I’m interested in acting because actors are interesting and to be an actor is agreat art form.

ANN: What makes you think you can direct?

ERIC: Because it’s my dream and my experiences and my visions and my past (that will be filmed) and nobody lived it like me and there’s nobody who can relate it like me. But I need the help of people who can understand me and understand what I’ve been through so it can be brought to you in full colour and stereophonic sound.

ANN: Will your film get across one concept, as with the prison album, or will you cover a lot of different ideas?

ERIC: Oh, I’ve got several movies planned. It’s getting the machinery in motion; that’s the hard thing. Once you’ve got the machinery in motion and once it’s running, then the rest comes easy.

ANN: Will you make any compromises in what you put on film? It seems the big companies today try to reach the biggest common denominator with some of their films. Will you make any compromises to reach a wider audience?

ERIC: I saw Ryan’s Daughter, which is the straight world’s last dying thrust at making a romantic movie that would touch the heart of every female, and maybe a few guys. It touched my heart. I thought every cent spent on the movie was worth spending.

But I don’t see where Lean (David Lean, the director) is going to go from there. I certainly loved the movie.

Then there’s another side of the coin in the garbage movies being made, like Easy Rider or whatever. To me it’s absolute garbage. It’s like guys who have been making pornographic movies have decided to make something a little better or they’ve tried to pretend it’s a little better. But to me it’s pornographic.

Anything or anybody who creates paranoia is bad. Like when I was in Louisiana recently for a festival. The kids were walking around looking for the Chevrolet pickup that had the shot-gun in the back with the redneck in it because they had seen it in amovie!

ANN Do you plan to make America your home or would you like to live in England?

ERIC: I’ve always been fascinated by the desert and I always wanted to live there. An opportunity came up this year to buy a house there, so I moved out with the guys in the group and we’re going to get it all together.

I’ll stay in America till my movie is completed and then I’ll take a holiday of two or three months, go see some bullfights in Spain. Maybe I’ll even cut my hair to watch the bullfights in Spain. Or maybe Spain will have changed enough by then.

Every two days I think “I wish I was back in England,” but it’s just because of the memories. If I went there I’d be dissatisfied. What I’m doing is here. Sure, everyone has beautiful memories ofwarm summer nights in England and friends and…

I love it but then I’m building some new memories here, different ones. And its taking me a long time to adjust. Right now I’m happy because I’m doing what I want to do. And musically this new group is going to wipe everybody out!

© Ann Moses, 1971