Original Animals drummer brings the hits to Shoreham

Rock n Roll Hall of Famer John is the only original in the line-up which goes under the name Animals & Friends for dates including May 2 at the Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham. It’s certainly something he never thought he would be doing all these years later.

“I remember thinking at the time I will give it a couple years and then everything will get back to normal,” John recalls. “It is just amazing how the wheels have kept on grinding and I'm still on the road. I've just come back from three weeks in Sweden and Finland with the add-on of flying to Porto for one gig!”

But the point is that John is celebrating a decade of huge musical and indeed wider cultural significance: “Everything seemed to be breaking new ground. Everything seemed to be new and not just the music. I mean the fashion and everything else. It was like we were suddenly in technicolour for the first time. It was a feeling of liberation. We were the first generation that seemed to break free from our parents. My parents were great about it but I do remember my dad kept saying ‘You will have to get a proper job one day!’ I am still thinking about it!”

Each of the great bands from the era had their own distinctive character, especially The Animals: “I suppose it was just our background. We were working-class Geordie lads. Back in those days all the buildings (in Newcastle) were as black as soot. It was austerity. When we were 15 in 1956 we'd just come out of rationing and really it was rock 'n' roll that saved our lives.”

Music seemed an exciting place to go: “I didn't for a moment think that we'd be doing it for the rest of our lives, but rather than listening to music we wanted to be amongst it and we found that there was a market for us on the local scene. But we didn't realise that that was what was happening in every other city at that time. It wasn't until The Beatles broke out that we all realised we were all doing the same thing.”

And John survived to tell the tale – in an era when so many people came a cropper: “I wasn't alone in it but I always felt a little bit wary of the hard drug rock 'n' roll lifestyle that some people were destroyed by. I was always ‘I don't really want to go down there.’ There's was a bit of common sense, I suppose. I think the real danger was when LSD came in which was a real personality changer. You were aware of people that you thought you knew were then suddenly like they were like someone else.”

But above all John remembers the excitement: “Within a few short months of leaving Newcastle we were flying to New York to follow up on our number-one single. And all the experiences and all the influences that we were coming up with in our music had come across the Atlantic in the 50s. Before then our only experience of America was in the movies and then we were there. It was so exciting but we didn't take long to get used to it. We discovered that we could swing along with it and take it in our stride. Our first gig in New York was in Times Square and we did a whole week there of doing four shows a day.

“But the nice thing about The Animals 60 years later is that all the songs still hold up. We had a really good catalogue. Every generation seems to be able to identify with the songs. We were very picky in what we did, and fortunately we managed to have good taste and pick some really great stuff. We never really had a strong song-writing team within the band but fortunately we got some great songs under our belts and as I say those songs have really stood the test of time. I am the only original member of the band on board but the other guys are all great musicians and they all love the period. And it's a real privilege to play with them.”