Eric Burdon Q&A: Rock Legend on Springsteen, Back Pain and Racial Divides

At 71, Eric Burdon is raring to go. Following years of intense back pain after falling on a patch of ice, the former Animals and War frontman is all healed up and just released a new album, 'Til Your River Runs Dry. Spinner recently caught up with the legendary rocker to discuss the record, his grueling SXSW stint, performing with Bruce Springsteen and how he bridged the racial divide with his War bandmates.

This album was called your "most personal to date." What does that mean to you?

I think people say it's the most personal album to date because maybe they see their own personal attitudes or growth in it. For me, it's personal, but I think that I deal with what everybody else has to deal with: The extremities between right and wrong, good and evil. I think it's part of the human play in everybody's life.

How did you come up with "Invitation to the White House"?

The album took such a long time, it was written and recorded when Obama first came into office. He gives the impression that he's one of the guys you could walk up and knock on the door and say, "Hey, how're you doing today?" That was the feeling I got from Obama, and it's meant to be lighthearted. It's not meant to be taken seriously.

Stream Eric Burdon's Full 'Til Your River Runs Dry Album

I saw that you're playing SXSW this year, and I know you played with Springsteen there last year. What was your experience like there?

I was really in bad shape when I went down there, to SXSW. My back had been really getting worse and it was becoming mental stress rather than physical. We went down there and I had no idea what SXSW was or what it meant or what the format was; I was just dropped in the middle. After two days, I was ready to jump on the plane and go home. I thought I was going down there to do a gig with my band, but what was in my mind wasn't for real, and by that time I was in so much pain I wasn't thinking of anything but my back. It got in the way of everything.

But [playing with Springsteen] was quite a pleasant surprise for me; I was in another session with a group of guys from Nashville called the Greenhorns. We were doing a radio show, and my phone started buzzing in my pocket, and it was the Springer, the Boss, from across town. "Are you here?" he said. "What do you mean? Am I in America?" "No, are you here in Austin?" "Yeah!" "Well come on over, we want to get you on stage for a song." I said fine, OK, cool. It was very nice of him to do that.

What's your relationship like with Springsteen? How far do you guys go back?

Without going into it too deeply, he wanted to produce me at one point and I didn't think it was the right thing to do at the time, so I said no. And there were times when I thought, "I should've said yeah!" But I didn't, for some reason. Early on, when I was playing in a club called Stone Pony in New Jersey, the owner of the club had a wall phone stretched to its maximum on its steel cord, and he was holding the phone in front of the stage during a guitar solo. I said, "what are you doin'?" and he said, "Bruce is back home watching the kids tonight, and he wanted to know what the band sounded like." That was a long time ago.

What do you have planned for SXSW this year?

I won't know until I get there. But I'm ready for anything this time; I'm in a much improved state of health than I was the last time I was there.


For the upcoming gigs, are there any old songs that you're gonna be playing again that you haven't played in a while?

Yeah, I am digging into my early catalog, trying to rejuvenate some of the things I did prior to being in the Animals. I did have a life before the Animals, and I'm trying constantly to prove that I have a life after the Animals. People tend to forget that I was the frontman with War for two years. People sort of have compartmental memories.

Were fans reluctant to embrace War when you first joined? It was a very different vibe from what people had known you for.

It was probably more difficult with the band than the audience. I don't think the guys in the band had ever seen a white person up close before. I remember them saying, "What do we wanna be playing with a guy who lives up in Beverly Hills and sits by the poolside smokin' a cigar, on the telephone doing business deals?" Where they got that from, I've got no idea, but it took us some time to settle down and see what each of us had to offer, to bring to the public. And eventually, it worked well.

What were the things you were bringing to the table that they weren't really familiar with?

Well, they couldn't understand -- and I couldn't understand -- that, back then, young black men of their caliber were not interested in blues music. They thought it was like, "that's something that my ma and pa did, when I was sittin' under the table and they were fightin' over a bottle of booze. They associated the blues with old-world Jim Crow values. They didn't grasp the fact that blues music was an original American art form, as was jazz. You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz. I think people in Europe grasp that, even more easily than Americans do; and now, they've built a wall around themselves in terms of rap, which I totally understand. They think, "This is our thing, and whitey, don't go here." One or two [white] kids have made it, and made it on their own, which is good; but initially, that was the attitude in rap.

You'll see a lot of rappers at SXSW, too. You might even find some young guys who love the work you do, especially with War.

You know, it's strange, actually. "Spill the Wine" was a rap song. When that was recorded, I was laying on my back in the studio with a microphone stuck down my throat and, needless to say, there's a good reason to was in that (prone?) position. But I didn't write anything up front, it just came tumbling out of my mouth. I guess that's what rap is.