Eric Burdon

In the day-to-day life of a traveling musician, it's easy to miss so many details. The world goes by at high-speed; it will take your breath away.

There are so many times in one's life, when one feels he has nothing more to offer. But no, my river has not run dry.

I used to hang out a lot in jazz clubs, and the groups took to a kid like me who wasn't afraid to get up and sing with a jazz band. Then I started to hang out in rock clubs and learned to carry off different styles.

I was in college, and very disappointed. I majored in commercial art and interior design for three or four years. At that time, it seemed the thing I really wanted to do, production design, just wasn't available in the U.K., so I turned to music.

My voice? Yeah, well, I used to drink a lot of beer when I was a kid and I sounded like a drunk in a choir. I don't drink anymore.

There are some songs that don't belong to The Animals that I refuse to give in to and not do. I enjoy singing other people's songs, you know. That's why they're written in the first place.

I look upon The Animals, they were a great band initially, we left our mark, but thing was it was a band that couldn't live up to its name so I soldiered on. On one level, it was devastating for a while. On another level, maybe I should thank them for helping me make my own way in my own career.

Britain, and my hometown, will always be with me wherever I go and whatever I do - but I prefer to live in California.

The rock biz is the low end of the creative world. Faces come and go so fast.

Blues was made for the recessed.

I may sing the same songs for over 40 years now but I always sing them in different ways in order to keep the excitement and passion alive.

I feel great that I've been given a chance in the golden years of my life. To me, it's the last battle, and I've been given a chance to get stuck in some good armament, some good power, and there's a chance that now I can finish off my working years with my head held high.

I have a life beyond performance. I love it, and it probably is the better part of my life, but I do have another life.

I'm really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn't buy meat, we couldn't buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn't starve - my family were lucky - but I knew what it was like standing in line waiting for foodstuffs.

OK, I've had a life of sort of success, some people know who I am but a lot of people don't. I feel the need to change that still.

Recording - once something's done, it's done, there's not much you can do about it. It's out there and you just have to pray to the gods.

Everything I do - if I do it, is going to be personal.

The Animals were their own worst enemy. The Animals were a band that couldn't live up to their name. I was the singer in the band and as long as I was enjoying myself I would keep on working with the band. But it got to be rather nasty once the big money showed up - things started to turn toxic.

From my personal point of view, the Animals are dead. They killed themselves.

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.