Animals – "House of the Rising Sun" (1965)

There is a house in New Orleans 

They call "The Rising Sun" 

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy 

And God I know I'm one

[NOTE: I chose to feature this 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME song way back in 2011, on the first anniversary of my wildly successful little blog.  "The House of the Rising Sun" was a stick of dynamite when it was released in 1964, and it’s still a stick of dynamite today.  Ralph McLean of the BBC called it "a revolutionary single," after which "the face of modern music was changed forever."  (No sh*t, Sherlock!)  Bob Dylan once told John Steel (who was the Animals’ drummer) that when he first heard the Animals’ recording of the song on his car radio, he "jumped out of his car" and "banged on the bonnet" . . . and decided to go electric.  Here's a slightly revised version of my original two-part post about "House of the Rising Sun." ]

INTRODUCTION

A full year has passed since I brought 2 or 3 lines into life, kicking and screaming and generally making a nuisance of himself by constantly demanding attention.  Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, after all.

I thought long and hard before deciding which song I would write about to kick off year 2 A.B. ("anno bloggus").  The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" fully deserves the honor I have decided to bestow upon it.  It's a song that I dare say is quite familiar to almost everyone who is reading this post – so familiar that perhaps we only half-listen to it when it pops up on the local "oldies" station.

"House of the Rising Sun" is an absolutely relentless song that has not lost a bit of its power in the 45-plus years since its release.  Is there a single thing that could be done to improve it?  I don't think so.

Eric Burdon first heard "House of the Rising Sun" sung in a club in Newcastle, England, by an English folk singer.  The song was probably between 50 and 100 years old at that time, and had been recorded by a number of prominent American folk singers (unbeknownst to Eric and his mates). 

The Animals started playing the song during a tour with Chuck Berry, often closing their act with it.  Audiences seemed to love it, which convinced producer Mickie Most that it might have some potential as a single.

Well, Mickie was right.  The song was a #1 hit in both the UK and the US – where it was the first #1 hit by a "British invasion" group other than the Beatles.  It sold a million copies in 5 weeks in the US alone.  Critics and rock historians have been virtually unanimous in praising it.

Believe it or not, the Animals recorded "House of the Rising Sun" in one take. One take!  (The producer later said that the whole recording process took at most 15 minutes, start to finish.)

This is a "not all about me" post, but I have to tell one personal story.  "House of the Rising Sun" was part of the Rogues' repertoire.  I think we performed it in public at least once -- at a Twin Hills' pool party one summer evening, which was attended by about a dozen kids, I think.

As the keyboard player, I naturally loved any song that gave me such a prominent role – and I think this was the one song I was allowed to sing.  (I had a relatively low voice – so did Jim Morrison – and for some reason we thought this song would work with a baritone/bass lead vocal.)  It's hard for me to imagine I was capable of singing and playing the organ part simultaneously.  Maybe someone else ended up singing it.

THE STORY OF "HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN"

Let's start with the words of the song, and its history.  Then we're going to analyze the music.  The lyrics tell an interesting tale but the music is what makes the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun" so compelling.

The story the song tells seems fairly straightforward.  The singer (presumably a male given that Eric Burdon is the singer) laments how a place in New Orleans called the "House of the Rising Sun" has ruined his life.  The first verse (quoted above) is a spoiler – we know the singer's life has been  ruined as a result of that evil place, but we don't know why.  

We learn about the narrator's upbringing in verse two.  His mother – no doubt she tried to keep him on the straight and narrow – was a hardworking type, while his father relied on Lady Luck for his daily bread:  

My mother was a tailor 

She sewed my new bluejeans 

My father was a gamblin' man 

Down in New Orleans 

I picture the father as a dandy – sort of a Yancy Derringer type.

Yancy Derringer

It's not clear whether the third verse is about the father or the son – or both – but what is clear is that we have added alcohol to the gambling:

Now the only thing a gambler needs 

Is a suitcase and trunk 

And the only time he's satisfied 

Is when he's on a drunk 

Did the son follow the father into the "House of the Rising Sun," falling prey to the same vices his father did?  Or did the son succumb to its evils all by himself?  We can't say for sure.  What we can say is that something very bad happened to our hero there:

Oh mother tell your children 

Not to do what I have done 

Spend your lives in sin and misery 

In the House of the Rising Sun 

The singer will have plenty of time to ponder his crimes and vices, because he's going to the poke for a nice long spell:

Well, I got one foot on the platform 

The other foot on the train 

I'm goin' back to New Orleans 

To wear that ball and chain 

To make sure we didn't miss the point, the singer then repeats the first verse – damning the "House of the Rising Sun" once more for all the lives it has ruined.

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What do you think the "House of the Rising Sun" was?  My assumption is that it was one of those all-purpose dens of iniquity that were such a prominent feature of frontier towns – a combination saloon-gambling house-whorehouse.  (Maybe there was even an opium den in the back.)

Main Street, Joplin (circa 1900) --
the "House of Lords" is at the far left

My home town – Joplin, Missouri – had a famous gilded palace of sin called the "House of Lords" back in the Gay Nineties.  But what comes to mind when I try to imagine what the "House of the Rising Sun" was like is the "Gem," a saloon that opened in Deadwood, South Dakota at the height of the famous Black Hills gold rush, and which is depicted in the HBO series Deadwood.

The fictional "Gem" is a very sordid place.  So is the fictional Deadwood.  You can find a cup of coffee in the mornings, but from about 9 a.m. on, the beverage of choice is whiskey.  Once the miners have knocked back a few shots, they're ready to gamble and have a little female companionship.  The prostitutes are a pretty nasty-looking bunch, although they aren't quite as repulsive as the miners.  

The life expectancy in Deadwood is pretty short.  There's plenty of disease to go around.  If you strike it rich, there's a good chance you'll get killed in a drunken brawl (usually involving gambling or one of the whores) while enjoying your riches, or simply murdered during a robbery.  Inconvenient dead bodies are taken to "Chinaman's Alley" and sold to the Chinese butcher, who feeds them to his pigs.  Mmmm, mmmm, good!  

"Deadwood" working girl

I remember only three female characters in the whole town who weren't whores.  One was the sheriff's wife – she was his brother's widow, and you were obliged in those days to step in and marry your brother's wife if something happened to him. 

The second was a transplanted New Yorker whose deceased husband had lucked into a major gold find.  But she got pregnant out of wedlock (by the sheriff), and was an on-again, off-again opium addict, so she was no paragon of virtue.  

The third was Calamity Jane, who dressed like a man, cursed like a man, and was such an out-of-control drunk that she usually woke up each morning soaked in her own urine.  

The first two of these women were married, and those were the only two married women I remember.  Every other female in Deadwood was single and ready to mingle.  (If you had the money, honey, they had the time.)  It wasn't exactly a place known for its strong family values.  

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Many people wonder if the "House of the Rising Sun" was an actual brothel, or combination saloon-brothel, but historians have been unable to pin down a real New Orleans establishment that went by that name.  

Some believe that the song's title is a reference to the Orleans Parish women's prison, which they say had an entrance gate with a rising sun design.  

The prison theory fits the "ball and chain" line in the song, but a women's prison?

You see, the earliest versions of "The House of the Rising Sun" featured a female narrator singing in the first person.  Here are lyrics that folklorist Alan Lomax published in 1941, several years after he first heard the song sung by Georgia Turner, a 16-year-old Kentucky coal miner's daughter.  (She died of emphysema at age 48, having received a grand total of $117.50 in royalties for her recording of "House of the Rising Sun.")

There is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun. 

It's been the ruin of many a poor girl

And me, O God, for one.

If I had listened what Mama said

I'd be at home today.
Being so young and foolish, 

Let a rambler lead me astray.

Go tell my baby sister 

Never do like I have done
To shun that house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun.

My mother she's a tailor

She sewed these new blue jeans.
My sweetheart, he's a drunkard, Lord, 

Drinks down in New Orleans.

The only thing a drunkard needs 

Is a suitcase and a trunk.
The only time he's satisfied 

Is when he's on a drunk.

Fills his glasses to the brim

Passes them around.
Only pleasure he gets out of life

Is hoboin' from town to town.

One foot is on the platform 

And the other one on the train.
I'm going back to New Orleans 

To wear that ball and chain.

Going back to New Orleans

My race is almost run. 

Going back to spend the rest of my days 

Beneath that Rising Sun.

Click here to listen to Georgia Turner singing in 1937.

Most of the pre-Animals recordings – including those done by Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan – featured these lyrics (or some variation on them) but were muscially quite varied.  

Click here for Woody Guthrie's 1941 version of the song.

Click here for Josh White's 1947 recording.

Click here for Nina Simone's 1962 version, which she transforms from a old-timey folk song to a jazz/soul song.

Click here to listen to Dylan's 1962 recording.  Note that Dylan's performs the song in 6/8 time (like the Animals) and uses a similar (although far from identical) chord progression).  

The Animals denied that their arrangement was inspired by Dylan's version.  Dylan was wowed by the Animals' single when he heard it on a car radio, but stopped performing the song because many fans – unaware that his recording had been released over two years before the Animals' version was recorded – believed he had copied the Animals.

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I don't know whether the Animals changed the lyrics so that a male was the narrator, or whether they heard someone else perform it that way.  The original lyrics do hang together a little better, I think.

But it always bothers me a little to hear a male sing a first-person song about a woman, or vice versa, so I'm glad the Animals did the song from a male's point of view.  

The best (or worst) example of that I can offer of a transgendered song that just didn't cut it is Linda Ronstadt's version of the Lowell George song, "Willin'."  

"Willin'" is sung by a "drunk and dirty" truck driver, who's not above smuggling cigarettes or transporting illegals across the border to make an extra buck – a modern-day cowboy, driving the lonely highways of the desert Southwest:

I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari, 

Tehachapi to Tonapah 

Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made 

Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed 

Kenworth W900

Linda Ronstadt included "Willin'" on her very successful Heart Like a Wheel album, but – sorry, Linda – it just didn't work.  I can't see you behind the wheel of a dusty Kenworth W900, heading out of Tonopah on U.S. 95 to deliver a load of 50-pound bags of composted sheep manure to a Home Depot distribution center.  

(Still with me, boys and girls?)

It seems that the woman in the original version of "House of the Rising Sun" is heading to prison because she killed her sweetheart.  (In some recordings, he is a "gambler," not a "rambler.")  Or was she busted for prostitution?  Or maybe the "ball and chain" is meant figuratively, not literally, and she is heading back to the house of ill repute out of economic necessity because her lover has deserted her.  Maybe she is fed up with his drinking.  (Maybe you have a different theory.)  

Cherchez la femme!

So how did the hero in the Animals' version of the song end up in a ball and chain?  What terrible thing happened at the "House of the Rising Sun" anyway?  Did he kill a gambler who was cheating at cards?  Did he kill his father for abusing his mother?

I say cherchez la femme.  I suspect a woman was the root of the problem.  Maybe he fell in love with a working girl there and killed her – or a customer of hers – in a fit of whisky-fueled jealousy one night.  

Or maybe he didn't kill her, but just threw a pot of hot coffee in her face so other men wouldn't want her (like Lee Marvin did to Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat):

Booze, or drugs, or gambling may have had something to do with our boy ending up in shackles, headed for the big house.  But trust me, there was a woman involved.  That's for sure . . . that's for damn sure.

IT'S THE MUSIC, STUPID

On to the music.  If you don't play an instrument, you may want to skip ahead – but if you do have a guitar or a piano, feel free to use the chords below to play the song yourself.

The song begins with 8 bars of guitar arpeggios (basically a chord played one note at a time – going up in pitch and then back down), with a chord change on the downbeat of each bar – the progression is Am, C, D, F, Am, E, Am, and E.

There is never a chord change in the middle of a measure, or on an off-beat – there's no syncopation.  That's one reason the song is so relentless.  Its tempo is constant (until the slight slowing – or ritardando – at the very end) and the always-on-the-first-beat accents (reinforced by the accompanying chord changes) are as regular as heartbeats – but somewhat speeded-up heartbeats.  

The time signature is a quick 6/8 – really two units of three beats apiece -- with the accent on the first of the three beats: ONE two three one two three.  (Many 4/4 versions of this song have been recorded, but the 6/8 time signature is a very important part of why the Animals' version works so well.)  The twitchy three-beat figures ratchet up the tension the listener feels as the song progresses. 

There are six verses – each is 14 measures long (plus one syllable), and each is followed by an 8-measure instrumental bridge, the chords of which are the same as the chords in the introduction.

Here's the first verse, with the chords added:

There is a house in New Orleans 

          Am  C              D                     F

They call the Rising Sun 

         Am         C          E7                E7

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy

              Am          C           D                     F 

And God I know I'm one 

        Am     E             (Am) 

Yes, I know that's 15 chords, not 14.  The way I see it, the last word of each verse is sung on the first beat of the 8-bar bridge.

(I don't want to get bogged down in minutiae, but another way to look at the musical structure of "House of the Rising Sun" is to say that it consists of 18-measure verses and a 6-measure bridge.  Actually, the most accurate way to describe the structure may be to say that there are 18-measure verses and 8-measure bridges, each paired set of which has 22 measures.  The two transitional measures – whether you think of them as the last two bars of the verse, or the first two bars of the bridge – really do double duty.  It's like one voice sings for 18 measures, and a second voice sings for 8 measures – but the second singer begins to sing when the first one still has two measures to go.  Capisce?  Probably not, but let's not worry about it any longer.)

Eric Burdon sings the first verse accompanied by only the guitar arpeggios.  Alan Price sort of sneaks in on his Vox Continental organ during the instrumental bridge between the first and second verses, and the organ increasingly dominates as the song progresses. 

The Animals

After three verses, Price gets a 14-bar solo – the solo functions as sort of a 7th verse, with the usual 8-measure instrumental bridges on either side of it.  (Or 18 and 6, or 18 and 8 equalling 22.)  He is joined by guitarist Hilton Valentine, playing chords instead of arpeggios, which carry quite a bit more force.  This is when all hell starts to break loose.

The organ and guitar back off a little when Burdon returns with the fourth verse, but quickly crank it back up for the fifth verse – as does the singer.  Nothing's held in reserve.

But the song doesn't end there – there's a sixth verse (actually, it's the first verse repeated once more), and it is just as loud and fast and intense as the previous verse was . . . only more so.  

After Burdon sings the last line of the last verse, you finally get to catch your breath.  The song ends with a 18-measure instrumental coda, which is twice as long as the introduction or the between-verse bridges.  The tempo slows down just a bit – I would mark it decelerando, not ritardando.  (To me, ritardando is like putting on the brakes.  Decelerando is taking your foot off the accelerator.)  You realize that you've been breathing shallowly and so you're a little short of oxygen, so you take a nice deep breath as the song decelerates.

The whole experience reminds me of the last time I rode one of those modern thrill rides that teenagers love but no sane adult views with anything other than abject terror.  You start climbing relatively slowly, but it doesn't take long before the scary stuff begins.  There's a bit of a break about halfway through and you let your guard down a bit – just in time to get scared silly by a vertical loop that takes you a full 360 degrees.  But before you have a chance to fully recover from that, it's time for a couple of head-over-heels corkscrew 360s.  

The "Alpengeist" at Busch Gardens (Williamsburg, VA)

Finally, you start to coast, gradually slowing down until the brakes are finally applied and you come to a complete stop.  You climb out of the ride wishing you could lie down for a few minutes with a cool washcloth on your forehead until your heart rate returned to normal and your brain started functioning properly again.

By the way, this discussion is about the original 4:29 version of the song.  A hastily edited 2:58 version was released in the U.S. as a single.  We will speak of it no more.

APRES LES "ANIMALS," LE DELUGE

A whole lot of people did "House of the Rising Sun" after the Animals did – including (in no particular order) Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Bon Jovi,  Toto, Tori Amos, Duran Duran, Gary Glitter, Sinead O'Connor, David Allan Coe, and the Seamonkees.  Don't waste your time.

There are several newer versions worth listening to.  Click here for Frijid Pink's 1970 version, which is not in 6/8 but what I would call 8/8.

Click here for a 2006 version by Evereve, a metal band from Hamburg, Germany.  (Not 6/8, however.)

Click here for a very recent recording by Muse, which it is VERY good – probably my favorite of all the non-Animals versions.  (It's in 6/8, too.)

There are quite a few Spanish versions of "La Casa del Sol Nasciente."  Click here for one by a conjunto group called Lone Star, which is somewhat like the Animals' version.

Click here for another Spanish version – a 1972 recording by a rock band from Colombia that seems to have gone by Gene-sis, Genesis, and Genesis de Colombia:

Here's a trailer for the "Infamous 2" video game, which features Buster Poindexter's 1987 recording of the song.  (Buster Poindexter is the alter ego of New York Dolls frontman David Johansen.)

And now, what you've been waiting for.  Click here for the one, the only "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals.

Finally, you can click here for a really compelling high-definition video of the Animals performing the song live – or at least lip-synching live.  Unfortunately, the ending cuts off a bit abruptly. 

A POSTSCRIPT

The ride's over, folks – if you made it all the way to the end, I'm impressed by your endurance.

But before bringing this post to a close, I'd like to reflect for just one moment on the first year of 2 or 3 lines.

When you're the creator of a wildly popular blog like 2 or 3 lines, you have very little time to rest on your laurels – you've got to keep your eye on the prize.  If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.  That's just simple physics, n'est-ce pas?

But one startling statistic should not go unremarked.  I'm not talking about the record-breaking numbers of hits and page views that 2 or 3 lines is achieving month after month after month.  I'm talking about the content that generated all those hits and page views.

The first six months that 2 or 3 lines was in existence, I produced 18 posts.  The last six months, I produced 73 – yes, I said 73!  In fact, I wrote more posts in October alone than in the first six months of 2 or 3 lines.  (And as the quantity of posts increased, did the quality fall off?  Well, maybe just a little.)

So don't tell me that 2 or 3 lines is just a hobby – a diversion – a pleasant way to while away some of my leisure time.  No, no, no, no, no . . . it is much more than that.  It is a force of nature – an unstoppable force and an immovable object, all rolled up into one.  It's a big deal, and don't you ever forget that.

In the words of Maino's "All the Above" (a song that could just as well have been written about 2 or 3 lines):

How the hell could you stop me?
Why in the world would you try?

I go hard forever

That's just how I'm designed 

That's just how I was built 

See that look in my eyes . . .

Take a look 

And you can tell that I'm destined for greatness

I did take my foot off the accelerator a little bit this week, and took my time for a change.  Every 2 or 3 lines post is very special, but I wanted this one to be very very special – so I gave this truly great record all the time and effort it so richly deserved.

But this post took a lot out of me, so don't be surprised if I sort of phone in the next one.  (You can't expect a magnum opus every time.)

Th-th-th-that's all folks.  Hasta luego . . . hasta la vista . . . hasta yo mama! 

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Click on the link below to order "House of the Rising Sun" from Amazon: