THE ANIMALS – BABY LET ME TAKE YOU HOME 7″ – VG+ UK ORIG 1964 ERIC BURDON

The Animals – Baby Let Me Take You Home
(Columbia Records  1964  DB7247)
UK Pressing

Vinyl in Very Good+ condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl which do give some light pops/crackles but sound quality is Excellent overall)

Columbia Sleeve in Very Good condition
– couple of tears (one has been sellotaped)
 

The Animals are an English rhythm and blues and rock band, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960s. The band moved to London upon finding fame in 1964. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their signature song and transatlantic No. 1 hit single, “House of the Rising Sun”, as well as by hits such as “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”, “It’s My Life”, “I’m Crying” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”. The band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm and blues-orientated album material and were part of the British Invasion of the US.

The Animals underwent numerous personnel changes in the mid-1960s and suffered from poor business management. Under the name Eric Burdon and the Animals, the much-changed act moved to California and achieved commercial success as a psychedelic and hard rock band with hits like “San Franciscan Nights”, “When I Was Young” and “Sky Pilot”, before disbanding at the end of the decade. Altogether, the group had ten Top Twenty hits in both the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100.

The original lineup of Burdon, Alan Price, Chas Chandler, Hilton Valentine and John Steel reunited for a one-off benefit concert in Newcastle in 1968. They later had brief comebacks in 1975 and 1983. There have been several partial regroupings of the original era members since then under various names. The Animals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

“Baby Let Me Take You Home“, a song credited to Bert Russell (a.k.a. Bert Berns) and Wes Farrell, was The Animals’ debut single, released in 1964. In the UK, it reached #21 on the pop singles chart. In the U.S. its B-side, “Gonna Send You Back to Walker” (retitled “to Georgia”), was released but was not a significant hit, placing only at #57 on the pop singles chart. American soul singer Hoagy Lands previously recorded the song in 1964 as “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand”, released on Atlantic 2217.

The song is an arrangement of Eric Von Schmidt’s rendering of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” as covered by Bob Dylan, on his first, self-titled, album. The Animals’ version opens with striking unaccompanied guitar arpeggios, inserts a middle section with spoken words over an organ riff and closes with a frantic double-time coda. The result was a key influence on Dylan’s change to electric music and to the folk-rock genre.

In 2006, Eric Burdon, of The Animals, began to perform the song in a heavier version, on his concerts again, adding a short story how they came to it.

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