Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read
Review: Informative and well written. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: Many of Eric's best friends are dead
Review: Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, John Lennon, John Lee Hooker....These are the people that Eric Burdon thinks most highly of, and they are all dead. He is much less kind to the living throughout much of this book. I feel a big reason for this is that the dead cannot refute the statements you make about them. The topper was his claim that he was the "eggman" that Lennon sang about in "I Am the Walrus." It kind of cast a shadow on many of his other claims. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy most of Eric's (original) work and I strongly regret the unavailability of his late 1960's work outside of the numerous compilations. The stories presented in this book took me by surprise and sometimes made me laugh out loud. I shared more than a few of these anecdotes with my co-workers. What the book is missing is more focus on the music. I would have loved to read more about his days with the original Animals and the stormy reunions. I also would have liked to read his thoughts on the period between "Winds of Change" and "Love Is" - how the music changed and his thoughts on the later Animals players and how he discovered them. All in all, this is fun reading. The personal anecdotes are priceless, but it left me wanting to hear more about the music itself and the people that he worked with (not just the one off jams, but the albums).
Rating:
Summary: Many of Eric's best friends are dead
Review: Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, John Lennon, John Lee Hooker.... These are the people that Eric Burdon thinks most highly of, and they are all dead. He is much less kind to the living throughout much of this book. I feel a big reason for this is that the dead cannot refute the statements you make about them. The topper was his claim that he was the "eggman" that Lennon sang about in "I Am the Walrus." It kind of cast a shadow on many of his other claims. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy most of Eric's (original) work and I strongly regret the unavailability of his late 1960's work outside of the numerous compilations. The stories presented in this book took me by surprise and sometimes made me laugh out loud. I shared more than a few of these anecdotes with my co-workers. What the book is missing is more focus on the music. I would have loved to read more about his days with the original Animals and the stormy reunions. I also would have liked to read his thoughts on the period between "Winds of Change" and "Love Is" - how the music changed and his thoughts on the later Animals players and how he discovered them. All in all, this is fun reading. The personal anecdotes are priceless, but it left me wanting to hear more about the music itself and the people that he worked with (not just the one off jams, but the albums).
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read, by a Great Rock Singer
Review: Man, this is yet another haphazard music bio. Publishers of rock bios must think fans are less than intelligent. Many stories (Bob Dylan stuff, the song "The House of the Rising Sun", the tour with Carl Perkin & Jerry Lee Lewis, etc., etc.) come right out of that great video documentary, "Finally, Burdon and the Animals". Some of these tales are actually word for word, which makes you wonder how much effort went into the book itself. Other stories come right out of Burdon's first autobiography, which was little more than a drug & sex induced flashback - though I admit it was very well written, and was a better book than this new one. This new book is just a completely unfocused mix of everything. Hard to believe Burdon & Craig had an editor who knew anything about rock music. The index doesn't include many of the people and places in the book, which they apparently didn't notice. My guess is that a computer made it for them. Many famous people will find their names spelled wrong in the book (a great blind living bluesman, the keyboard "Rabbitt", a soul legend, half of a great country rock outfit, and the best sax man in the history of rock music are among the many in this unlucky group). The writing is not uniform, switching from slang to British terms to literary references to profanity - all in a matter of pages. Although I am no prude, a 60+ year old man using the F-word used more than 25 times seems a bit much. He claims, more than once, that he is not bitter, but when referring to other people, f-ing along page after page is one of the things bitter people do, isn't it? Even basic factual matters aren't handled well. Midway through the book it is stated that he gave MGM their first number 1 single with the song Spill the Wine, yet the appendix lists this song as #3, and it can't max out at both 1 and 3 - and there are dozens of things like this throughout the book. The book also confuses time frames. Going from Hendrix already being dead, back to when he was alive, til when he is dead, again, without ever accounting for what is going on. The book is over 325 pages long, but this is due to the outrageous layout and spacing used; I think in terms of words this book is shorter than the first autobiography. The text is practically double-spaced. What really adds to the length is the insane number of paragraph breaks. Many, many chapters have dozens of one-sentence paragraphs for no literary or grammatical reason (did a computer do this too?). Big fat books cost more than not so fat ones, so maybe there is a reason for this? Even the text itself is weirdly chosen. For instance, he is over 60 years old and has done more than most people ever dream of, yet he devotes one full chapter of this short book to what is just 5 days of his life in the Israeli desert doing nothing much worth remembering? Why bother telling this story? I think the biggest problem could be summarized like this: the 2nd to last line in the book is perfect, and it should have been the first line ("My first true love: singing"). If this is true, tell us about that instead of goofy theories about masturbation, Hendrix, explosives, the Animals manager, Eggmen, Yakuza, Morrison, and this other stuff. Thunder's Mouth needs a decent editor, someone to make sure Burdon & Craig started here, instead of avoided this for 300+ pages! After all, this is not what got in him the rock hall of fame, and that is why people read a book by him.
Rating: 
Summary: It Is What It Is - Which Ain't Enough
Review: Man, this is yet another haphazard music bio. Publishers of rock bios must think fans are less than intelligent. Many stories (Bob Dylan stuff, the song "The House of the Rising Sun", the tour with Carl Perkin & Jerry Lee Lewis, etc., etc.) come right out of that great video documentary, "Finally, Burdon and the Animals". Some of these tales are actually word for word, which makes you wonder how much effort went into the book itself. Other stories come right out of Burdon's first autobiography, which was little more than a drug & sex induced flashback - though I admit it was very well written, and was a better book than this new one. This new book is just a completely unfocused mix of everything. Hard to believe Burdon & Craig had an editor who knew anything about rock music. The index doesn't include many of the people and places in the book, which they apparently didn't notice. My guess is that a computer made it for them. Many famous people will find their names spelled wrong in the book (a great blind living bluesman, the keyboard "Rabbitt", a soul legend, half of a great country rock outfit, and the best sax man in the history of rock music are among the many in this unlucky group). The writing is not uniform, switching from slang to British terms to literary references to profanity - all in a matter of pages. Although I am no prude, a 60+ year old man using the F-word used more than 25 times seems a bit much. He claims, more than once, that he is not bitter, but when referring to other people, f-ing along page after page is one of the things bitter people do, isn't it? Even basic factual matters aren't handled well. Midway through the book it is stated that he gave MGM their first number 1 single with the song Spill the Wine, yet the appendix lists this song as #3, and it can't max out at both 1 and 3 - and there are dozens of things like this throughout the book. The book also confuses time frames. Going from Hendrix already being dead, back to when he was alive, til when he is dead, again, without ever accounting for what is going on. The book is over 325 pages long, but this is due to the outrageous layout and spacing used; I think in terms of words this book is shorter than the first autobiography. The text is practically double-spaced. What really adds to the length is the insane number of paragraph breaks. Many, many chapters have dozens of one-sentence paragraphs for no literary or grammatical reason (did a computer do this too?). Big fat books cost more than not so fat ones, so maybe there is a reason for this? Even the text itself is weirdly chosen. For instance, he is over 60 years old and has done more than most people ever dream of, yet he devotes one full chapter of this short book to what is just 5 days of his life in the Israeli desert doing nothing much worth remembering? Why bother telling this story? I think the biggest problem could be summarized like this: the 2nd to last line in the book is perfect, and it should have been the first line ("My first true love: singing"). If this is true, tell us about that instead of goofy theories about masturbation, Hendrix, explosives, the Animals manager, Eggmen, Yakuza, Morrison, and this other stuff. Thunder's Mouth needs a decent editor, someone to make sure Burdon & Craig started here, instead of avoided this for 300+ pages! After all, this is not what got in him the rock hall of fame, and that is why people read a book by him.
Rating: 
Summary: The wild & Crazy life of Eric Burdon
Review: This book is like Eric, a true original. This book speaks to both the fans of eric as well as fans of sixties music, there is something for everyone. Written through Eric's eyes, it is interesting to hear the insights of a man who has experienced more than most of us could ever imagine and is still around o talk about it. very entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Misunderstood? I Doubt It!
Review: When Burdon wrote his first autobiography in the early 1980's, I was angered that his account stopped in 1970 - and didnt cover his music with War and the bands after that. I guess that was the book publisher's choice, and not his. Well, this new book updates the story right up to 2001. It is a pretty wild collection of stories, tied together by his tours, money problems, drugs, and girlfriends. A good book, and since no other member of the Animals or War bands have written an autobiography that I know of, this is the only source. I liked the book, but wished he gave all 353 pages to his life after 1970, making this part 2 of his autobiography. But, this is not the second volume of an ongoing work. The first half of this new book repeats things I knew from the first book, called I Used To Be An Animal. That is my only complaint, other than him not describing why he choses to sing the songs he does, which songs that he has written are his best, and personal assessments of music like this.
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