Alan Price, a music portrait

The official American debut of Alan Price (b. Apr. 19, 1942, Fairfield, Durham, England) came inconspicuously on March 5, 1964. Looking to get a piece of the same action Capitol Records was enjoying via their new band the Beatles—whose “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was in its sixth week at Number One—MGM Records that day released the first single by their own new British group, the Animals. “Baby Let Me Take You Home” flopped, but three months later, with the release of second single “House of the Rising Sun,” Newcastle quintet the Animals were swiftly on their way to stardom. The first non-Beatles English single to reach American Number One—where it stayed for three full weeks— the song was a mesmerizing, almost menacing-sounding record, a lethal combination of powerful singing and a loud, dominating organ. The vocals were provided by a small man with a big voice named Eric Burdon; the organ came courtesy of one Alan Price.

Initially named the Alan Price Combo when they formed in Newcastle in 1960, the group took on their famous moniker at the suggestion of new arrival Burdon, who joined the group well after they’d established themselves locally. A powerhouse of a blues-rock band, the Animals went on to have 14 American top 40 hits through 1968—though by that time, Alan Price (and everyone but Burdon) had long gone. Price, who played an integral role in shap­ing the band’s earliest hits, had departed in 1965 to form a new band called the Alan Price Set—of which he would, naturally, be lead vocalist. “I was tired and confused,” he explained years later to writer Jeff Tamarkin, “and I gave up the struggle between the demands that were made on us and what we were trying to experience.”

Between 1966 and ’67, Price quickly established himself as a hitmaker in his homeland with three top 10 U.K. singles in little over a year. One of those sin­gles—“Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear”—had been penned by Randy Newman, the American songwriter to whom, perhaps ironically, Price would find himself being continually compared for much of his later career. Though the Alan Price Set’s sole American album, "Price Is Right" (issued by Parrot in 1968), never even charted, and much of his music to come would never see Stateside release, Price’s U.S. profile was soon heightened considerably.

In 1973, the onetime Animal appeared onscreen in Lindsay Anderson’s much-praised British film O Lucky Man!, singing a series of superb songs that also served as its soundtrack. Issued in the U.S. by Warner Bros., the set reached a surprisingly high chart position of number 117. Price’s finest album, Between Today and Yesterday, emerged on the same label the next year; though it sold poorly, it received rave reviews in important places and in England spawned the top five hit “Jarrow Song.”

A brief reunion of the Animals resulted in 1977’s surprise set Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted, which sold respectably (peaking at number 70) but seemed disappointingly restrained. The same year. Price released his first of three albums on the Jet label (Alan Price, 1979’s Lucky Day, and 1980’s Rising Sun), all of which were substantial but somewhat slickly produced. And at a time when punk and new wave rock were making substantial inroads into the American heartland, Price, glibly decked out in a tuxe-do on his 1977 album cover, looked dishearteningly out of place and very much like last decade’s news.

In 1983-84, another much more successful Animals reunion took place, resulting in Ark (which peaked at number 66) and a live greatest hits album, both on I.R.S. Records. Ever ambitious, Price continued to extend himself in many other directions as well. During the 1980s he started his own label, Key Records; hosted his own British TV show; wrote and co-starred in a stage musical based on the “Andy Capp” comic strip; and scored such films as 1982’s Britannia Hospital and the 1987 hit The Whales of August. In all, it has been a bright and distinguished legacy, and clearly—whatever his Animal roots—not the work of someone operating on instinct alone.