While this album is certainly not for anyone, as it wasn't in 1967 when it came out, it has much to offer for the eclectic listener who can overcome their foolish stereotypes of hippie music (what the hell is hippy dippy?). Of course this album is loaded with several sound effects which most would classify as psychedelic. So what, the musicianship on this album is top notch. John Weider and the very unsung Vic Briggs were actually pretty talented.
As for the content of this album I suppose there are some over the top moments, but probably no more than most of the music currently out today. After years of owning and listening to this unique piece of history my favorite song by far is "Hotel Hell". A French horn mournfully wails as Eric Burdon's finest vocal performance unfortunately may have been responsible for a few premature deaths. I always liked the title track "Winds of Change" and even the Hendrix tribute "Yes I am Experienced" has appeal. On the negative side "Man-Women" although clever tends to detract and hurts the flow after repeated listens.
The original band, The Animals, broke up in 1966 and this band was entirely new, except for lead singer Eric Burdon. With the new band, including guitarist Vic Briggs and electric violinist John Weider, Burdon began to transition from the gritty blues sound of the original mid-1960s group and moved into the pyschedelic era of music.
The album opened with the sound of waves washing over the title track, "Winds of Change." "Poem by the Sea" is a spoken word piece by Burdon with a swirl of echo-drenched instruments. "Good Times" and "San Franciscan Nights," were two of the most popular tracks, with the latter breaking into the Top 10 in 1967. Burdon was a fan of Jimi Hendrix and wrote the fifth track as an answer song to Hendrix's "Are You Experienced?" from earlier that year.
Second incarnation
A group with Burdon, Jenkins, and new sidemen John Weider (guitar/violin/bass), Vic Briggs (guitar/piano), and Danny McCulloch (bass) was formed under the name Eric Burdon and the New Animals (or sometimes just Eric Burdon and the Animals) in October 1966, and changed direction. The hard-driving blues was transformed into Burdon's version of psychedelia, as the former heavy-drinking Geordie (who later said he could never get used to Newcastle, "where the rain comes at you sideways") relocated to California and became a spokesman for the Love Generation.
Some of this group's hits included "San Franciscan Nights", "Monterey" (a tribute to the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival), and the anti-war "Sky Pilot". There were further changes to this line-up: George Bruno (a/k/a Zoot Money, keyboards) was added in April 1968, and in July 1968 Andy Summers (guitar)—later of The Police—replaced Briggs and McCulloch.
By 1969 these Animals had dissolved, and Eric Burdon joined forces with a Latin group from Long Beach, California called War. [Wikipedia]
I always have trouble trying to sit through this one from beginning to end. Finally, this is Eric Burdon's group, it's called 'Eric Burdon & The Animals', and he can do whatever he wants. What he wanted to do was two things: first, he wanted to write songs, second, he wanted the world to see him as a kind of New Prophet for the New Generation. Unfortunately, he failed both here and there. There are ten 'original compositions' on here (I refuse to call most of them 'songs'), and, sure enough, there's a lot of pseudo-philosophy going on, but he didn't even bother to set it to real music. Apparently, Eric wanted to create something more than just music on here - the record cannot be set on the same shelf with such avantgarde curios as Lennon's 'experimental' albums or Zappa's Lumpy Gravy or, in fact, anything. It's music, philosophy, literature and show-biz all in one forty-four minute package; but if this record proves anything, that's just one thing - be yourself and don't pretend to make a bigger fool (or genius, which is more or less the same thing) of yourself than you already are. Particularly applicable to Eric Burdon.
As a historical curio, the record is perhaps worth one essential listen, but only an S&M freak with serious self-destructive tendencies would want to hear this twice. The title track, more or less, says it all: it consists of a brief lecture on the history of rock'n'roll, adorned by a background of silly noises and sitar sounds. Imagine that? Sitars wail all over the place, winds howl in the background, and Eric's booming voice that sounds more like Juppiter than Mr Burdon keeps naming all the major rock and proto-rock stars that paved the way to 'changes'. It's nauseating, to say the least, and whoever calls progressive rock 'pretentious' should first listen to this crap to learn what 'pretentious' really is. If this was Eric's idea at what psychedelic music should be, I pity him.
From then on we have lecture after lecture, preaching after preaching, and not a single good tune in sight! On the first side, the only one that comes a bit close to being tolerable is the cover of 'Paint It Black' which could even have been good were it not so painfully inferior to the Stones' original. And not just inferior - loathsomely overblown. In the hands of the Stones it's just been a jolly good simple dark tune, while in the context of these novelties it sounds as bad as anything, especially in the middle, where the music dies away completely and we're left on our own with Eric's weepings and wailings. Of course, it ain't nowhere near as bad as the title track or 'Black Plague', which belongs to a historic documentary rather than a rock album. In fact, I do think the number would work well in the context of a movie (I can just imagine Eric's somber description of the plague inserted in some kind of a generic goth horror picture), but what the hell is it doing stuffed in the middle of a 'New Epoch' hippie record? Bummer. And it doesn't get any better than this: the first side closes with 'Yes I Am Experienced', a 'song' obviously intended as an answer to Hendrix's debut album which simply couldn't be anything but parody. It's totally laughable, to the point that sometimes I just can't get rid of visions of a completely boozed out Eric clenching his fists at Jimi and blurbing out 'sshhhoo Jimi, you sshay haf I bin 'sperienced? Well dammit ssho I AM 'sperienced, betcha fuckin' life!' A clear case of self-humiliation and nothing more.
The second side is a little bit reassuring, although it does contain the only track that I simply can't listen to at all - one of the worst blurbs of nonsense I ever heard in my life in 'Man - Woman'. Suffice it to say that the 'climactic' moments on this track include Eric shouting out the words 'Man! Woman! Desire! Love!' over a rudimentary drum beat. The closing 'It's All Meat' is not a total duffer, but its ear-destructive gimmicky effects set on the guitars to achieve a state of complete chaos - which it does - don't thrill me all that much. The other four tunes are listenable - more or less; if you try real hard, a few melodic lines can be squeezed out of the hit 'San Francisco Nights', with its hilarious megaphone intro ('this song is dedicated to the people of San Francisco who may not know it but they are beautiful') and a cute little poppy melody. 'Good Times' is also pretty neat; and 'Hotel Hell' has a nice jazzy arrangement and an okayish gloomy, pessimistic atmosphere around it, but overall it's forgettable in any case. I mean, objectively I should have raised the rating a little bit, because these tunes never make me vomit, but the rest brings the record to such unreachable depths of crappiness that only a song of the 'House Of The Rising Sun' level could pull it out a little, and there's none.
Don't even think about buying this album - I wouldn't even recommend it for completists; instead, please find some compilation that has 'San Franciscan Nights' on it or something. But if, due to a crazy historical accident, you've had the misfortune of doing so, keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the real Animals. The real Animals perished in 1966; this record is exclusively the product of the twisted, warped mind of Eric Burdon who's happened to acquire a Napoleon complex, unfortunately, at the very beginning of the Summer of Love. [http://starling.rinet.ru/music/animals.htm#winds]