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Just been announced the death of original Animals guitarist Hilton Valentine aged 77, will be best known the chord sequence in House of The Rising Sun.Not sure what he did after the Animals split they did make some comebacks in various line ups.

Which of us hasn’t played those chords?!
One of the sounds of my youth and what a terrific name, I always thought.

Iain Purdon wrote:Which of us hasn’t played those chords?!

I have, that's for sure! However, I first heard of this song before The Animals recorded it when I saw it in an American book entitled Songs for Pickin' and Singin', printed in 1962. The chord sequence given in the book is much worse and less interesting as fewer chords are used: Dm - A7 - Dm - C7 - F - Dm - A7 - Dm. The song just doesn't sound right to my ear with these chords.

The song has six verses in the book, which kind of compensates for the poor chord sequence.

Yes Hilton Valentine created an absolute masterpiece with the opening riff of this Classic
I first heard it on Radio Caroline North (as the BEEB initially banned it) and was totally blown
away like the first time hearing Apache.
He played some great guitar on other Animals recordings, one I particularly like on their first LP
is a cover of I'm Mad Again by John Lee Hooker. His trademark Gretsch Guitar really growls a great
riff and a plodding blues line throughout.
R.I.P.

Mike

It was Hilton Valentine's Gretsch Tennessean that introduced the wider world to the Animals...



By coincidence his first group became known as... the Wildcats!

Bill

Interesting to see Chas Chandler with a Precision Bass in that video - I always associate him with a Gibson semi-acoustic bass!

Hilton Valentine RIP

I always liked Hilton Valentine's guitar licks on Animals singles, not just House Of The Rising Sun.

They were all simple and easy to play, but so perfect for the song in each case.

That is what made them so wonderful: thinking up something straightforward but perfect and resisting all temptation to "show what you can do" at every opportunity is a mark of greatness shared by only a few rock guitarists over the years. Two of them came from Tyneside...

JimTidmarsh wrote:Interesting to see Chas Chandler with a Precision Bass in that video - I always associate him with a Gibson semi-acoustic bass!

Hilton Valentine RIP

In those far-off days when (as in that clip) the band was miming to their record, it was not unusual for the band's van to be left behind when they were appearing on TV. If Chas's Gibson bass was locked in the van, it didn't matter - he could hold and mime with any old bass that could be provided. In the great days of Top Of The Pops when it was at Lime Grove Studio G and then at Television Centre , instruments and amplifiers were hired for the show from a West London dealer called Maurice Plaquet.

Of course, if a band were endorsing a particular brand of instrument (like The Shadows with Burns guitars) then those would have to be the ones that were seen on the TV show, even if they were miming.
Ray

I recently revisited/ played most of the Animals EMI and Decca 1964-66 recordings, and am beginning to wonder
if on some tracks, session musicians were added to fill in a heavier sound noteably Its My life/ Im gonna
change the world, Inside Looking Out etc
Hilton Valentine certainly would have been most competent to do overdub fill ins required, just that Mickie Most
often used sessioners on his other productions i.e The Nashville Teens and Herman's Hermits
Anyone got any thoughts on this possibility?

Mike

Back in around 1980 I made recordings of a radio series called 'The Record Producers' and the program about Mickey Most is both fascinating and entertaining. Too many wonderful quotes to include them all here, but he certainly mentions using John Paul Jones (both as bass player and arranger) and Jimmy Page on sessions. However, as you say Mike, Hilton was a very competent guitarist so it is unlikely in the case of The Animals.

As The House Of The Rising Sun has been mentioned so much I must include this quote from Mickey Most.
"There are certain record producers who spend their whole time painting in sound and that's great if you've got a good backcloth. The most important ingredient is the song. What I started to do during that particular period of time was to find the best song and let The Animals find their interpretation to the song. This would be the song and it would be very much different from the way The Animals did it. The song, the words and the melody, that's the key to it then if you can rough it up a bit it will self-produce.

House Of The Rising Sun took eight minutes to make, so there's not much producing you can do in eight minutes, is there?
The first four minutes was the run-through and the second four minutes was the record."

Ray