Animals

“Juke-Box” is a step back from the album format, a return to the building blocks of pop: songs. Riffs, choruses, words and images: those of the video clips, or those that music evokes and uses to seduce the listener.

The purpose of this column is precisely to enter into this game of seduction, always crucial and always taken for granted. To uncover its stories and protagonists, but also its mechanisms, rules and exceptions.

There are covers that become classics in place of the originals. Some people are convinced that “Tainted Love” sprang from the perverse mind of Marc Almond and have no idea who Gloria Jones is, while when Gloria Gaynor unleashed “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” from her magical vocal cords, the charts collapsed and the Four Tops were relegated to Motown's memorabilia bin. Two random examples, and ones with little bearing on the case at hand, at that. Because this particular cover doesn't actually have a “physical” original. Only a long tradition of legends and disputes, surrounding a traditional claimed on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The House Of The Rising Sun” has ancient roots. Nineteenth-century, if we're talking about its lyrics; seventeenth-century, even, if we consider the music, at least going by the most credited hypothesis, that of scholar and collector Alan Lomax, curator of the Archive of American Folk Song, according to whom the melody was drawn from a traditional English ballad called “Matty Groves”, dating back precisely to the 16th century, while the lyrics were written two centuries later by a pair of Kentucky residents, Georgia Turner and Bert Martin (under the title “The Rising Sun Blues”). In short, one of the many cases of a traditional crossing the Ocean and changing skin. Even if we're inclined to accept the theory put forward by Alan Price of the Animals, who claims English paternity for it, asserting that it's a 17th-century folk-song about a Soho brothel, already back then London's red-light district. And a brothel it will remain to all intents and purposes, even in the New Orleans version.

The fact is that, by a twist of fate, that ancient song remained for a long time only in the air. Until, in 1934, the young Appalachian banjo player Clarence “Tom” Ashley finally decided to record it, as a tribute to that old tune his grandfather Enoch always used to hum to him (no trace has ever been found of an earlier recording on 78 rpm, dating back to 1928, by bluesman Alger “Texas” Alexander, under the title “Rising Sun Blues”).

Little Vocalion Records had no idea what it had on its hands. Perhaps also because, despite his efforts, good old Ashley hadn't exactly managed to conjure up the magic of that treasure. But, from then on, everyone gave it a shot. Lomax himself, infatuated with that melody as if it were the Lost Ark, recorded the versions credited to his Kentucky duo, while an endless line of performers queued up for the covers procession: Roy Acuff, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Leadbelly, Glenn Yarbrough, Ronnie Gilbert, Pete Seeger, Frankie Laine, Joan Baez (perhaps the best), Miriam Makeba, Bob Dylan (who ended up risking a plagiarism accusation from Dave Van Ronk, from whom he copied the arrangement) and Nina Simone.

But in the end, only one version would survive. Because out of that whole crowd of nobodies and stars, none of them had truly nailed it. And fate saved the winning shot for five exuberant English lads, fired up on rock and rhythm'n'blues. They'd heard that immortal tune in a pub back home in Newcastle, performed by a Northumbrian minstrel named Johnny Handle. And – so they claim – they didn't even know that Dylan had just put it on his debut album. Their names are Alan Price (keyboards), Eric Burdon (vocals), Bryan “Chas” Chandler (bass), John Steel (drums), Hilton Valentine (guitar). And they couldn't be called anything other than the Animals. Because they had a wild fury running through their veins, at odds with their good-boy beat-group looks. They started playing that old blues lament in the summer of 1964. And they made it detonate with dynamite.

An electric guitar arpeggio in A minor that seems carved from rock, so granite-solid and epic it is. Burdon's insolent, intense voice steps in to launch the vocal line. Then Price makes history: a rollercoaster ride on the keys of the Vox organ, virtuosity turned into pure soul, dragging the song's crescendo along and spilling over into a towering solo that, exhausted, implodes in the finale. It's the definitive arrangement, the one that will remain forever etched in history. Because "The House Of The Rising Sun" will forever be this version, despite the endless string of covers still to come. It will become the Animals' biggest hit (No. 1 in the US and UK), showered with awards in polls and halls of fame the world over. It will be ranked among the classics of the British Invasion (quite the paradox, for that poor Kentucky couple!) and even hailed by critic Dave Marsh as "the first folk-rock hit in history".

An achievement for which the history of rock also owes a debt to producer Mickie Most: it was only thanks to his insistence that the track — deemed by record executives, with the foresight that so often distinguishes them, "too long" and "boring" — was eventually released.

But what exactly is this blessed "House of the Rising Sun"? Nothing more than a brothel — no argument there from good old Price. Except that it has moved from Soho to New Orleans, which at the time (the 19th century) was a kind of "sin city", home to the largest red-light district in the world: a maze of sinful inns and houses of ill repute known as Storyville (named after city councilman Alderman Story, who had championed its creation), right in the heart of jazz town, destined to be swept away by later waves of moral outrage.

Even the story behind the lyrics is not clear-cut: two versions have circulated over time, one — probably the original — featuring a female protagonist, forced to live in the House despite regretting ever having entered the world of prostitution, and the other — the one chosen by the Animals — featuring a male protagonist: the young son of a gambler, equally devastated at having spent his days in the House, "the ruin of many a poor boy", living out his life "in sin and misery" and now ready to return to New Orleans as a convict ("to wear that ball and chain"). Hence the desperate plea: ⟦Q1⟧. A classic tale of misery and ruin, one that could apply to virtually any setting.

The other mystery concerns the Rising Sun of the title. There's no point boring you with every hypothesis, none of which has ever been officially confirmed. The most evocative is the one that attempts to put a name to the brothel, identifying it as an actual house of ill repute at 1614 Esplanade Avenue (1862-1874), nicknamed as such because of its supposed madam, a woman of French descent named Marianne Le Soleil Levant. But with little regard for legend, that house was torn down in 2007, as happens to so many of rock's monuments, real or imagined.

The song, however, will remain the quintessential evergreen. With countless new covers (so many that it's probably quicker to name who hasn't covered it, but at least worth mentioning are Beatles, Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Marianne Faithfull, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Eagles, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos, Sinéad O'Connor, Duran Duran, Muse and even Italian acts Los Marcellos Ferial, Riki Maiocchi and Pooh, who, with an assist from Mogol, turned it into a love song!), guaranteed radio play from here to eternity, plus a fixture in TV theme songs and film soundtracks (from Scorsese's "Casino" to the Italian "La meglio gioventù").

Like a phoenix, the House in New Orleans will rise again and again from the ashes, reopening its dusty doors. But its mystery will remain the subject of endless debate and interpretation. Just as befits a legend.

There is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy

And God I know I’m one

My mother was a tailor

Sewed my new blue jeans

My father was gamblin' man

Down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs

Is a suitcase and a trunk

And the only time he’ll be satisfied

Is when he's all a-drunk

Oh mother, tell your children

Not to do what I have done

Spend your lives in sin and misery

In the House of the Rising Sun

Well I’ve got one foot on the platform

The other foot on the train

I'm going back to New Orleans

To wear that ball and chain

Well there is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy

And God I know I’m one

Ride the wave of great music

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10/02/2026