Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
by Eric Burdon

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Book Reviews of Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Book Review: Some more pieces to the Burdon puzzle but lots still missing
Summary: 3 Stars

The style, organization and subject matter of the book tell as much about Eric as the words themselves. Eric writes in a conversational style that, unfortunately, is undisciplined. As with the ad-libs to songs on his live recordings, he's prone to rants and the use of vulgarities that detract from the points he is trying to make. Eric's experiences are presented both chronologically and topically which results in some confusion for the reader trying to put events in some sort of order. His subject matter is underlain by the themes of sex and drugs, while the music and personal relationships aspects of his life play a lesser role. Burdon has the need, as do many aging rock stars, to provide the reader with details of his successes with girls and women through the years. This may be exciting to him but it quickly becomes boring for the reader. Drugs are apparently a big part of Eric's life. In addition to him going on and on about scoring drugs, using drugs, and smuggling acid and mescaline to inmates in San Quentin, the biggest photo in the book is the two-page front and back inside-cover shot of Eric rolling a joint. Passages on his relationships with the musicians he has worked with through the years would have been welcome but, at best, we get only short discussions on most of these. We get two pages about a guy with a cool motorcycle Eric sees in the desert and only a paragraph on Larry Wilkins whom Eric describes as one of the finest guitarists he has ever known. Two pages on his hallucinations while on an acid trip and another two pages on German policemen asking for an autograph don't add anything to the story. There is very little text on Eric's inspiration for the songs he writes or his choice of songs for his albums.

My biggest complaint about Eric's earlier book was the apparent lack of editing. I had hoped that with Jeff Craig as a co-author, this problem would be addressed. Not so. The book is rife with spelling mistakes, omissions and errors. In the introduction, Eric's thanking of the other Animals combines Dave Rowberry and Vic Briggs into a new member, Dave Briggs. Individuals names are misspelled, incorrect movie titles given (Get Yourself a College Girl and It's a Bikini World have been combined as Beach Party A Go Go), and songwriting credits confused (Eric wrote Inside Looking Out with Chas Chandler, not Alan Price; if the latter, a discussion on why Chas was given the credit would be appropriate). Spill The Wine was not MGM records first number 1 hit; it only reached number 3, as stated later in the book, while House of the Rising Sun, also on MGM had reached number 1 six years previously. How does Eric see his album Stop released without his knowledge, move in with three girls, marry one and then have his first meeting with the members of the band that recorded Stop and its predecessor, Sun Secrets, all in sequence over one page? Does Thunder Mouth Press not have editors with any knowledge of Burdon's history or the 60s music scene? These and other errors and omissions makes one wonder about the overall validity of the material presented in the book.

So, given the criticisms above, why do I still give the book three stars? I do so because it does update Burdon's activities since his previous book, providing information not readily available in the other books on the Animals and Eric Burdon. It also gives further insight into the type of person Eric is. More detailed chronological histories of Eric Burdon and the Animals are availible in Jeff Kent's excellent The Last Poet from 1989, George Pearson's entertaining Sex, Brown Ale and Rhythm & Blues from 1998, Sean Egan's Animal Tracks from 2001; and Andy Blackford's Wild Animals from 1986. Now if Eric could only write a book about his music and his various bands we could almost complete the puzzle.

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