Danny Handley with drummer John Steel. Mandy Tzaras photo.
WORDS: Robert Brokenmouth
IMAGES: Mandy Tzaras
By now you'll have got over your Blue vs. Red US mid-term election hangover and are looking for a decent band to go and see. Try The Animals.
Despite announcing their 60th anniversary farewell tour two years back, it seems the band - particularly, original Animals member John Steel - seems reluctant to quit, and they're back in Australia for another long string of gigs. You may find this cynical, but the best rock bands are built to play live. Engage with their audience. People tell me how much the Stones love to play live: I call bullshit, they've hardly been a touring band for decades.
For those who still hold out for Eric Burdon, it's worth recalling that in 1960 Steel was a founder member of The Alan Price Combo (with Price, Hilton Valentine and Chas Chandler) who morphed into The Animals two years later, when Burdon joined from The Pagans. While the band split in 1966, since 1977, on and off, Steel has been playing with or as The Animals/ The Animals and Friends, and since 1993 has rarely been off the road. Seems the man - and his band - are addicted to playing live.
Sure, we've all seen older bands emerge for one last round, creaky, laced with lard and well-past their best-by date. Remember The Pretty Things, Alex Harvey Band and The New York Dolls shows a few years back? It was wonderful to finally see these people on-stage for the first time, and they did not disappoint.
By contrast, The Animals and Friends go well and truly beyond your expectations: their shows are instantly engaging. There are good reasons why these blokes keep returning here: first, they've been match-fit for decades; second, incredibly, at 85 Steel maintains his power behind the kit; and thirdly, the 'Friends' are bloody good musicians who absolutely bring the songs to vivid life, every night drawing in an appreciative, often emotional crowd.
As you'll read with this interview with the band's singer/guitarist Danny Handley, they're still having fun with the songs, the set and themselves. I can't think of any other still-active 1960s band (or brand) I'd rather see, and I will again this year.
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I-94 Bar: Morning, Danny. We've gone this interview road before, so I thought perhaps we could detour a bit.
Danny Handley: Good morning, Robert. I trust you are well, old mate?
I-94 Bar: Nothing that a handful of gins won't fix... Y'know it was only two years back when we thought John Steel might finally quit, (maybe crossing his sticks beneath a cymbal to form a pirate flag, mount and frame the lot and hang it where it might alarm sundry visiting vicars or Mormons) but he doesn't seem to have done that. What on earth keeps driving you all forward?
Danny Handley: Money, ha ha! These stately homes, City penthouses and villas by Lake Como don’t come cheap.
I-94 Bar: John is, I think, 85, and (not counting the Alan Price Combo) has been playing in The Animals for 60-something years. Compared with pretty much anyone over 60, the man has an astonishing energy and self-determination. Dare I ask, does that vitality make you feel tired?!
Danny Handley: Exhausted, absolutely exhausted! But no, quite the opposite: you have no reason to ever moan or grumble about feeling tired about late nights and early mornings, because if you complain and an 85-year-old doesn’t, well, what kind of a wimp does that make you?
I-94 Bar: Danny, as you know I think The Animals and Friends do a fine, strong, captivating set. Yet I've seen a lot of older bands creak out of the woodwork after a long absence and they're ... well, let's just say that not every rock legend should get up and do it again. But that's not the case with John, nor the way he's directed the band; what's the difference?
Keyboardist Barney "Boogie" Williams and Danny. Mandy Tzaras photo.
Danny Handley: I take it upon myself to push the band constantly. Always adding new ideas, always tweaking, always suggesting. At football, I hear the coach screaming at my son “if you’re stood still for two seconds, it’s two seconds too long” - and that’s how I feel with the band. I love it so much and I want it to carry on for as long as possible and I want it to be the best it can be.
Hopefully it’s working well - it certainly is in Australia. We’ve been coming there now for 15 years, sometimes twice a year, and we really built an audience every year. Bigger venues every year, more people every year; the percentage of young people to old people increases each year. And we’ve recorded a new album in Sweden, with a new single to be released soon (hopefully before Christmas, but possibly first thing in the New Year), so it’s all going in the right direction!
I-94 Bar: The Animals' selection of covers initially seemed to take aim at a certain sensibility unique to that younger part of our lives where we're working things out, working through pain, working to solve things. What do you think?
Danny Handley: The Animals had a special knack for choosing songs, and capturing a raw performance that sounded as though they were already in a scene from a movie twenty, thirty, forty and now sixty years in the future. I’m not sure where they got those songs from because all the other Bill Building songs, and songs by established writing teams, were all a bit bubblegum, in a way.
But with The Animals, you could smell the urban grime. You could smell it coming off the record, you could smell it in Eric Burdon's voice, and Alan Price's Vox Continental. All those Animals singles except "I’m Crying" were by established American pop songwriters. Maybe they saw a picture of Eric glaring at them looking like a gorilla forced unwillingly into a Beatle suit and thought “uh oh, he ain’t gonna be singing "sweets for my sweet”. I dunno. But those songs still reach young people today, the audiences and 50/50 burdonpeople who are reliving their youth, and younger people digging it with fresh ears. It’s quite groovy, when you think about it, man.
"Baby Let Me Take You Home"; "The House of the Rising Sun"; "I'm Crying"; "Boom Boom"; "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"; "Bring It On Home to Me"; "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"; "It's My Life"; "Inside-Looking Out" and "Don't Bring Me Down" ...
I-94 Bar: You've been playing with John and the lads since (I think) 2009; that's from your early 30s - have there been changes in your life which made you think on how well the songs reflect real life?
Danny Handley: For me, it’s always "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood". Every lyric in that song, I’m sure I’ve said to somebody at least once in my life, and there is a certain line which every time I sing it, I can feel it in my bones. Makes me shudder, it’s a very emotional and powerful song to sing.
I-94 Bar: When the dust eventually settles on all of us born in the twentieth century, how do you think The Animals will be remembered?
Danny Handley: As the first true rock'n'roll band, with all the clichés, all the mistakes, all the animosity and all the bad management and all the rip-offs. That all fades away the moment you listen to those 10 singles released between 1964 and 1966. The Animals are timeless, embedded in the 20th Century in the same way as any other piece of generation-defining art. They really did capture the Zeitgeist - but they also transcend generations, and I hope to be singing these songs for as long as people want to listen.
I-94 Bar: I know I've asked this before, but just how difficult is it to go on tour so often, for such long periods? Quite apart from looking after your voice and avoiding coughs and colds, has it got any easier?
Danny Handley: Where I come from in the north of England, a little town called Burnley in Lancashire, our grandparents worked in the mills six days a week, and we were raised on those stories. What I do isn’t hard work, that’s why they call it "playing". It’s a joy, every second of it. And if anybody complains about playing music in a band, they want to go and try actually working for a living.
My grandma had a saying. If I was ever feeling sick or didn’t want to do something, she would pick up the phone and pretend to call the German army waiting on the coast of France and ask very politely if they could please put the invasion off until next Wednesday as our Danny isn’t feeling up to it!
I-94 Bar: You know that a cappella moment where you walk into the crowd without your guitar - or a microphone - and still have the audience responding and carried along? How did you develop that - was it gradual? What made you do such an extraordinary thing?
Danny Handley: Oh, that’s easy. I’m a terrible show-off. But I developed that little trick after watching a blues player called Albert Collins - and he had a 50-foot guitar cable and I was stood in the audience as a thirteen-year-old boy (just started my own band!) and he walked right off the stage and into the audience and stood right next to me playing his guitar.
I’ve always loved showmanship - all the old bluesmen did it, and everybody copied everyone. You think Jimi Hendrix invented playing the guitar behind his head, behind his back, with his teeth and through his legs? No, no, no - that was T-bone Walker waaay before him - and even probably somebody away before him too! So in my own silly English way I try to emulate my heroes. I’m a bit of a sponge.
"Boogie" Williams. Mandy Tzaras photo.
I-94 Bar: It's a huge leap of trust, too. What makes you so confident that you can trust your audience so much?
Danny Handley: I don’t, I’m hoping I get molested
I-94 Bar: Now, detour time. Danny, the blues and rock'n'roll are obviously what got your heart racing and provoked the desire to play ... but what about the very many other bands? I mean, I don't have any Sade myself but I know people who do (and would like to keep it quiet). So, what other music is in your collection? GBH or Conflict? Tom Waits or Jackson Browne? Sparks or Pet Shop Boys? Megadeath, or maybe Dissection? Or should I ask: what bands do your sons force on you?
Danny Handley: Sade mostly!
I-94 Bar: As I'm sure you remember, Bruce Springsteen gave a speech at SXSW where he said; "... to me, The Animals were a revelation. The first records with full blown class consciousness that I had ever heard. "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" had that great bass riff, that was just marking time ... It was the first time I felt I heard something come across the radio that mirrored my home life, my childhood. And the other thing that was great about The Animals was there were no good–looking members. There were none. They were considered to be one of the ugliest groups in all of rock and roll."
The Animals are still a step or two apart from the other bands of the era (I'll get hate mail, but Mick and Keith have both looked increasingly uglier than John Steel for decades) - but what I want to know is: you've been playing these songs for over 15 years, to continuously appreciative crowds; what do the people say to you after the gigs? How are they affected?
Danny Handley: I’ve seen people crying their eyes out to "House of the Rising Sun" at the end. I think it takes them back to a long lost youth and they’re very grateful for that. Even with me singing it my way, giving it my best shot, it gets them somewhere deep inside.
Over the years Ive attracted a load of flack for not being Eric Burdon (not sure how I could be) but I don’t think it matters to the majority of our audience. They’re over that within a song or two, hopefully. Last time we were in America a guy came to me and said “We (the audience) have to make a decision, do we want to hear the songs live again? If so, we have to accept line-up changes”. It’s just what it is.
I-94 Bar: So you know these songs inside and out, and yet not only do the songs always sound fresh and new when you play them, how do they still remain so strong?
Danny Handley: The freshness is never resting on laurels, mainly so we don’t get bored out of our minds, there is constant fiddling (I do love a good fiddle). Swapping songs, trawling the back catalogue and surprising the band so they don’t know what song I’m going to introduce next. Keep them on their toes
I-94 Bar: Springsteen also commented that The Animals "They were cruel, which was so freeing. It was so freeing." He's partly referring to "It's My Life", which everyone finds so positive, but Bruce is right. There's a flipside. And there are flipsides to a number of Animals songs, aren't there?
Danny Handley: Yes, there’s a definite dark side to those songs, but as I say, maybe they were written specifically with those scowling Geordie faces in mind.
I-94 Bar: Lastly, I know you've played solo in your home town - will you be doing more of that in the future?
Danny Handley: This last year, I’ve done three solo tours as well as all The Animals work, so I’ve been very busy and hardly at home. In fact, I overstayed my welcome in the EU by accident; I'd been away over 90 days in the 180 day period.
In 2027 me, Barney ("Boogie" Williams) and Norman (AKA Norm Helm) are starting a new project called Electric Company, playing Barney’s songs and my songs. No covers at all. And we’re booked into a studio in Wales in January so we'll hopefully have a nice shiny new record out soon. But the plan is to run that alongside The Animals' incredibly busy calendar, and hopefully that will be something for us in the future.
Next year, The Animals start the year in London - then Miami, the Caribbean, Scandinavia, South America, the Balkans, Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, possibly Canada and Japan before heading back Down Under for another huge Tour at the end of 2027. So no let up at all.
The Animals
November/December 2026 Australian Tour
Friday 6th November ROZELLE, The Bridge Hotel
Saturday 7th November ROZELLE, The Bridge Hotel
Wednesday 11th November WYONG, The Art House
Friday 13th November CANBERRA, Southern Cross Club
Saturday 14th November THIRROUL, Anita’s Theatre
Sunday 15th November MARICKVILLE, The Factory Theatre
Friday 20th November TWEED HEADS, Twin Towns
Saturday 21st November BRISBANE, Mansfield Theatre
Sunday 22nd November BRISBANE, The Tivoli
Tuesday 24th November BENDIGO, Ulumbarra Theatre
Wednesday 25th November WENDOUREE, Centre for Performing Arts
Friday 27th November LAUNCESTON, Country Club
Saturday 28th November HOBART, Odeon
Sunday 29th November BURNIE, Burnie Arts Centre
Wednesday 2nd December ADELAIDE, The Gov
Friday 4th December PERTH, Regal Theatre
