It’s My Life: The Animals rocker on life as a 60s bad boy

John Steel was in his early teens when rock and roll first came on the scene.

“It was the birth of a new kind of music,” Steel remembers.

Little did he know that he – a high school dropout who was playing trumpet in a Dixieland-style jazz band in the northern English city of Newcastle – would soon be part of one of the biggest names in the music industry.

“We didn’t just want to be fans,” he says, of how he and his school mate Eric Burdon ended up forming The Animals.

Steel, now 76, tells Starts At 60 how Burdon, who played trombone in the same jazz band, decided to make the change to singing, with a focus on rock and roll, while Steel himself opted to drop the trumpet in favour of the drums.

“Fortunately I turned out to be all right … at 15, you know, you think ‘I can do that’,” he says. 

Their re-formed rock band started playing live in 1956 and by 1963 they had becomeThe Animals, the famous bad boys of 60s rock – a mantle Steel admits he and his band mates were perfectly happy to wear.

“Teenagers were bad boys, we loved it,” he says.

“It was a really exciting time, to be honest,” Steel adds. “One minute we were ordinary guys from Newcastle, provincial town, working class background … then the whole world suddenly opened up … it was just like a dream come true.”

The band hit the top of the charts in the UK and the US with its famous song House of the Rising Sun in 1964, and had many other hits, including Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, I’m Crying, It’s My Life and We Gotta Get Out of This Place.

Life wasn’t always glamorous, though, with the band going through its share of in-fighting and management bust-ups over the years.

“We had a few bumps and a few hard knocks,” Steel says. But that doesn’t stop him recalling the good times rather than the bad.

“I’ve never lost any sleep on it – everybody got ripped off in those days,” Steel says of the claims of mismanagement and theft that let the original line-up making surprisingly little money despite their huge popularity.

The band never made it to Australia during their 60s heyday; the bank’s first visit Down Under was in the 90s, but Steel says he enjoys the vibe whenever he visits. “The hospitality is so good and so friendly,” he says.

The Animals, now with a different line-up,  have already played 45 gigs this year, touring Germany and Sweden, and will head to Poland and New Zealand before embarking on their Australian tour in early May. “It beats me how we do it sometimes,” he admits.

Steel says the travelling part of touring can be tedious, and there’s little time to stop and enjoy the sights, but continuing to perform keeps him and his bandmates going,

“The adrenalin kicks in on stage, the energy comes from somewhere,” he reckons.

And although technology has changed the music world, Steel says The Animals’ shows today aren’t too far away from what fans would have seen 50 years ago. “We are a live band, we don’t rely on fancy electronics,” he says,

While they do perform their biggest hits, Steel says The Animals are lucky to have created a large repertoire of good songs, so they’re able to keep each show fresh.

“We [the original Animals] recorded a brilliant catalogue of songs that still stand up so well today,” he says.

It’s  the grittiness of their songs that Steel finds people are able to identify with, no matter what their age.

“The songs have a real life edge to them, that’s why they still stand up today,” the rocker says of the many young fans who come to his gigs.

From Kazakhstan to The Philippines, The Animals get the same response, he says – fans who know all of the band’s lyrics.

 “It blows me away because I’m the drummer and I don’t even know half the words myself,” Steel jokes.

Steel says that when The Animals started, the band was inspired by the likes of Elvis and Chuck Berry. Now, while he doesn’t focus heavily on the current music scene, the long-time musician says he admires female performers such as Amy Winehouse and Adele.

“I’ve always thought every generation has its own soundtrack,” he says.

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When he’s not on stage, Steel has some surprisingly non-rock pastimes. “I’m a big reader,” he explains “That always helps me on the road, I can bury myself in a good book.”

And when off tour, he spends time at his peaceful home in the English countryside, where helps out his wife, who’s a keen gardener. “I’m a sort of go-fer – I do all the grunt work… I enjoy that, it keeps me grounded,” Steel jokes.

LISTEN: Remember the music of The Animals.

Despite his genteel forms of relaxation, the drummer says he still feels fit and can still play as well as he ever did so has no plans to slow down.

“My body is going to tell me when I’ve had enough,” he says. “As long as I can play and enjoy it, I’ll do it as long as I can.”

Steel and another early Animals member Mick Gallagher, along with Danny Handley and Scotty Whitely, will perform all the band’s greatest hits during the tour of Queensland, New South Wales, Adelaide, Victoria and the ACT in May. 

What’s your memory of The Animals? Do you have a favourite song?