The Eric Burdon Story

Before I get around to telling the Eric Burdon story I recently remembered another one of my mom's inexplicable white lies that caused me some grief. Here's what happened:

When I was in the 1st grade at Reavis Elementary School in Affton Missouri (1959) there were a couple of classmates who lived in the same neighborhood (Lakeshire).
One day my mom arranged for me to spend the afternoon at a kid's house. I don't remember his name - I really didn't know him that well. But before she dropped me off she told me that the boy's father had died so I mustn't under any circumstances say anything about it.
I was really upset by that... I was incredibly sensitive at that age and the whole "death" thing made me sick to my stomach... A close family friend had recently died in a head-on collision. She'd been driving a station wagon full of girls scouts and only her daughter survived - it was all so random and unfair - one of my worst fears... BTW - I do remember the make, model and color of the station wagon... But that's not particularly relevant...

So I'm at the boy's house - and we play for a while - then he mentions that he's going to visit his father the following weekend... ???!!! ... And I say "Isn't your father dead?" And he says "No - my parent's are divorced."
I have no idea why my mom felt like she had to lie about that. Maybe she thought I didn't know about divorce and she didn't want to have to explain... But I already knew all about it - kids talk... And it's not like the concept of "dad doesn't live here anymore" is rocket science :-) Yeah - she put me through a bunch of anxiety for nothing...

Now - on to the Eric Burdon story:

During the fall of 1969 Karina briefly went out with a promoter who had just arranged a concert by Eric Burdon and War at Palomar Junior College in San Marcos (just west of Escondido). This was only the group's second public performance - nobody had heard of them at that point - this was many months before they recorded anything.

Now - I had always been curious about the "mechanics" of staging a live show so on the day of the concert the boyfriend was nice enough to sneak me in early and let me tag along with him for a bit. And it came to pass that I was standing in a circle of about 10 people - roadies and such - going over all the sound and lighting details. After about 5 minutes of discussion one of the roadies turned to the guy next to me and said "So Eric, what do you think?".

It took me a surprisingly long time to connect the dots... But I finally realized that I'd been standing next to Eric Burdon (one of my idols) for over 5 minutes and had not noticed...

Of course, I was totally cool and didn't react... It was just hard for me to believe that someone who had that much presence onstage could be that invisible offstage...
And it wasn't just me who failed to notice him... Shortly before the show started I was up in the bleachers at the side of the auditorium when I spotted Eric enter through the back of the hall. It was open seating and the aisles were packed. And as he slowly worked his way toward the stage a number of people looked right at him and nobody recognized him... As a matter of fact most of them were irritated at him for pushing past them... He seemed quite amused by the whole thing - apparently he had stepped out the back door and gotten locked out :-)

It was an amazing concert... They did a bit of Animals material - albeit in a rather different style. But most of it was new unrecorded stuff... That whole rock, funk, reggae, latin fusion vibe was quite innovative at the time... The percussion was stunningly good...

And of course - Eric Burdon was a "force of nature" - when he was onstage...