Animal magic

Eric Burdon: Rock and Roll Animal – a new biographical documentary aired on BBC4 at the end of February and available now on the BBC iPlayer – is a reminder of one of the great British R&B voices of the 1960s. Burdon’s unforgettably powerful vocals featured on a string of hits by The

Why did Billie Joe jump?

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay… So begins one of the greatest, and most mysterious, hit songs of the Sixties, ‘Ode to Billie Joe’, recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a part-time swimsuit model from the wrong side of the

Generating real interest

The original Van de Graaff generator was invented in 1929 and it still has its uses in physics today but the one we are interested in here at The Record Album was formed almost 40 years later. When Pete Hamill and Chris Judge Smith launched their band in Manchester in 1967, they added

Dazzling Led Zep III

On September 7, 1968, more than 1200 people turned up at the Gladsaxe Teen Club near Copenhagen to see the latest incarnation of a band with a big reputation and a string of hits behind them. But The New Yardbirds, as they were billed, had instead become something really new, Led Zeppelin, by