San Franciscan Nights

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San Franciscan Nights is a song by Eric Burdon & The Animals that appeared on the 1967 album Winds of Change . Music and lyrics are provided by band members Eric Burdon , Vic Briggs, John Weider, Barry Jenkins and Danny McCulloch. The Paian an San Francisco was one of the biggest hits of the then new band. The single reached number 1 on the Canadian RPM chart, number 7 on the UK pop singles chart and number 9 on the US pop singles chart . The B-side title of the single released by MGM Records was Good Times .

background

The band wrote San Francisco Nights as a protest song against the Vietnam War . In an interview with Songfacts , Burdon said, “The 'Love Generation' helped the anti-war cause in the United States. Presumably she changed the minds of many soldiers because she made them wonder why they should go to war while their friends were frolicking at home. At that level, she caused a lot of fear. Perhaps she also helped the so-called enemy politically. I do not know exactly."

The song begins with a short parody of the Dragnet title melody. This is followed by a spoken dedication from Burdon: "To the city and people of San Francisco, who may not know it but they are beautiful and so is their city." He then urges Europeans to come to San Francisco to understand the song and find their inner peace.

The actual lyrics begin with a report about a warm night in San Francisco in 1967, interwoven with hallucinogenic images, such as stroboscopic beams that create dreams, move walls and thoughts, and make angels sing. This is connected with the "Jeans of blue" and "Harley Davidsons, too", which were already associated with California at that time. In contrast, the lyrics put hateful police officers on a street called “Love”, in order to ultimately take them into the community imagined in the song (“Old cop young cop feel alright”). The song connects many of the topics that the 'Love Generation' had put on the agenda.

On the B-side of the British version is the song Gratefully Dead , a reference to the band Grateful Dead from San Francisco.

Burdon's statement that nights in San Francisco are warm drew the mockery of some Americans who knew the city's climate. This is best illustrated by the quote attributed to Mark Twain : "My coolest winter was a summer in San Francisco," while music journalist Lester Bangs found this statement inexplicable. However, Burdon and his band played in San Francisco for 10 days in exceptionally warm spring weather, which left them with this misleading notion.

During a concert in Naperville, Illinois in 2010, Burdon said the song was written about an evening with Janis Joplin in San Francisco.

Cover versions

The Romanian rock band Sfinx recorded a cover version of the song with completely different lyrics in 1967. It was never released on CD and is known both as Toamna (Autumn) and Nu mai sunt flori de mai (No more lilies of the valley). The guitar riff is accompanied by a French horn by Petre Iordache. The lead singer sings the guitarist Octav Zemlicka.

The Japanese psychedelic rock band The Mops covered the song on their debut album Psychedelic Sounds in Japan in 1968 . Further covers took place by the band Harpo and The Flying Carpets .

Hip-hop band People Under The Stairs sampled a version of the song by Gábor Szabó & The California Dreamers from the album Wind, Sky, And Diamonds (1967). On the Drew Carey Show , Drew and his band under Joe Walsh covered the song with the lyrics about Cleveland, Ohio .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eric Burdon / Eric Burdon & the Animals: Winds of Change. Allmusic, accessed November 29, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Eric Burdon on SWR 1 (cover of the recording)
  3. ↑ San Franciscan Nights by The Animals. Retrieved November 29, 2015 .
  4. ^ Carl Nolte: Fog Heaven: The sun will come out tomorrow. Or maybe not. It's summer in the city, and that means gray skies. August 19, 2005. Retrieved November 29, 2015 .
  5. ^ Lester Bangs : The British Invasion . In: Jim Miller (Ed.): The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll . Random House, New York 1980.