Gig review: Steve Cropper & the Animals - ABC, Glasgow

IT’S impossible to dissociate The Animals from Eric Burdon’s deep, bluesy burr, but the singer has been estranged from the legends’ classic line-up since it fractured in the late 1960s.

Steve Cropper & the Animals

ABC, Glasgow

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His version of the band tours as Eric Burdon and The Animals; appearing at Celtic Connections was the parallel incarnation led by drummer John Steel – founder member and legal owner of The Animals name – and keys player Mick Gallagher.

However faithfully and skilfully rendered the likes of Bright Lights Big City and Boom Boom might have proven, an opening slew of Animals classics – led by Geordie Jack Black-alike Peter Barton on bass and vocals – traded rather too flatly on past glories. But once The Animals were joined at the halfway stage by American guitarist Steve “The Colonel” Cropper – founder member of Stax records house band Booker T & the MG’s, frequently ranked among the greatest guitarists of all time – a much more fun and collaborative dynamic immediately reigned.

We got Cropper co-credited Stax soul classics from Otis Redding’s Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay – preceded by a recounting of its very inception in the studio, and ending with a mass whistle-along – to Eddie Floyd’s Knock On Wood. With such a Booker T Jones aficionado as Gallagher on Hammond organ, what else could have ended Cropper’s innings – prior to a rousing Animals encore of, what else but House of The Rising Sun – other than a hip-shaking Green Onions?