Reason to Hope….. and Implications for Leaders January, 2022

There is reason for hope. As so often occurs, this reason comes from an unexpected place. In this case, it arises from my wandering about YouTube over the holidays. May this sharing of the results of my wandering aid your transition into 2022.

Executive Summary
Long ago, as a rate limiting member of a 1960s garage/basement band (The Blue Condition), I grew very familiar with The Animals’ version of the House of the Rising Sun. I also quickly came to appreciate my complete inability to approach the keyboard playing in their version—no false modesty, I assure you. (Alan Price, the keyboard player, and I had but one thing in common: a Vox keyboard.) Over the holidays, I came across a 4K version of the Animals’ video from 1964 and refreshed my reverence for the song and the artistry. The high def release in 2019 (watch and listen to it here) seems to have opened the gates to new generations. It has slid into the ‘first time reaction’ genre on YouTube.

Listening to first reactions by young (very young compared to me!) music aficionados from around the world, especially the rap and hip-hop casters and the internationals, is an absolute delight—so joyful in their time capsule discovery. They wind into the surprise of the 23-year-old Burdon’s powerful, edgy, ‘old’, blues tinged and passionate yet eerily stone-faced singing along with the deeply intertwined instrumentals, especially the piercing keyboard playing of Price. The joy of the youthful reactors joining in the connection with the lament and the artistry of its presentation crosses time, gender, age, race, and nationality. As great as the song is—it’s these reactions that testify to the power of music across generations, people, dress, technology, and even hairstyles(!)…and provides hope born of shared felt experience.

Human beings share being human beings, even (especially?), as the Brits would say, ‘the hard bits’. Sharing what we share, passionately and artfully, unites us. Authenticity? That’s just being human. Leaders should lead from there.

Today, in these roiling, fractured, isolating, diseased and often outright sad times, we as people (and especially leaders) would do well not to succumb to calls for lemons to lemonade or for any false, even toxic positivity. Yes, by all means, carry on and celebrate the breakthrough of any beams of light … but think Kubler Ross and play the blues and do so in the company of others whenever possible. Share the experience. Find the inherent and paradoxical joy of the passionate, genuine, timeless, and oh so visceral bond of hard times, the release and joy in shared sadness. Why sing the blues? Because they wring joy from the deepest of our personal and yet most common struggles. They allow us to sing (even wail) through the hardest of times by moving into them. The blues serve as portals to healing and, yes, even to joy.... and to hope.

Trekking through? Returning to the office? Don’t rush to renewal. Watch for it. Celebrate and support its arrival. In the meantime, honor where we are. Share the song track for this part of trail: the blues.


Director’s Cut
The roots of the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun arguably date back to 16th century England before being transplanted to America and taking hold in its folk traditions, including those of African Americans. Many singers recorded (covered/altered) the song over many years. Twentieth century artists include Guthrie, Lead Belly, Dylan, Simone, Parton, and Frijid Pink, just to mention some of the Americans.

The Animals’ version of the song is, I’d suggest, a lament over the tragedy of cross-generational familial patterns of brokenness, in particular addiction, and the hope/despair regarding changing those patterns. It offers wisdom hard learned—wisdom offered by the singer to others but then ignored by him. The Animals’ mashup of references, images, and symbols along with the changed gender of the song’s focal character unmoors the song (the story) from its traditional specifics and thereby makes the lyrics more elliptical and metaphoric. Ironically, ‘cleaning up the lyrics’ (e.g., distancing the song from an explicit link to brothels, perhaps in the hopes of more general acceptability), serves to broaden both the range of interpretation of the song and to enhance its relevance, inclusiveness, and timeless quality. The Animals (particularly keyboardist Alan Price) changed the folk arrangement, including the time that the song is played in which then allowed room for a dramatically different pacing as well as different breadth and variety of instrumentation, Price’s keyboard play most notably. The listener can easily identify the consistent contribution of the drums and guitars; they are authentic, restrained, intertwined and textured. Folk music electrified; blues infused rock.

Point 1: Timeless stories are timeless stories. To tell them well, one must recognize and honor them before crafting one’s own presentation. Authenticity is not a cloak to don. Rather, it starts from within, moving outward when called forth by the times and by one’s companions on the river.

The Animals’ The House of Rising Sun violated the stricture about radio song length (running nearly twice as long as the generally enforced norm). The violation led to a very slow start after the release of the song in the US. Meanwhile, the song rose quickly to #1 in the UK, a fact which, not surprisingly, opened the radio doors in the US. The impact of the song started almost immediately. For example, Bob Dylan, who had recorded his traditional, folk version of the song about a year earlier said that he was driving when he heard the song on the radio. He pulled over in order to take it in. Some say that his highly controversial conversion to electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival the following year came in no small part from the impact on him of the Animals’ version of House of the Rising Sun.

Point 2: Work with those who appreciate the essence of what you do. Lean on the ‘demonstration effect’. Others will catch up…or not.

The Animals came up with the song as part of their response to the challenge of opening for the already legendary Chuck Berry. To paraphrase lead singer Burdon, ‘Unlike others who opened for Chuck, we knew that you can’t out rock Chuck Berry so we had to come up with something else.’ After performing the song onstage, the group believed that they had lightning in a bottle. They briefly left the tour with their instruments in tow, sprinted to their studio in England, and reportedly put the song down in a single, 15-minute take before speedily rejoining Berry’s European tour.

Point 3: Don’t try to out rock Chuck Berry. Call it Blue Water Strategy if you want, but figure out how you can contribute, even if your group is only loosely coupled to the work of other groups on the venue and cast in a supporting role, e.g., an opening act for a living legend.

Point 4: Strongly coupled groups (such as a rock group) benefit from working face to face, especially when searching for creativity and deep coordination. True synchronicity and deeply interdependent teamwork benefit greatly from ongoing face to face interaction (i.e., not remote).

“Particularly with the blues, it’s not just about bad times. It’s about the healing spirit.” (Taj Mahal)

May 2022 prove to be a healing year for us all.