Be My Baby

Sixteen

A/N - I am trying to use my Eric autobiography as well as interviews from John to write this (I bought a book MAINLY for this chapter but I'll read it for fun too) . John's version is more accurate so this is based mostly on his account, but some details do come from Eric's book.

May 18th, 1964

The tour for the band had been going great so far.  The sights have been wonderful and working with Chuck and the others have become an dream come true. Alan and the guys managed to impress the audience well with their ability on playing blues covers, causing the crowd to go wild.

The magazines have taken a liking to the band too. I managed to sell a good amount of my photos to a number of them for some money. Soon, photos of The Animals were found all over the city of London and elsewhere, including some of Hilton rocking out and Eric yelling into the microphone. I was quite proud of how my photos turned out of everyone. The fan count slowly began to grow. Even "Baby Let Me Take You Home" was climbing the charts!

The best part of the show is that everyone seemed to really enjoy their rendition of "The House of the Rising Sun". Whenever Hilton played the opening arpeggio riff, everyone sat and listened, memorized by his playing. By the time Alan punched on his solo, the crowd was in pure amazement, many of the kids with their mouths wide open. The claps and cheers were the loudest for that song than they were for all the other opening acts.The Animals were that new sound no one ever heard and the recipe was simple: five hard working guys from Newcastle that all craved the style of blues in some shape or form and acted wild and rebellious on stage. My new favorite thing to see was the reactions of faces when the group preformed. It truly was memorizing.

With that in place, the band decided that they wanted to record the song soon. Sure, they were saying it for weeks but now with the growing number of likes that the song has received, it was now the right time to record it before everyone gets bored if it. It was the sound that they wasted to represent their next single. The cries of the keyboard. The softness of the drums. The howling of Eric's vocals. However, with them being on a tour with Chuck Berry for the next couple weeks or so, it was hard to find a time to go into a studio and record it.

That lead to someone mentioning that it would probably be easier to hunt for a studio in the morning where no one was using them. Ir would nearly impossible to record in the afternoon when everyone was at each other's throats after getting packed and shipped to one arena from another.

Unfortunately, morning didn't mean nine A.M but more like three in the morning. The day was the 18th of May, 1964. It was a Monday. A Monday that seemed like any other normal Monday of the whole year.

        The morning was already happening way too fast and it wasn't even six yet. Everyone didn't go to bes and were all relying on sleep from the previous day. Of course, it was hard for me to stay awake. From where we were staying, we had to take the train to get to London. The previous day we were in Liverpool and today we were heading to Gaumont. I was excited to be able to check out Gaumont for a day (or afternoon, depending how how much sleep I was able to get before being rushed out). Mickie Most, the guy's producer, managed to get us in a studio for that morning in London before we all were going to rush to Liverpool.

There were quite a few people on the train despite it being a early Monday morning. Mostly it was people traveling home from trips in the wee hours of the morning. The seven of us, me, the five group members and the band's roadie, Tappy R. Wright, were in one section. Everyone was chatting amongst themselves as I was half asleep, my head leaning on Alan's shoulder. His arm was wrapped around me made me feel comfortable.

"Did Penny sleep the day before?" Hilton asked, causing me to pay attention once my name was said. Even with my eyes closed, I knew he was looking at me.