ERIC changed my life as he growled We Gotta Get Out Of This Place in the early Sixties.

It became the soundtrack to my Great Escape from... Middlesbrough! Back then, as frontman of Geordie band The Animals, Eric set my callow candle of youth ablaze with numbers such as House Of The Rising Sun, Don't Let Be Misunderstood and Baby Let Me Take You Home, all of which still plug me in to the happy daze when a pint of Exhibition cost 1s 10d. Forty three years later he still has that distinctive raw, rasping grittiness but cloaked in more mellow cadences. The Animals split in 1966 and Eric moved to San Francisco, became fogged in psychedelia, fronted funk band WAR in the Seventies and drifted out of my life. He's back with My Secret Life, 13 tracks, 12 new, and it's a Bobby dazzler. Once Upon A Time and Broken Records are bluesy and reflective while the title track shows the old urgent passion is as powerful as ever.

Updated: 10:02 Thursday, May 13, 2004