With hits like "House of the Rising Sun," and "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place," Eric Burdon and his band The Animals helped provide a soundtrack to the 1960s.

Burdon and The Animals will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Arcada Theatre, 105 E. Main St., in St. Charles.

Tickets range from $29 to $69, and Vietnam veterans get in free. Tickets are available by calling 630-962-7000.

The Kane County Chronicle had a chance to do an email interview with Burdon, who will soon release a new album, "Til Your River Runs Dry." More information about his latest activities is at www.ericburdon.com.

Kane County Chronicle: Your concert at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles is being billed as a tribute to Vietnam War veterans. Were you surprised that the song "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" became so popular among U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War? What kind of response have you received from Vietnam War veterans over the years to the song?

Eric Burdon: I didn't know that the show at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles was being billed as a tribute to Vietnam War veterans but that's OK with me.

They need all the help they can get, back then and now. It's no surprise to me that "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" was popular with the armed forces back then during the Vietnam conflict. Although I didn't write it, I lived it. Soldiers still deeply relate to the song. It doesn't really matter what war it is, they want OUT.

Last time I heard anything about it being popular was with the Brits in Iraq. UK soldiers voted it in as one of the top five songs during the Iraq War.

Over the years, Vietnam vets have expressed to me countless times that this song saved their lives. And I'm fortunate that my music touched a lot of people.

One story I will never forget was from a soldier whose life was literally saved. He told me he had gone out to pick up the cassette tape and when he returned his entire company had been wiped out.

What was your reaction to being ranked 57th in "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time? Who are some of your favorite singers and how have they influenced you?

I consider it an honor.  Especially that this comes from my peers. As for my favorite singers, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and James Brown, to name a few.

How do you think your current band compares to the original lineup of The Animals? How did you go about assembling your current band?

It's pretty much the same line-up.  Drums, guitar, keyboards, bass and me as the front man. Except the players that I play with today have, what I would say, a lot more musical skill; a lot more musical panache.

So, don't get me wrong. It's not that the original Animals weren't great, but you have to take into consideration that when the Animals came out of Newcastle, we were all mostly in our early twenties, virtually a garage band, and what we lacked in musicology, we made up for in the need to be heard and also feeling that we'd discovered something that was kind of like a state secret.

We believed we were the only ones that knew that we'd discovered this power that existed in the trash bins in America that was called 'the blues' and we lived by it. It became our religion. It became our credo.

To come back to the guys I share the stage with today, they are all first class players; Terry Wilson on bass; Billy Watts on guitar; Red Young on keyboards; Brannen Temple on drums;

They've all lived a lot longer than the original Animals and they've had the time to develop their skills, to mellow and to hone their craft as professional musicians. It's a pleasure to be in front of such a band and a lot of fun as well.

I understand The Animals received its name because of its wild stage shows. How do you approach touring these days? What keeps you going?

It's kind of true that the Animals got their name because of their wild stage show but then again it's not really true at all.

We came up with the name The Animals because we felt that the soul of animals, as opposed to the soul of human beings, is cleaner.

It's much more of a purity of soul. I believe that animals have souls and nobody really, in the English speaking world, understood what we were trying to reach and conjure up with the name, the Animals, I think only the French did when we played in France, we were quite popular.

The French press understood what we were getting at. This was not so everywhere else! In the U.S., at photo shoots for pop magazines the photographers would be shouting, "Which one's the lion? Which one's the elephant? Which one's the tiger? Get down on the ground and crawl like an animal!"

You know, it was so much ... and they just didn't get it at all. But as we went out on the road and we got popular with a hit record that went around the globe several times and back again, followed up with good recordings but a disastrous management situation.

They just played us to death and we were very bad at handling our affairs, but that's another story. Anyway, that's how the name the Animals came about.

And yeah, we did have wild stage appearances in the early days and it was a lot of fun. Just tearing stages apart, generally misbehaving and being wild youth. That's what they wanted.

The music business continues to change. Is it easier or harder to be a musician these days?

It's like life itself, it's always changing. Is it harder to be a musician these days? I wouldn't know.

I hate to sound this way but I'm in my own world and my own world works for me. I recall the days when I was a garage band when getting our first TV appearance was like a gift from God.

You know, now I'm so jaded, I hate TV appearances. It's one of the worst mediums there is, it kills artistic endeavors.

You wait around for hours and all of a sudden you're on. When you're big and successful, it's the same with touring. You can't jam. You're not allowed to jam around.

Your music world is over when you become a viable product, as opposed to a band that wants to play and enjoy themselves. So the business kicks a lot of the fun out of the realm of performance.

Today, I really cringe when I see these young kids getting a break on these massive TV shows like "The Voice," "American Idol," and all of that. I wonder what's going to happen to them when they get out into the real, harsh, cruel light of day, that's known as the music business, which is no business at all, actually. There's no business like no business!

I understand you first heard the song "The House Of The Rising Sun" in a club in Newcastle, England, being performed by a folk singer named Johnny Handle. What first struck you about the song and what made you want to tackle it?

I first heard "House of the Rising Sun" in a club in my hometown and it was performed by a folksinger by the name of Johnny Handel, who was like, he was the real thing. He was a miner, he was a pit deputy and he worked at the coal face.

He also liked to twang guitar and sing folk songs and he would sing songs about local political events and mine disasters and ships being lost on the high seas. So, he was the real thing. He was what folk music is supposed to be made of.

But he also liked Elvis Presley (laughs) and all of the folkies would think he was nuts and they shunned him but everybody shut up and listened when he sang a song called "House of the Rising Sun." This song holds a lot of magic.

This song is a great song because It's about sin; it's about spirituality; it's about redemption; it's about the glory of love; it's about failed love; it's about using love as a means to exist; it's about prostitution, but it's also about redemption. It's also got a great chord sequence which, guitar players have told me, anybody can play.

I can't, but anybody can play it and that's proved to me to be true. Every guitar player I ever meet says, "You know something, the first thing I ever played on guitar was this," and then they launch into those chords at the beginning of the song.

So, is it harder to be a musician these days? No, just go out and buy a guitar. Just get a keyboard and start playing. It was harder back then, when I was a kid, to do that, you know.

Guitars were really expensive and they were imported from America. They weren't that readily available. Today, they are. So, on one level it's harder and on another level, it's easier.