Very much their own

“We Gotta Get Out of This Place” was a Brill Building demo that got away. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote it with the Righteous Brothers in mind, and Mann was about to release his own version when record man Allen Klein slipped the demo to producer Mickie Most — who handed it to The Animals. Eric Burdon and the band dragged it out of Manhattan and into Newcastle, and by the time Chas Chandler’s bass has finished its opening prowl, the song is very much their own.

It became a hit in 1965, but its longest life was lived elsewhere: American soldiers in Vietnam adopted it as their unofficial anthem, and when researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison surveyed hundreds of veterans about the music of the war decades later, this was the one song everyone agreed on.

This clip catches them live in 1965, Burdon selling every word of it. “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do” — a pop chorus that turned out to be big enough to hold anyone’s exit.