John Steel (drummer) Jones and Art Blakey. They switched from jazz to embrace the new rock 'n' roll explosion. In March 1959, Steel met Alan Price at a church hop in Byker, Newcastle, and with Hilton Valentine (guitar) and Chas Chandler (bass) formed a band; by 1960 the Alan Price Combo had acquired a reputation in Newcastle. Burdon joined in 1962 from a band called the Pagans, and the Animals were born. Steel went on to play and record with them until February 1966. His last charted single with the group was "Inside Looking Out". Subsequently, Steel returned to Newcastle and became a
Those Were the Days (song) the song was at no. 1 in the very first edition of the singles sales chart launched by the Centre d'Information et de Documentation du Disque in October 1968. Georgian singer Tamara Tsereteli (1900–1968) and Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky made what were probably the earliest recordings of the song, in 1925 and in 1926 respectively. The song appears in the 1953 British/French movie "Innocents in Paris", in which it was sung with its original Russian lyrics by the Russian Tzigane chanteuse Ludmila Lopato. Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording of it with Gene Raskin's lyric was a chart-topping hit in much of