"We gotta get out of this place,

  "If its the last thing we ever do.

  "We gotta get out of this place,

   "Girl theres a better place for  me and you."

          --The Animals, 1965.

BRIAN JAMES CHANDLER     who will be 34 in December, and

has been called Chas since his 

schooldays, is learning to play 

the guitar again.

  His reason this time round is simple,  father Christmas is bringing his three year old son a guitar next Christmas and Chas has to be the teacher. Chandler junior is already well into rock: He can sing along to Slade, and some of the Beatles, but he doesn't seem to like Jimi Hendrix. He only likes Ray Charles but only because his dad recommends it.

Its not surprising that Chandler senior has this influence on his son, Chas Chandler was the original bass player with the Animals, which taught him as much about the rock business as Georgie Best knows about football. From there he went on to discover, produce and manage Jimi Hendrix and now he's managing Slade, the hottest property to arrive on the rock scene for  a long while.

For a one time Docker in the Newcastle ship yards, Chandler has put a real meaning into the words of the old Animals hit. Now he has a rambling country mansion on the road to Eastbourne and has offices in Mayfair.  He lives, he says for the present and the future but its the past that has taught him all he knows. He can recall a list of names of  businessmen to trust and with whom he has dealt  --and he can reel of a bigger list of characters who are crooks, swindlers and con men. It would be very hard to swindle Mr Chandler today.

  In his youth Chandlers main preoccupation was avoiding conscription. To this end he enrolled in engineering college where he learnt to design power stations. On the day conscription ended he quit college and worked on the docks. He was Docking by day and playing in a variety of Newcastle clubs by night.

Various combinations of the five musicians who became the Animals played together before the band was formed, and docking seemed much less attractive. Eventually docking occurred on sunday afternoons only --with double pay for the same amount of work.

  In 1962 the Animals came to London to find  work. Eight months earlier Chas had been sacked from the shipyards for irregular hours. He'd play music all night and go straight to work  in the mornings and work suffered the most.

On arrival in London The Animals met Mickie Most who wanted to produce their records. The first one, "Baby Let Me Take You Home." was a hit, and three years of being an Animal began. It was says Chas three years of total lunacy -- working every night, touring all the time and never knowing who to trust.

"We were so green, so green we hardly knew what was happening to us. We just did what we were told, and so long as we had enough money to

 live on it didn't matter."

 "House Of The Rising Sun." was their second record and biggest hit, It was also a massive hit in America and the animals became the third British group to cross the Atlantic -- after the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five.

"We spent the money so fast we never had time to sit down and count it. We were screwed here and screwed in America. We had a big turnover but no capital and we always stayed in the best hotels, Then, one day, in Ireland we just decided to drop the whole thing."

 Alan Price was the first Animal to leave. Price has a phobia about flying and he opted out of the Scandinavia tour at the last minute and went home to Newcastle. Mick Gallagher was brought in as a temporary replacement and Dave Rowberry who is with the Kinks today, became Price's permanent replacement. Next to go was Johnny Steele, the drummer, who went home to Newcastle and who is today Chandler's assistant.

 "Eric (Burdon) and I were starting to get wise to things," says Chas. "We had done our own production deal by this time but the whole thing was still crazy. One night we just decided to quit --we would carry out all the  engagements booked and no more. 

 "I didn't want to stay a bass player all my life or play one ever again at that moment I hadn't a clue what to do but we all knew the Animals were over."

 The last few months of the Animals , says Chas, were their best days. There were no tensions or arguments as all the band knew it was over. It was during this time that they made what \Chas considers to be their best record " Don't Bring Me Down"

 " During the last eight months our only objective was really to make some money while we still the chance. It was a question of grabbing what we could before it was all over."

 It was during the last Animals tour of America that Chas met Jimi Hendrix.

 I was asked to go over to the cafe' Wah in Greenwich village and see him and that was it. I had thought about producing  records and this was the man I wanted to produce."

 "When the Animals finally split Chas came back from New York and brought Hendrix back to London. Chas had just £1,400 to show from his days with the Animals and most of this was grabbed during the closing .

During the next three years he managed Hendrix and produced his records until a point was reached where Jimi no longer wanted work. They parted company amicably, and Chas who had improved substantially his £1,400 by this time, was out of work again.

In the three years with Hendrix he was married, and his wife Lotta  was expecting Chandler junior. For most of the time he had shared a flat with Hendrix which was rented from Ringo Starr, but the time was now right to move out of the country.

After four months Chas joined 

the Robert Stigwood organization with no specific role .  "By this  time I had become very hardened and learned a lot about the business. I was supposed to look for new acts with Stigwood and do some record production.

"One day I had a call from a guy who told me about this band called Slade, and that they wanted a manager. I went down to see them at  the Rasputin club  in London, and they knocked me out. I   was as impressed with Slade as I was when I first saw Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to find something different from the blues, and Jimi was the same thing, But Slade just had a ball on stage. After watching them work I had to sign them."

 Chas signed them up and shortly afterwards left Stigwoods to form his own company and concentrate entirely on Slade. He has no plans to manage any other acts.

 "Slade were very young when I first met them, much younger than the Animals when we came to London - and they were getting screwed just like we had been. As far as publicity was concerned they weren't very successful in the early days but they were still earning good money. The business was taking every opportunity to knock them because of the skinhead thing, but they were slowly building up a very big following. Slade originally on the Fontana label, switched to Polydor and the rest of the story is too recent to recount again. America is Slade's next goal, and already they have received rave reviews around the country ---- unlike T Rex.

 "Slade are far and away better musicians than the Animals ever were. Hilton valentine couldn't play a guitar like Dave Hill and I could never hope to be able to play bass as well as Jim Lea. I have a guitar now and I bring it out once a year.

  "My attitude as a manager is to get as much success and as much money for the act I am managing, and my experiences as a musician have helped me a lot. I never try to analyse my own actions which arte mainly inspirations based on experience.

"That's how I picked up Slade." 

   SLADE:

   better musicians than the Animals