My two favorite Eric Burdon stories go like this. Sometime in the ’80s, he was playing the now-defunct Boston club the Channel with one of his post-Animals bands. As the group launched into the finale of his signature song, " The House of the Rising Sun, " Burdon shouted into the mike, " Man, I hate this fuckin’ song! " A few years later, he was booked to play the same club, but the show was cancelled a couple weeks in advance. Usually in such cases, the management issues some wishy-washy press release, or you don’t hear from anyone at all. But this time Burdon himself called everyone on his interview list, including me, and delivered the message flat-out: " I’m sorry, we can’t come because the record company has gone belly-up. "

As someone who pulls few punches, Eric Burdon makes the ideal candidate for writing a rock-and-roll memoir. And his second attempt doesn’t disappoint . . . much. You want stories of glorious excess, he’s got ’em, both about his own misadventures and about those of his fellow ’60s figureheads (a chunk of the book is devoted to the last days of Jimi Hendrix, when Burdon was a friend and jamming partner). But it’s also the kind of tell-all book that’s obviously written for the current Behind the Music market, the kind that assumes everybody wants to hear about the sex and drugs but nobody really cares about the rock and roll.

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood covers much of the same chronological ground as Burdon’s previous memoir, 1990’s I Used To Be an Animal, But I’m All Right Now, though in more linear fashion. Co-writer J. Marshall Craig’s main contribution seems to have been corralling Burdon’s reminisces into something resembling a conventional autobiography. Only a few times does he resort to the clichés of the genre: when you see a sentence like " Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll were replaced by AIDS, Prozac, and Michael Bolton, " you know the co-writer is trying too hard. In general, he maintains Burdon’s storytelling voice, and that keeps you engaged even while large chunks of the man’s career are glossed over.

Longstanding grudges may not be good for the soul, but they’ve never hurt a memoir. And Burdon lets it be known that he’s still pissed at most of his ex-managers, at Jimi Hendrix’s now-deceased last girlfriend (who he believes inadvertently poisoned Hendrix when trying to sedate him with sleeping pills), and at most of the original Animals. He confirms the legend that the bandmembers didn’t get along — especially Burdon and keyboardist Alan Price, who took credit for the group’s " Rising Sun " arrangement; he also outlines their shambles of a mid-’80s reunion tour. Still better are some choice words for an ex-manager who Burdon suspects faked his death and is now living in the Bahamas: " Maybe he’s even reading this book and having the mother of all laughs; if so, I hope you choke on a mango, fucker. "

All very entertaining, but we also get overlong accounts of Burdon’s travels in Bosnia, in Spain, and in Germany, where he spent a few days in jail. He’s evidently softened on " The House of the Rising Sun, " because that’s the only recording session that gets recalled: the Animals took an overnight train from Manchester to London, hauled out their gear at 9:45 a.m., stole a baggage cart from a railway station, went into a basement studio in the financial district, argued with their producer, and cut the master take in 10 minutes.

The book could use a few more stories like that; instead it tends to forget that Burdon did things like leading bands and making records. " We Gotta Get Out of This Place " — not just his peak record, but one of the greatest of its time — receives barely a passing glance; " Don’t Bring Me Down " and " I’m Crying " aren’t mentioned at all. Neither are his acid-damaged albums of the later ’60s. It would have been interesting to know what the band (whose line-up then included future Police guitarist Andy Summers) were thinking when they recorded the whacked-out double album Love Is.

In the end Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood is worth reading for the same reason Burdon is still worth seeing: because he hasn’t calmed down or changed his ways. He admits to two failed marriages but says he had a fine time with various girlfriends and groupies (including the one who smeared his private parts with raw eggs, allegedly prompting John Lennon’s " I am the egg man " line). He says the acid enhanced his music in the ’60s, and when asked recently whether he has a drug problem, he responded, " The only problem is that I can’t find any. " He’s now 61 and showing no signs of retirement; and nowhere does he claim to have cleaned up, been saved by true love, or found Jesus. That’s a story you probably won’t hear on VH1.