Victor Harvey Briggs III (14 February 1945 – 30 June 2021) was a British blues and rock musician, best known as the lead guitarist with Eric Burdon and The Animals during the 1966–1968 period.
Briggs, a convert to Sikhism, later played classical Indian and Hawaiian music, and adopted the name Antion Vikram Singh Meredith.
He was named after his father, an American army captain who was killed in action in France in November 1944, shortly before Briggs' birth.
[2] Briggs attended Hampton Grammar School, where his contemporaries included Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty, later of The Yardbirds, Brian May, later of Queen and singer-actor Murray Head.
During this brief period, Briggs met Rory Storm, Ringo Starr and Gerry and the Pacemakers, among other musicians, and played with The Echoes at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.
[2] In the summer of 1962, Briggs was playing with a band called Peter Nelson and The Travelers, members of whom would later form The Flower Pot Men and White Plains, and which briefly included Mitch Mitchell as the drummer.
A bandmate was John Weider, who would later join Briggs in Eric Burdon and The Animals, and remains a lifelong friend.
[6][7] Briggs and the rest of The Echoes also backed Springfield on her Top 10 hit single "In The Middle of Nowhere",[8] released in June 1965, but which was not included on the album.
Later in 1965 when, with the encouragement of producer and manager Giorgio Gomelsky, Auger co-founded Steampacket, with Long John Baldry, he asked Briggs to join.
Other members were Rod Stewart and Julie Driscoll on vocals, Micky Waller on drums and Richard Brown on bass.
[2][1] Later that fall, Auger and The Trinity were backing Johnny Hallyday at an engagement at the Paris Olympia, to which Hendrix had been added as the opening act.
[2] Briggs is described by one biographer as being "the most musically adept musician ever to pass through the ranks of the Animals in either of that group's major incarnations".
[4] Between 1967 and 1968, Briggs recorded three albums with Eric Burdon and The Animals,[16] two of which involved song co-writing credit for all members of the band.
[4] In January 1967, barely a month after the band commenced performing, manager Mike Jeffrey arranged for Eric Burdon to record a song being included in the soundtrack for the Casino Royale movie, which was being written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Briggs considered the appearance of the band at the Monterey Pop Festival, in June 1967, as one of his most significant experiences as a musician.
[10] During the 1968-1969 period, Briggs, having purchased a house in Topanga Canyon[21] and based in Los Angeles, developed a reputation as an independent arranger and producer.
During this period, he arranged and produced albums by Danny McCulloch, Zoot Money, Hilton Valentine and Sean Bonniwell, among others.
[25] Briggs attributes his firing from Capitol Records as precipitating his decision to leave the music business, as well as the commencement of his spiritual growth.
In 1977, Yogi Bhajan appointed Briggs and his wife as co-directors of the Guru Ram Das Ashram, in San Diego.
[29] Briggs and his wife left Yogi Bhajan based on a dispute over whether the equity in the temple should belong to the local membership or to the central leadership.
[1] In 2003, Briggs provided an invited review of Sick of Being Me, a novel by Sean Egan, a novelist and journalist with a number of publications in relation to the music industry.