45 Years of Pink Floyd's "Animals"
It doesn't get the acclaim of the albums released on either side of it. It should.
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This week, I wanted to talk about Pink Floyd, so here I am doing just that.
Some sources show the release of Pink Floyd’s Animals album as Jan. 21, 1977, while others show it as having dropped two days later on Jan. 23. Whichever it was, the album is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year.
The British quartet’s 10th studio album was quite different than the album that preceded it — 1975’s Wish You Were Here. For one thing, there were no singles.
Three of the songs on Animals were far too long to be radio friendly, while the two bookend acoustic tracks were just the opposite — too short to provide enough substance for a traditional radio audience. The three longer songs were angry, cynical, politically charged, and simpler in some respects than the band’s previous. David Gilmour’s guitar playing is, at times, more angular and lacks some of the warmth shown on the previous couple of records. There’s a bit of a punk aesthetic in not only the anger, but the simplicity of, for example, the repetitive acoustic guitar line in “Dogs.” The album has been called “Punk Floyd,” with the band showing it was possible to spew anger over the course of 11 or 17 minutes just as easily as the three minutes that the Sex Pistols generally spent doing it.
But still, there were similarities between Wish You Were Here and Animals. Both albums contain five tracks and both have bookend songs. But where “Pigs on the Wing” parts one and two from Animals are short sketches — barely what you can call proper songs, really — Wish You Were Here starts and ends with the epic “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” which is lush, atmospheric, and as comfortable as an old blanket. While there are only two parts to “Pigs on the Wing,” there are nine parts to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” with the first five parts leading off Wish You Were Here and parts six through nine closing it.
Between the bookends, Wish You Were Here boasts the proto-industrial “Welcome to the Machine,” the Roy Harper-voiced “Have a Cigar,” and the melodic, sing-along title track. There’s plenty of melody in this treatise on loneliness, isolation, and alienation, and it contains multiple radio-friendly songs.
On the other hand, Animals is Roger Waters’ twist on George Orwell’s Animal Farm concept, cynically dividing humanity into three categories — pigs, dogs, and sheep. The songs are named for each category, with “Dogs” and “Sheep” evolving out of previously written tracks that weren’t used on Wish You Were Here — “You’ve Got To Be Crazy” and “Raving and Drooling,” respectively — which the band had played live three years before Animals and a year before Wish You Were Here. Those two songs were reworked for Animals, which wasn’t the political fable on Stalinism that Orwell had written, but rather a scathing critique of capitalism and oppressive archetypes that arise in such a society.
This was the Pink Floyd album on which Waters more or less “seized” the band and imposed his will on it. That’s not always a bad thing. As John Mitchell (Lonely Robot, Arena, Frost*, It Bites) told me in last week’s Michael’s Record Collection interview, “A band shouldn’t be a democracy. The ship needs a captain.” There are various types of captains, however, and Waters used a bit of a vacuum to assume more or less complete control.
Waters is listed as the writer of every song on the album except “Dogs,” on which guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour is credited as his co-writer. In fact, splitting “Pigs on the Wing” into two parts handed Waters an additional songwriting credit without him having to do any more work for it. Animals was the first Pink Floyd album on which keyboardist Richard Wright did not receive a writing credit, despite the fact that his parts are essential to the album. His long keyboard intro to “Sheep,” in particular, should have been sufficient for a writing credit. There’s no way Waters — the song’s only credited writer — penned that.
Given what was going on, it’s easy to see why the band started to fracture around this time and completely unraveled by the final studio album with Waters — 1983’s The Final Cut.
With Wright going through a divorce and Gilmour welcoming his first child into the world, some of the band members understandably had other priorities requiring their attention during the recording in a church hall at Britannia Row in London — a property the band bought and turned into a studio. Recording took place from April through December of 1976.
While Wright has mentioned in interviews that he felt Waters was taking control around the time of Animals — not always in welcome ways — Gilmour has stated publicly that he didn’t feel at the time that he was being squeezed out. Regardless, the seeds were sown for the eventual breakup of the band and, to this day, there is little Waters and Gilmour agree on. Even the anniversary reissue of Animals went through a lengthy delay while the two principles squabbled over the veracity of the liner notes, before eventually deciding to do away with them.
Whether the four members of Pink Floyd at the time — Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and drummer Nick Mason — started to feel conflicted toward each other during the making of Animals or not, the band put together another stellar record. As it had the bad luck of following Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, and preceded The Wall, this record sometimes gets lost in the discussion of the band’s considerable artistic achievements. However, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t well received. Animals reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 3 in the United States.
My personal view on Animals as a whole is that I found it to be a grower, outside of the simple, two-part, love song that starts and concludes the record. Where other Pink Floyd albums have hit me more immediately, with hooks that stuck in my brain (in a good way) for days afterwards, Animals revealed itself to me over repeated listens. It was a more difficult meal to digest, but was every bit as satisfying.
There were exceptions, of course. The wonderful repeated Waters vocal line of “Ha ha, charade you are” from “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” and that song’s ersatz chorus (“You’re nearly a laugh, but you’re really a cry”) were immediately captivating, as well as Gilmour’s soaring, magisterial double lead guitar line in “Dogs.”
The bitterness of the lyrics throughout the album — with the exception of the more hopeful love song “Pigs on the Wing” — contain all of Waters’ blistering rage and bile.
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in — “Dogs”
Bus stop rat bag
Ha ha, charade you are
You!
Fucked up old hag
Ha ha, charade you are
You radiate cold shafts of broken glass
You're nearly a good laugh
Almost worth a quick grin
You like the feel of steel
You're hot stuff with a hatpin
And good fun with a hand gun
You're nearly a laugh
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry — “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”
The songs are chock full of Waters’ politically charged anger and his views on wealth, power, oppression, and capitalistic corruption. And they sound amazing. Pink Floyd produced the album themselves, using all the tools and tricks of the day. They play the perfect parts at the perfect times, and every note and sound serves the songs — even sampled dog barks, pig grunts, and sheep bleats.
“Pigs on the Wing (Part One)” kicks off the album and it’s just Waters on an acoustic guitar with a few vocal lines. The entire thing lasts less than 90 seconds and it’s the same length as album closer “Pigs on the Wing (Part Two).” These ‘songs’ provide just a little bit of warmth and hope on an album that otherwise might overwhelm the listener with its bleak, dark, and furious mood.
The epic centerpiece of the album is “Dogs,” about society’s predators. Gilmour’s only lead vocals on the album occur in this song, and he and Waters share the microphone on it. Notably, “Dogs” is the only song on Animals on which Pink Floyd bassist Waters actually played bass. Elsewhere, Gilmour handled bass duties in addition to his customary guitar.
“Dogs” contains some of Gilmour’s most iconic guitar work and if the listener had any doubt as to when this song was written, Wright’s synth sounds seem like they’ve been lifted right off of the Wish You Were Here album. Like all predators, the dogs eventually get swallowed up when the next young alpha comes along.
And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone
Dragged down by the stone (stone, stone, stone, stone, stone)
The above passage is one of the album’s most incredible moments from a production standpoint. The word “stone” is repeated as it fades, but it’s altered little by little until it falls completely apart. Given the limitations of the studio in the late 1970s, it’s a stunning and remarkable bit of audio engineering.
Waters did Gilmour few favors with “Dogs.” There were a lot of lyrics in “You’ve Got To Be Crazy,” and even with the revisions there are still a lot. Some of them early in the song are on the very top border of his vocal range. Still, he managed to make it work.
“Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is probably my favorite track on the album, just edging out “Dogs” by the smallest of margins. Gilmour plays bass in addition to lead guitar and also uses the Heil talk box to great effect, while Waters adds some rhythm guitar. Wright’s contributions are considerable here, as they are throughout the album, with Hammond organ, ARP string synthesizer, piano, and clavinet. He also played Fender Rhodes and Minimoog on the record (on “Dogs” and “Sheep”). I’m not sure if it’s a deadened cowbell or a wood block Mason is using in the song but that simple percussion part is extremely cool and adds so much to the song.
For just a tick under 11-and-a-half minutes during “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” Waters takes aim at the wealthy and powerful — those who pit everyone in lower socioeconomic strata against each other so that the pigs can remain in power. The first pig is a composite of a typical businessman, the second is Margaret Thatcher, and the third is Mary Whitehouse — once a conservative British activist (no longer living) who tried to impose her brand of moral standards on others, which really pissed Waters off.
Gilmour plays a scorching guitar solo over the song’s final minutes with the ending slowly fading out and giving way to the sounds of chirping birds and bleating sheep.
“Sheep” is over 10 minutes long and contains the aforementioned wonderful Wright keyboard intro, along with some cool bass from Gilmour that is reminiscent of some of the playing on the Meddle album.
As with “Dogs,” this song was around in some form since at least the band’s 1974 tour, on which its “Raving and Drooling” form was played. The original version was about insanity. Gilmour has said that the bass parts he was playing were mostly what Waters had been playing onstage for live shows.
Gilmour’s lead guitar work on “Sheep” sounds angry and aggressive against the relentless bass and Wright’s Hammond organ washes, with Mason driving the song along relentlessly. There’s a callback to the “stone, stone, stone” vocal in “Dogs” partially buried in the music.
Later in the song, Waters includes a bastardized version of Psalm 23, on which the vocal is delivered quietly with the otherworldly sound provided by a vocorder.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by
With bright knives he releaseth my soul
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places
He converteth me to lamb cutlets
For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger
When cometh the day we lowly ones
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water
The sheep in the song then rise up and kill the dogs but can’t help but go back to being obedient sheep.
Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead
You better stay home
And do as you're told
Get out of the road if you want to grow old
There’s a majestic Gilmour guitar riff that repeats as the song nears its conclusion that is simply sublime.
I’ll admit that “Sheep” is the song that took the longest for me to warm to, but it stands toe-to-toe with “Dogs” and “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” in my estimation now.
“Pigs on the Wing (Part Two)” lightens the mood to close the album, providing some of the hope missing from the album’s three epics.
Animals is every bit the masterpiece that the band achieved with its more celebrated albums. Waters had always written about war and other political topics but Animals is the album where he started to focus more on those issues in his writing. It’s also where he started to impose his vision on the band, although at the time, Gilmour at least was happy to follow along.
While some of the individual instrument sounds may be rooted in the 1970s — the Hammond organ and the Fender Rhodes, for example — the music of Animals doesn’t sound dated or of its time. It’s as fresh-sounding today to my ears as it ever was, and the themes it explores lyrically could hardly be more relevant in the present. Only the names have changed. The U.S. alone has plenty of stand-ins for Thatcher and Whitehouse, and Waters has referenced this on his current solo tour.
If you haven’t heard it in a while, I highly recommend revisiting Animals with a critical ear. If you’ve never heard it, I can’t praise the album highly enough and urge you to correct that oversight.
If I’m forced to rank the songs in my order of preference, I’d have to do it this way:
Pigs (Three Different Ones)
Dogs — this one seems to be the consensus favorite among Pink Floyd fans and is only infinitesimally behind, for me.
Sheep
Pigs on the Wing (Parts One and Two) — these are interchangeable.
Tracklist:
Pigs On the Wing (Part One)
Dogs
Pigs (Three Different Ones)
Sheep
Pigs on the Wing (Part Two)
For more of my thoughts on “Animals,” and those of my good friend, Joel Craig — the former host of the Interstellar Overdrive online radio show — check out Episode 76 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast or check out the video below. Joel and I discuss our Pink Floyd origin stories and dive into “Animals” track by track.
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