Animals (Pink Floyd album): Difference between revisions

Animals
Studio album by Pink Floyd
Released	21 January 1977 (1977-01-21)
Recorded	April – December 1976
Studio	Britannia Row, London
Genre	Progressive rock[1]
Length	41:40
Label	Harvest
Producer	Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd chronology
Wish You Were Here (1975) Animals (1977) The Wall (1979)

Animals is the tenth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 21 January 1977^[2] through Harvest and Columbia Records. It was recorded at the band's Britannia Row Studios in London throughout 1976, and was produced by the band. The album continues the longform compositions that made up their previous works, including Wish You Were Here (1975). The album received positive reviews from critics and was commercially successful, reaching No. 2 in the UK and No. 3 in the US.

Animals is both a progressive rock album and a concept album, focusing on the social-political conditions of mid-1970s Britain, and was a change from the style of their earlier work. Tension within the band during production culminated in keyboardist Richard Wright being fired two years later. The album's cover shows an inflatable pig floating between two chimneys of Battersea Power Station, conceived by the band's bassist and lead songwriter Roger Waters, and was designed by long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson. The band released no singles from the record, but promoted it through the In the Flesh tour. Waters' agitation with audiences during this tour inspired their next record, The Wall.

In 1975, Pink Floyd bought a three-story block of church halls at 35 Britannia Row in Islington, north London. Their deal with Harvest Records' parent company EMI for unlimited studio time in return for a reduced percentage of sales had expired, and they converted the building into a recording studio and storage facility. Its construction took up most of 1975, and in April 1976 the band started work on their tenth studio album, Animals, at the new facility.^[3][4]

Animals was engineered by a previous Floyd collaborator, Brian Humphries,^[3] and recording took place at Britannia Row from April to December 1976, continuing into early 1977.^[5] "Raving and Drooling" and "You've Got to Be Crazy", two songs previously performed live and considered for Wish You Were Here, reappeared as "Sheep" and "Dogs" respectively.^[3] They were reworked to fit the new concept, and separated by a Waters-penned composition, "Pigs (Three Different Ones)". The only other new composition, "Pigs On The Wing" (split into two parts to start and end the album), contains references to Waters' private life; his new romantic interest was Carolyne Anne Christie (married to Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead).^[6] With the exception of "Dogs" (co-written by David Gilmour) the album's five tracks were written by Waters. Gilmour was distracted by the birth of his first child, and contributed little else towards the songwriting of the album. Similarly, neither Mason nor Wright contributed as much as they had on previous albums, and Animals was the first Pink Floyd album not to contain a composer's credit for Wright.^[7]

The band had discussed employing another guitarist for future tours, and Snowy White was therefore invited into the studio. When Waters and Mason inadvertently erased one of Gilmour's completed guitar solos, White was asked to record a solo on "Pigs on the Wing". Although his performance was omitted from the vinyl release, it was included on the 8-track cartridge version. White later performed on the Animals tour.^[3] Mason recalled that he enjoyed working on Animals more than he had working on Wish You Were Here.^[8]

Loosely based on George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm, the album's lyrics describe various classes in society as different kinds of animals: the predatory dogs, the despotic ruthless pigs, and the "mindless and unquestioning herd" of sheep.^[9] Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs.^[9][10] The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which, in the words of author Glenn Povey, "described the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of mere animals".^[11]

Apart from its critique of society, the album is also a part-response to the punk rock movement,^[12] which grew in popularity as a nihilistic statement against the prevailing social and political conditions, and also a reaction to the general complacency and nostalgia that appeared to surround rock music. Pink Floyd were an obvious target for punk musicians, notably Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols, who wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt on which the words "I hate" had been written in ink. Rotten has constantly said it was done for a laugh (he was a fan of several progressive rock bands of the era, including Magma and Van Der Graaf Generator). Drummer Nick Mason later stated that he welcomed the "Punk Rock insurrection" and viewed it as a welcome return to the underground scene from which Pink Floyd originated. In 1977 he produced The Damned's second album, Music for Pleasure, at Britannia Row.^[13]

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)"

The "Pigs" on Animals represent the people whom Waters viewed as being at the top of the social ladder

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In his 2008 book Comfortably Numb, author Mark Blake argues that "Dogs" contains some of David Gilmour's finest work; although the guitarist sings only one lead vocal, his performance is "explosive".^[14] The song also contains notable contributions from Wright, which echo the synthesizer sounds used on the band's previous album, Wish You Were Here.^[15]

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is audibly similar to "Have a Cigar", with bluesy guitar fills and elaborate bass lines. Of the song's three pigs, the only one directly identified is morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who amongst other things is described as a "house-proud town mouse".^[16]

"Sheep" contains a modified version of Psalm 23, which continues the traditional "The Lord is my shepherd" with words like "he maketh me to hang on hooks in high places and converteth me to lamb cutlets". Towards the end of the song, the eponymous sheep rise up and kill the dogs, but later retire back to their homes. Wright played the song's introduction unaccompanied on the electric piano, but did not receive a writing credit for it.^[17]

The album is book-ended by each half of "Pigs on the Wing", a simple love song in which a glimmer of hope is offered despite the anger expressed in the album's three other songs. Described by author Andy Mabbett as "[sitting] in stark contrast to the heavyweight material between them",^[18] the two-halves of the song were heavily influenced by Waters' relationship with his then-wife.^[16][19]

Once the album was complete, work began on its cover. Hipgnosis, designer of the band's previous album covers, offered three ideas, one of which was a small child entering his parents' bedroom to find them having sex: "copulating, like animals!"^[20] The final concept was, unusually, designed by Waters. At the time he lived near Clapham Common, and regularly drove past Battersea Power Station, which was by then approaching the end of its useful life. A view of the building was chosen for the cover image, and the band commissioned German company Ballon Fabrik (who had previously constructed Zeppelin airships)^[21] and Australian artist Jeffrey Shaw^[22] to build a 12-metre (40 ft) porcine balloon (known as Algie). The balloon was inflated with helium and manoeuvred into position on 2 December 1976, with a marksman ready to fire if it escaped. Inclement weather delayed work, and the band's manager Steve O'Rourke neglected to book the marksman for a second day; the balloon broke free of its moorings and disappeared from view. The pig flew over Heathrow, resulting in panic and cancelled flights; pilots also spotted the pig in the air. It eventually landed in Kent and was recovered by a local farmer, who was apparently furious that it had scared his cows.^[23] The balloon was recovered and filming continued for a third day, but as the early photographs of the power station were considered better, the image of the pig was later superimposed onto one of those.^[23][24]

During the Isles of Wonder short film shot by Danny Boyle and shown as part of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the camera zooms down the length of the River Thames, from a small spring in the countryside all the way to the Olympic venue. During the fly-by, a pig can be seen floating above Battersea Power Station.^[25]

The album's theme continues onto the record's picture labels. Side one's label shows a fisheye lens view of a dog and the English countryside, and side two features a pig and sheep, in the same setting. Mason's handwriting is used as a typeface throughout the packaging. The gatefold features monochrome photographs of the dereliction around the power station.

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[26]
Christgau's Record Guide	B+[27]
The Daily Telegraph	[28]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[29]
The Great Rock Discography	8/10[30]
MusicHound Rock	3/5[31]
Pitchfork	10/10[32]
PopMatters	9/10[33]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[34]
Tom Hull – on the Web	A–[35]

The album's release followed Capital Radio's broadcast two days earlier of The Pink Floyd Story, and an evening press conference held at the power station two days before that.^[5] The broadcast was originally to have been an exclusive for the DJ Nicky Horne, who since mid-December had been broadcasting The Pink Floyd Story, but a copy was given to John Peel, who played side one of the album in its entirety a day earlier.^[5][23]

Animals was released in the UK on 21 January 1977,^[36] and in the US on 12 February. It reached number two in the UK, and three in the US.^[37] Thanks to the album and the band's back catalogue, noted The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums, "Pink Floyd bested ABBA for most weeks on chart (in 1977), 108 to 106."^[38]

NME called Animals "one of the most extreme, relentless, harrowing and downright iconoclastic hunks of music to have been made available this side of the sun",^[39] and Melody Maker's Karl Dallas described it as an "uncomfortable taste of reality in a medium that has become in recent years, increasingly soporific".^[39] Rolling Stone's Frank Rose was unimpressed, writing: "The 1977 Floyd has turned bitter and morose. They complain about the duplicity of human behavior (and then title their songs after animals – get it?). They sound like they've just discovered this – their message has become pointless and tedious."^[40] However, in June 2015 Rolling Stone magazine placed the album at the thirteenth position of the 50 best progressive albums of all time. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave the album a "B+" rating and found the negative reaction overly cynical, reasoning that the album functions simply as "a piece of well-constructed political program music ... lyrical, ugly, and rousing, all in the right places".^[41]

In his 2004 autobiography Inside Out, Nick Mason suggests that the album's perceived harshness, when compared to previous Floyd releases, may be a result of a "workman-like mood in the studio", and an unconscious reaction to the accusations from the aforementioned punk genre that bands like Pink Floyd represented "dinosaur rock".^[42] Animals was certified by the RIAA as 4× Platinum on 31 January 1995.^[43]

Originally released on Harvest Records in the UK and Columbia Records in the US, Animals was issued on Compact Disc (CD) in 1985,^{[nb 1]} and in the US in 1987.^{[nb 2]} It was reissued as a digitally remastered CD with new artwork in 1994,^{[nb 3]} and as a digitally remastered limited-edition vinyl album in 1997.^{[nb 4]} An anniversary edition was released in the US in the same year,^{[nb 5]} followed in 2000 by a reissue from Capitol Records.^{[nb 6][37]} The album was also included in the Shine On box set in 1992, in the 2007 Oh, By The Way box set and in the 2011 Why Pink Floyd...? re-release series both in the box set and as a standalone 'Discovery' edition CD^{[nb 7]}.

In an April 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, Waters said he had pushed to release a remixed and remastered vinyl of Animals (done by James Guthrie), but that it had been rejected by Gilmour and Mason although a 180 Gram vinyl remaster was released in 2016.^[44] In June 2021, Waters released a press statement on his website and a video on YouTube announcing that both the new stereo and 5.1 surround remix (both done in 2018) would be released. Waters cited a dispute between himself and David Gilmore over liner notes as the reason for the delay. Waters would post the scrapped liner notes on his website.^{[45] [46] [47]}

"Despite being recorded in London during the long, summer heatwave of 1976, Pink Floyd’s Animals remains a dark album. Its critique of capitalism and greed caught the prevailing mood in Britain: a time of industrial strife, economic turmoil, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the race riots of Notting Hill. The album was released on January 23rd 1977, but the roots of Pink Floyd’s tenth studio album go back earlier in the decade. Following the success of 1973’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd pondered their next move. During a two-to-three week jam session in early 1974, the band worked on ideas for three new compositions. From these sessions the band developed Shine On You Crazy Diamond, (A passionate tribute to Syd Barrett, words by Roger Waters. Added by me, sorry couldn’t help it.) which became the centrepiece of Floyd’s next album, Wish You Were Here, and Raving And Drooling (composed by Roger Waters) and You Gotta Be Crazy written by Waters and David Gilmour.

Raving And Drooling was a tale of violent social disorder, while You Gotta Be Crazy told the story of a soulless businessman clawing and cheating his way to the top. Both were performed live for the first time on the Floyd’s winter tour of 1974. They were both considered for the Wish You Were Here album, but Roger insisted that neither song was relevant to the overall idea, that “Wish You Were Here” was essentially about absence, and as neither song fitted his conception of the record’s overall theme, neither song should be included. The band eventually concurred. Scroll forward two years, and Roger had an idea for the next Pink Floyd album. He borrowed from George Orwell’s allegorical story, Animal Farm, in which pigs and other farmyard animals were reimagined anthropomorphically. Waters portrays the human race as three sub-species trapped in a violent, vicious cycle, with sheep serving despotic pigs and authoritarian dogs. You Gotta be Crazy and Raving And Drooling perfectly fitted his new concept. In the meantime, a year earlier, the group had bought a set of disused church buildings in Britannia Row, Islington, which they’d converted into a studio and storage facility. Prior to this every Pink Floyd studio release had been partly or wholly recorded at Abbey Road studios. Pink Floyd had also found a new recording engineer. Brian Humphries, an engineer from Pye studios, who they had met while recording the sound track for “More”, a movie directed by Barbet Schroeder. Brian had gone on to engineer Wish You Were Here at Abbey Road, and also helped them out on the road, so they had got to know him very well. Using their own studio marked a significant change in their working methods. There were setbacks and teething problems, but also a great sense of freedom.

Following Roger’s instincts about the new songs paid off, the songs had an aggressive edge far removed from the luxuriant soundscapes on Wish You Were Here. It was a timely change of direction. At Britannia Row, he renamed Raving And Drooling, Sheep and Gotta Be Crazy became Dogs. The narrative was completed by the addition of two new Waters songs: Pigs (Three Different Ones) and Pigs On The Wing.

On Pigs (Three Different Ones), the lyrics namechecked Mary Whitehouse, the head of the National Viewers And Listeners Association. Whitehouse was an outspoken critic of sex and violence on British television and a topical target for Roger’s ire. The subject matter was bleak, but Nick Mason recalled lighter moments over dubbing songs with special effects and barnyard noises. While Sheep also made room for Roger’s blackly comic variation on Psalm 23: “He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places/ He converteth me to lamb cutlets…” The music and the performance mirrored the intensity of the lyrics. Keyboard player Richard Wright’s eerie-sounding synths and Hammond organ cranked up the unease. While David Gilmour’s shared lead vocal on Dogs and his guitar playing throughout Animals offered a striking counterpoint to Roger’s brutal lyrics. In contrast, Animals began and ended on an optimistic note. The verses of Pigs on The Wing were split in two and bookended the album. Roger’s lyrics and vocal performance of acoustic intro and outro (“You know that I care what happens to you/ And I know that you care for me too…”) suggested hope for humanity. The idea for Pink Floyd’s flying pig was also Roger’s. He had already commissioned its building as a stage device for the next tour. Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of the design company Hipgnosis, had produced a number of design ideas for an Animals sleeve and presented them to the band but none of the band, liked them, and when Roger added his disapproval someone said, ”Well why don’t you come up with something better then?” So he did, on the drive from his house in South London to Britannia Row, he regularly passed Battersea Power Station. He was drawn to the imposing brick building, and by the number four. Four in the band, four phallic chimneys, and if the power station were turned upside down then it resembled a table with four legs. He pursued his idea and had a maquette made, a small scale model of the eventual full scale inflatable pig. He then took photographs of Battersea Power station and created a photographic mock up of an album sleeve. The rest of the band loved it. Storm and Po, who had designed all of the previous Pink Floyd album covers, graciously offered to source photographers for the photo shoot, and did. On the first day of the photo shoot, the pig failed to inflate. On the second day, it broke free of its moorings and disappeared into a beautiful brooding sky, prompting a frantic call to the police and a halt to all flights in and out of Heathrow. The pig eventually crash-landed in a farmer’s field in Kent.

The following day, the shoot went ahead without a hitch, great shots of pig in situ but no brooding sky. So Storm and Po stripped Day three Pig into Day two sky, bingo! History. Animals was a hit, reaching Number 2 in the UK and Number 3 in the US. Pink Floyd’s pig, Algie, made its live debut on their subsequent “In The Flesh” tour in 1977. At stadium shows in America, it was joined by another Water’s idea, an inflatable nuclear family comprising a mother, father and 2.5 children, surrounded by the spoils of a consumerist lifestyle: an inflatable Cadillac, oversized TV and refrigerator. Roger called it Electric Theatre. Both the album and the tour signposted the way to Pink Floyd’s next release, The Wall, and to Roger’s ever more ambitious ideas, both in terms of his music, narratives, politics and stage shows. But his themes and ideas explored on Animals have endured. More than 40 years on the album has been remixed in stereo and 5.1. In troubled times and an uncertain world, Animals is as timely and relevant now as it ever was. Mark Blake" <https://rogerwaters.com/animals-new-mix-update/></https://rogerwaters.com/animals-new-mix-update/>

The album became the subject material for the band's In the Flesh Tour, which began in Dortmund on the same day the album was released. The tour continued through continental Europe in February, the UK in March, the United States for three weeks in April and May, and another three weeks in the United States in June and July. Algie became the inspiration for a number of pig themes used throughout. An inflatable pig was floated over the audience, and during each performance was replaced with a cheaper, but explosive version. On one occasion the mild propane gas was replaced with an oxygen-acetylene mixture, producing a massive (and dangerous) explosion. German promoter Marcel Avram presented the band with a piglet in Munich, only for it to leave a trail of broken mirrors and excrement across its mirrored hotel room, leaving manager O'Rourke to deal with the resulting fallout.^[48]

The band was augmented by familiar figures such as Dick Parry and Snowy White,^[49] but relations within the band became fraught. Waters took to arriving at the venues alone, departing as soon as each performance was over. On one occasion, Wright flew back to England, threatening to leave the band. The size of the venues was also an issue; in Chicago, the promoters claimed to have sold out the 67,000 person regular capacity of the Soldier Field stadium (after which ticket sales should have been ended), but Waters and O'Rourke were suspicious. They hired a helicopter, photographer and attorney, and discovered that the actual attendance was 95,000; a shortfall to the band of $640,000.^[50] The end of the tour was a low point for Gilmour, who felt that the band had by now achieved the success the members had originally sought, and that there was nothing else they could look forward to.^[51] In July 1977 – on the final date at the Montreal Olympic Stadium – a small group of noisy and excited fans in the front row of the audience irritated Waters to such an extent that he spat at one of them. He was not the only person who felt depressed about playing to such large audiences, as Gilmour refused to join his bandmates for their third encore.^[52][53] Waters later spoke with producer Bob Ezrin and told him of his sense of alienation on the tour, and how he sometimes felt like building a wall to separate himself from the audience. The spitting incident would later form the basis of a new concept,^[52] which would eventually become one of the band's most successful album releases, The Wall.

All tracks written and all lead vocals performed by Roger Waters, except where noted.

Track numbers noted in parenthesis below are based on CD track numbering.

• David Gilmour – lead vocals (2), lead guitar (2–4), bass guitar (3, 4), acoustic guitar (2), talk box (3)
• Roger Waters – lead vocals (all tracks), harmony vocals (2, 3), acoustic guitar (1, 5), rhythm guitar (3, 4), bass guitar (2), tape effects (3, 4), vocoder (2–4)
• Nick Mason – drums, percussion (2–4), tape effects (4), graphics
• Richard Wright – Hammond organ (2–4), ARP string synthesizer (2–4), Fender Rhodes (2, 4), Minimoog (2, 4), Farfisa organ (2), piano (3), clavinet (3), EMS VCS 3 (4), harmony vocals (2)

• Snowy White – guitar solo (on 8-track version of "Pigs on the Wing")

• Pink Floyd – music producers
• Brian Humphries – engineering
• Roger Waters – sleeve concept
• Storm Thorgerson – sleeve design (organiser)
• Aubrey Powell – sleeve design (organiser), photography
• Peter Christopherson – photography
• Howard Bartrop – cover photography
• Nic Tucker – photography
• Bob Ellis – photography
• Rob Brimson – photography
• Colin Jones – photography
• E.R.G. Amsterdam – inflatable pig design

• Live Frogs Set 2

Notes

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Christgau, Robert (18 July 1977). "Pink Floyd Fills an Arena". The Village Voice.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Animals (Pink Floyd album).

• Animals at Discogs (list of releases)