RGM
RGM
Follow

Pink Floyd Animals Continued...

Posted about 5 years ago
http://mog.com/blog_post/view/32191#comment-145Previous Post... Animals is a 1977 concept album by Pink Floyd, loosely reminiscent of George Orwell's book Animal Farm. It was recorded at the band's Britannia Row Studios in London.Animals was the first album to be predominantly written by bass player/singer/lyricist Roger Waters. Singer and guitarist David Gilmour only co-wrote one track which was the epic "Dogs" as tensions in the band were increasing more and more. Musically, Animals consisted of songs written before Wish You Were Here. The track "Dogs" was originally called "You Gotta Be Crazy". The song "Sheep" started as "Raving and Drooling". Arguably, the exclusion of those two tracks from Wish You Were Here was the start of the rift between Waters and Gilmour but the two made up the majority of the Animals album. This was the first Pink Floyd album that keyboard player Rick Wright did not contribute to the writing of the album due to either writer's block or because Waters was refusing musical ideas Wright came up with.The Animals album was originally released on January 23, 1977 in the UK on Harvest Records, and released on 2 February 1977 in the United States and Canada on Columbia Records.Although Animals quickly reached #3 on The Billboard U.S. Album charts in March of 1977 (kept out of #1 in the US by Hotel California by The Eagles which was at #2 and the soundtrack album to the Barbra Streisand film A Star is Born which was #1), it quickly fell off the charts, most likely due to the fact the five songs it contained were three unusually long songs and two very short bookending songs, none of which would make likely singles, keeping the album from getting airplay on American rock radio. Due to this, the album was on the charts for only six months, as opposed to The Dark Side of the Moon's 30-year-plus chart run and Wish You Were Here staying on the charts for over a year. Although it went Gold (500,000 copies sold) on 12 February 1977 and Platinum (1 million copies sold) on 10 March 1977 in the U.S.; critics and others labeled Animals a critical and commercial disappointment in comparison to Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here's ongoing massive sales. However, to date, Animals has continued to sell solidly with over four million copies sold in the U.S. alone and seven million worldwide and is currently listed as Quadruple Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.A digitally remastered CD (sourced from the 1992 Shine On box set) was subsequently released on EMI in Europe in 1994. Then, an upgraded remaster was released on Columbia/Sony for North America and Canada in 1997. The 1997 remaster was then re-released (with UK 1994 artwork) on 25 April 2000 on Capitol Records in the U.S. and EMI elsewhere, and is currently the most recent CD issue of the album.It marked the first-ever appearance of the Pink Floyd pig. For the 8-track version of Animals, guitarist Snowy White was brought in to play a short guitar solo which would combine "Pigs on the Wing 1" with "Pigs on the Wing 2" into one whole song; "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" was split between two programmes.The album appears to be heavily inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm as, through the central three songs, Roger Waters uses three animals as metaphors for human behavior: dogs, pigs, or sheep. Dogs are used to represent the megalomaniacal businessmen who are finished by being dragged down by the very weight they needed to throw around. The song "Dogs" was originally titled "You Gotta Be Crazy" when performed live in 1974 and 1975. Pigs represent the corrupt politicians and moralists (with direct references to Mary Whitehouse, who, at the time, was making considerable efforts to censor Pink Floyd's music, because of their political overtones). Those who do not fall into either of these two categories are sheep, who follow blindly, without any self-thought. ("Sheep" was originally called "Raving and Drooling" when performed live in 1974 and 1975).Each song on the album reflects on Pink Floyd's beliefs about the class system found in capitalistic societies, with the pigs being a metaphor for the owners of large corporations (upper class), the dogs being the ruthless men who run the corporations (mid-upper class), and the sheep being the working class, the lowliest rung on the class ladder. The cover of the album refers to this class society. The factory, representing the workers, is the main figure in the picture, with a floating pig up above the industrial building, representing his superiority.The three core songs are bookended by a pair of love songs written by Waters for his then-wife Caroline: "Pigs on the Wing, Part 1" and "Pigs on the Wing, Part 2". Both are in stark contrast to the misanthropic middle three songs, and suggest that companionship can help us overcome our flaws. And while the casual listener may ignore these two songs for the most part they are keys to the album, summing up the album's entirety in their short 1:25 second spans. Waters also refers to himself as a dog in Part 2. For the 8-track cartridge release, which looped, Parts 1 and 2 were linked by a guitar bridge performed by Snowy White, and the 17:08 song "Dogs" was cut into two tracks.SleeveThe giant, helium-filled pig seen on the cover was actually flown over Battersea Power Station for the photo shoot (under the direction of Storm Thorgerson). On the first day of shooting, a marksman was on hand in case the pig broke free. However, according to Thorgerson, this was considered an "insurance problem", and he was not hired for the second day of shooting. Ironically, on December 3, 1976, during the second day, a gust of wind broke the pig free of its moorings. Because there was no one to shoot the pig down, it sailed away into the morning sky. A passenger plane reported seeing the pig, causing all the flights at London Heathrow Airport to be delayed. A police helicopter was sent up to track the pig, but was forced to return after following the pig to an altitude of 5,000 feet. A warning was sent out to pilots that a giant, flying pink pig was loose in the area. The CAA lost radar contact on the pig near Chatham in Kent, at a height of 18,000 feet and flying east towards Germany. It finally landed in a farmer's field (without much damage). They then repaired the pig, and flew it up for a third time. The resulting pictures were not deemed suitable on their own (as the clear, blue sky from day three was thought to be much less evocative), and the final image was made as a composite of the power station picture from day one and the pig from day three.Similar inflatable pigs have since featured in Pink Floyd concerts.The album had custom picture labels with drummer Nick Mason's writing for credits. Side one depicted a 'fish-eye' lens view of a dog and the English countryside. Side two was similar, but featured a pig and sheep instead of the dog.[edit] The spitting incidentThe album was promoted by Pink Floyd's 1977 In The Flesh tour. The tour was gruelling and made the band members miserable. As time went by, the nature of the concerts caused Waters to become detached from the audience and see himself as a superior figure. The final night of the tour, in Montreal, Canada, Waters was starting to sing "Pigs on the Wing" and an audience member set off a firecracker near to the stage. He stopped singing and shouted out, "Oh, for fuck's sake. Stop letting off fireworks and shouting and screaming. I'm trying to sing a song." The crowd cheered at this."I mean I don't care. If you don't wanna hear it, you know... Fuck you! I'm sure there's a lot of people here who do want to hear it. So why don't you just be quiet... If you wanna let your fireworks off, go outside and let them off out there. And if you wanna shout and scream and holler go and do it out there but... I'm trying to sing a song that some people want to listen to. I want to listen to it!" (Recording of the incident (info))He then continued with the song, but things went downhill from there, and during "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", Waters watched incredulously as one fan climbed the netting that separated the audience from the band and in disgust, Waters spat in his admirer's face. Near the end of the show, Gilmour is reported to have walked disgustedly off the stage, sitting out the final encore. Afterwards Waters regretted what he had done, and lamented the separation between the audience and band. It was this which caused Waters to come up with the idea of the critically acclaimed album The Wall.However, according to Nick Mason's book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, it was during a different concert that Waters spat at a fan in the third row who kept screaming "Play 'Careful With that Axe', Roger!" in between songs.It was also during an appearance on this tour that one of their massive props went astray. During their show at the LSU Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge Louisiana, a giant inflatable pig that ran back and forth across the ceiling of the arena accidentally struck a fan in the head as it executed a turn at the far end of its travels away from the stage. The fan was uninjuredQuotes"It wasn't a great, one of the most productive periods of our life I don't think. We used those two tracks, which went back to '74 and changed the names and doctored them around and stuff and stuck them on the album. I like them, I love that album. It's exciting and noisy and fun and it's got really good bits of effects and stuff on it but it's not one of our creative high points really." - David Gilmour, May, 1992, Pink Floyd: The 25th Anniversary Special, Westwood One. "I didn't really like much of the album. I have to say I didn't fight very hard and to put my stuff on and I didn't have anything to put on. I played on it. I think I played really well but I didn't contribute to the writing on it and also I think Roger was kind of not letting me do that. I think was the start of the whole ego thing in the band, Animals." – Rick Wright, November 1994, BBC Omnibus Pink Floyd Special 1994. Taken From The Wiki...
0

Comments (4)

  1. chucky
    chucky says Very interesting.
    Permalink posted 12/14/2006
  2. ennuikiller
    ennuikiller says I remember hearing Animals for the first time and being totally blown away by the guitar work on all three main pieces, but particularly on pigs and sheep.......i seem to cycle through the 3 floyd albums dark side of the moon, wish you were here, and animals as being my favorite, but animals consistently comes out on top in terms of overall production......I think sheep is perhaps musically and lyrically one of the best songs of any ever of any genre......for example, what lyric can match the following: wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream simply amazing!!!!
    Permalink posted 12/14/2006
  3. RGM
    RGM says You read my mind E.K. . Many of the more Popular Floyd Albums are on the forefront of my mind, but this one seems to always to stick to back of it. It never gets olds, just stays there when needed, I feel the same about Steeley Dans "Aja" that came out around the sametime, must have been the era or something. Some 90's Neo Fusion Jazz has that feel, just this cool dark engulfing feel...
    Permalink posted 12/14/2006
  4. extraordinarypoems
    extraordinarypoems says How very cool. I didn't know about the Animal Farm thing.
    Permalink posted 12/15/2006

Comment on this Post

Login using email and password below.

Forgot Password?

OR login using Facebook Connect

Connect

Don't have an account?
Join MOG. It's Free!

 

© 2006-2012 Mog Inc. All Rights Reserved