January
21st marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s tenth
studio album, Animals. Inspired by the novel, Animal Farm by George
Orwell, it’s an ambitious concept album which looks deeply into the
brutality of capitalism through the class metaphor of the ruling “pigs”,
their obedient and domineering servants, the “dogs”, and the subjugated
masses, the “sheep”. While it is often overshadowed by albums like
Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Animals is deserving of attention as
one of the groups last great recording achievements.
The roots
of the album begin back in 1974 with a couple of live jam songs, You've
Got to Be Crazy and Raving and Drooling. These were originally intended
to become part of Wish You Were Here (1975), but plans changed as that
album took shape and they ended up getting shoved to the back burner
until it was time to start working on Animals.
After Wish You
Were Here was completed, their contract with their record label for
unlimited studio time expired, so the group decided to invest in their
own recording facilities. The band purchased a three story block of
church halls at 35 Britania Row in Islington, north London, and
converted the building into both recording studios and storage
facilities for their gear. By April of 1976, the studio was ready to
begin recording of the new album, which went on until December.
The
two live jams from 1974 were resurrected and the lyrics were updated
for the album’s concept. You've Got to Be Crazy morphed into Dogs and
Raving and Drooling became Sheep. A new song, Pigs (Three Different
Ones), filled out the core conceptual triptych and the whole thing was
book-ended by a short song split into two parts for the intro and outro,
Pigs on the Wing (Pts 1 & 2). With the exception of a co-writing
credit for David Gilmour on Dogs, the entirety of the album was credited
to Roger Waters, something which was a bit of a signpost for the split
that was developing within the band as Waters began to feel he was
carrying most of the creative burden.
As the album progresses,
it becomes apparent that the prime narrator is a “dog”, representing a
ruthless, predatory businessman, who is manipulated by the elite “pigs”
to prey upon the “sheep” for their benefit. It sets up a perfect
analogy to the dominant class structure in capitalistic societies with
the wealthy ruling class over the adversarial middle class subjugating
the subservient lower classes. Eventually, the “sheep” rebel and
overthrow the “dogs”, but their ignorance only leads them to replace the
dogs as oppressors, perpetuating the class system while the “pigs”
remain unscathed. It’s a deeply cynical outlook which is only mildly
lightened by the dog’s realization that “love” and caring for others is
the only way to ease the suffering & loneliness of this seemingly
hopeless cycle of social struggle.
Musically, the album came
about at a time when the “punk” zeitgeist was starting to become
prominent and there’s a certain rebellion against that on this album,
though you can hear how it would eventually shift the group away from
the sprawling double digit run-times of Animals into the more concise
radio friendly songs that would appear on The Wall a couple of years
later. In that sense, the album feels a bit braced against the tides
with its indulgences, but the performances still hold up as masterful
and impactful and there’s an engaging flow to the arrangements and the
narrative that carry the listener along for the ride.
The cover
for the album is worthy of a dramatization on its own as it became
somewhat notorious for its comical, absurdist disruption. After
rejecting a few concepts from design firm, Hipgnosis, one of which
included the idea of a child bursting in on parents having animalistic
sex, Roger Waters came up with the factory concept since, 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. They
concocted the concept of flying a massive 40’ inflated pig over the
factory and contracted a firm to custom fabricate the beast. In
anticipation of any potential problems with the giant balloon on the day
of the shoot, they hired a marksman to be prepared should they lose
control of it, but because they had to reschedule the shoot for the next
day due to bad weather, they forgot to re-book the marksman. The pig
was finally launched and, as feared, it broke free of its moorings and
took off into British airspace, making it to Heathrow airport where it
caused quite a stir with mass panic and cancelled flights as authorities
tried to figure out what on earth was going on. It eventually landed
in a farmer’s field in Kent where it continued to provoke outrage as the
farmer complained of it startling his cows. The inflatable was
eventually recovered and a third shooting day was booked, but the
resulting shots didn’t quite cut it and they found they had better shots
of the factory on its own. So the decision was made to simply “cut
& paste” the pig into the picture, something which seems easy enough
today, but was a bit more hands on then as there was no such thing as
Photoshop and such effects literally meant cutting up a photograph and
pasting it to another one.
After the album’s release, the band
went on tour to support it and the onstage rapport between Waters and
the audience ended up taking a contentious turn throughout the tour, a
situation which ultimately resulted in Waters being inspired to write
The Wall as a reaction to that situation. Despite this, the album was a
hit and, along with their back catalogue, helped the band beat out ABBA
for most weeks on the charts in 1977. Critics were somewhat uneven in
their response, with NME raving about it being extreme, relentless &
harrowing while Rolling Stone’s critic was unimpressed. It’s legacy,
however, has born out the warnings it gave about the nature of
capitalism. When we look at our civilization at present, the cynicism
that is steeped throughout its grooves is more than warranted and its
message is even more disturbingly on point. It’s an album that I have
taken a long time to warm to, but researching it and giving it a proper
deep listen again has certainly given me a new appreciation for its
complexities and depth.
