Listening to Pink Floyd's Animals today, and just had to share one of my favorite parts:
“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.”
I love Animals for many reasons. It has been referred to as “the forgotten album”, and like many Floyd albums, it contains a theme that’s clear in concept and vast in execution. I only recently learned that it was their response to England’s huge anti-progressive rock punk phenomenon lead by Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols.
Roger Waters was partly inspired by George Orwell’s political fable Animal Farm, except that Orwell focused on Communism and Waters was actually criticizing his own Capitalist government. The people are split up into groups, dogs, pigs and sheep. Dogs are the crafty cutthroats who travel in groups, in a pecking order, each one trying to screw the other over to achieve success. Pigs are the overbearing dictators who have a great fear for what they don't understand, but claim to know what is best for everyone. They impose this on the sheep, which are the meek and obedient subservient masses of the world. They realize what has become of them and revolt, but are eventually put back in their place and taken advantage of again.
One of the songs, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” was aimed at certain politicians who Roger felt were hypocrites. There is a verse in the song that addresses Mrs. Whitehouse, a public Floyd denouncer, who was the self-appointed head of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, and who promoted censorship.
The historical London landmark, The Battersea Power Station was 50 years old when the album was released. Waters came up with the idea of putting a pig over the station to symbolize greediness, but didn't want it to be artificially created. A giant 40-foot pig was designed to be inflated and placed over the station, and was so big that the first attempt to send it up had to be halted because it was dark before it was blown up. There were forty photographers and a man with a rifle (should the pig fly away), but he was removed because of cost. The following day, the pig was launched, secured with ropes, but a huge wind blew the pig off the ropes and it flew off into the air. The pig flew off south of London, interloping in the flight paths of airplanes. Radar contact diminished after 18,000 feet, and it finally crashed to the ground and was recovered and sent back for more photos. Even after all the effort to re-shoot the pig, they ended up superimposing a picture of the original pig shoot onto the picture of the power station.
On a side note, I have an MP3 of Floyd performing Pigs in Montreal where a fan was screaming and letting off fireworks and ended up distracting Roger to the point where he just stops performing and lets loose on this guy. Evidently, when the guy started climbing the netting that separated the crowd from the band, Roger spit in his face. Remorseful, Waters realized that in order to perform he would have to take steps to isolate himself from the crowd, and envisioned himself behind a wall.
The rest is history.