The stark, arresting cover image of Pink Floyd’s Animals album is the Battersea Power Station in London, which stands just alongside the Thames River. The immense, sooty white towers are seen by the many jet-lagged London vistors that arrive via the Gatwick Express Train.
In contrast to the spacier early art of the band, ie. Dark Side and Meddle, this album’s now infamous cover is a very real, industrialized image. One exception, if you look closely, is an inflatable floating rubber pig between two of the power plant’s huge stacks.
Here is a link that shows the original art work from the album.
Not only was the album’s art a departure from early Floyd, the music itself was the first that did not explore the mind’s inner landscape. Instead it depicts the cruel and unjust pecking order that forms the hard backbone of modern life.
The album was recorded in 1976 just as the punk rock scene exploded in London. Britian was going through a severe economic recession and there was a general mood of hopelessness in the Margo Thatcher run global powerhouse.
Animals had consolidated a new darker mood in Pink Floyd’s work, more realistic than anything that had come before.
Pig, dog or sheep…which are you? And what the hell does “a pig on a wing” represent?
With obvious influences from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, Roger Water’s reduces all human society to three categories. At the top of the hierarchy are the pigs: the ruling class, politicians, bosses, censors and oppressors (both economic and moral). The pigs are the self-righteous and self-satisfied. They possess most of the power and are quite content with this arrangement.
Then there are the dogs, who are not so content. In fact, they are ruthless in their pursuit of power. Among the dogs are the unscrupulous and streetwise, the venture capitalists and business sharpies…”crooks in possesion of a club tie and a firm handshake.”
The great majority, however, are sheep: those who meekly, blindly and obediently go along with society’s program. They are powerless, passive, and literally devoured by the system, ending up as lamb chops and mutton on the tables of more aggressive carnivores.
The class of ’77 punk rockers pounced on the inflatable pig, holding it up as a symbol of all that was wrong with corporate rock. Few took note that Waters had intended the pig to symbolize just the opposite. Many of the punk rockers would have been very surprised to learn that Waters was in complete agreement with them in the matter of large arena concerts. He also lamented the lack of any significant communication between performer and audience in settings more conducive to sporting events than any kind of musical expression.
These concerns of Waters would emerge on Pink Floyd’s next album, “The Wall”.
The last point, I’ll make for now about Animals (my favorite Floyd album) is that “Pigs on the Wing” is a love song…one of the most oddly titled and grim love songs ever. Some Floyd historians say that it was written for Waters new bride at the time, Carolyne Christie.
(Please note that some of this commentary comes from a lengthy article in Guitar World’s Nov. 2002 issue)
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