Pink Floyd All the Songs
Page 48
For Pink Floyd Addicts
In the mid-1970s, punk rocker John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) was seen wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words I hate in front of the band name. That says a lot. Lydon’s distaste didn’t deter Nick Mason from later producing a punk band—Music For Pleasure (1977), the second album by the Damned. Interestingly, the punk outfit had originally wanted Syd Barrett to be their producer.
Britannia Row had its baptism of fire prior to the Animals sessions, with the avant-garde jazz musician Michael Mantler, accompanied by Jack DeJohnette, Carla Bley, and Robert Wyatt on vocals working on Mantler’s album The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Stories, 1976.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Peter Watts, Pink Floyd’s former road manager, immortalized both on the back of the sleeve of Ummagumma and by his various phrases and laughs on The Dark Side of the Moon, was found dead in Notting Hill, London, on August 2, 1976, following a fatal heroin overdose. Drawing lessons from their sad experience with Syd Barrett, the band members had checked him into a clinic to undergo treatment for drug addiction. But in vain.
Brian Humphries, the sound engineer, had a foible that wound everyone up: he spent his time dusting the mixing console with an old cloth that he kept with him at all times like a comfort blanket. “Roger later had it framed,” Nick Mason recounted, “and presented it to Brian after the completion of recording.”5
Pigs On The Wing 1
Roger Waters / 1:26
Musician
Roger Waters: vocals, acoustic guitar
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: April–December 1976
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineer: Brian Humphries
Assistant Sound Engineer: Nick Griffiths
Genesis
Roger Waters composed “Pigs On the Wing” several months prior to the start of the Animals sessions, but it was only at the end of the sessions that he decided to record it, then to divide it into two parts (as had been done previously with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”), with one part placed at the beginning of the album (part one) and the other at the end (part two). This acoustic ballad added at the last minute breathes a small dose of optimism into this unapologetically somber, even depressing album. “A touch of romanticism in a world of brutes” might have made a good subtitle for this song, an ode to Waters’s new wife Carolyne Christie, who came into his life and into his heart after the torments of his separation from his first wife, Judy Trim.
The granddaughter of Lawrence John Lumley Dundas, the 2nd Marquess of Zetland, Carolyne Christie was a member of the British aristocracy, a world until then totally foreign to Pink Floyd’s songwriter. She was also a dedicated fan of rock music who had worked for Atlantic Records and for producer Bob Ezrin. When she met Roger Waters, Carolyne was still married to Rock Scully, the manager of the Grateful Dead. It all happened very quickly after that, and Harry (Waters’s first child) was born on November 16, 1976.
Not only had Roger Waters found love again—“Pigs On the Wing” is in fact one of Pink Floyd’s first real love songs—Carolyne Christie also above all brought a sense of balance. In a way, she prevented him from straying from his chosen path by abandoning himself to all the excesses of rock stardom, from betraying himself, from lapsing into the kind of behaviors he used to criticize, starting with consumerism. Essentially, from turning into a “pig” himself. She is a shelter from pigs on the wing, his defense against boredom and pain, a sister soul who would enable him to overcome adversity and tolerate society’s ills.
Production
The piece begins with Roger Waters on his own. He sings with simplicity, accompanying himself with strumming on his acoustic guitar, an Ovation Legend. It has something of Bob Dylan, or John Lennon (Plastic Ono Band) feel about it. The guitar and vocal are recorded in mono, and only the reverb is in stereo.
“Pigs On the Wing,” the first track on Animals, was recorded as a single piece, and it was only afterward, at the very end of the sessions, that it was decided to split it in two. The piece initially included a guitar solo that formed a bridge between the first and the second parts. Unfortunately, while Brian Humphries was taking a break from recording, Waters and Mason, who were sitting at the console, inadvertently deleted this solo that Gilmour had just put down. Realizing their mistake, the musicians decided to ask Snowy White, who had just entered the control room, whether he would be able to rerecord it. White was a guitarist who had been engaged by Steve O’Rourke to assist Gilmour onstage. As Nick Mason related: “Snowy was given a cursory interview by David (‘You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t play, would you?’) and later Roger (‘Since you’re here you might as well play something’), who gave Snowy a shot at a solo on “Pigs On The Wing,” a part [unfortunately] made redundant when the track was split in two for the final album.”5 Snowy White’s very good solo (forty-nine seconds!), played on his 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop through his Vox AC30 amp, can be heard in its entirety in the initial, untruncated version of “Pigs On the Wing,” which was released as an eight-track cartridge in February 1977 (Harvest/EMI Records 8X-SHVL 815).
One small technical detail: since the two parts were originally one, how can it be, one wonders, that Roger Waters ends the section “Pigs On the Wing 1” with a final chord? One would expect this section to end on a guitar fade-out. Probably what happened was that the ending of the second part, which finishes cleanly, was copied and added at this precise point. Unless Waters replayed that concluding chord to round off the album’s opening number.
The song’s title comes from an expression used by fighter pilots to refer to an enemy, which has since entered into common parlance, referring to a hidden enemy or an undesirable.
Dogs
David Gilmour, Roger Waters / 17:05
Musicians
David Gilmour: vocals, vocal harmonies, acoustic guitars, electric rhythm and lead guitars
Rick Wright: keyboards
Roger Waters: vocals, vocal harmonies, bass
Nick Mason: drums
Unidentified Musicians: VCS3, vocoder, sound effects
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: April–December 1976
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineer: Brian Humphries
Assistant Sound Engineer: Nick Griffiths
Genesis
“Dogs” is the only song on Animals not credited solely to Roger Waters. It was actually composed mainly by David Gilmour: “I basically wrote all the chords—the main music part of it,” he told a journalist in 1993. “And we [Roger and I] wrote some other bits together at the end.”29 This second track, the album’s real pièce de résistance, is actually a new version of “You’ve Gotta Be Crazy,” a piece dating from the January 1974 sessions in the King’s Cross studios, which Gilmour had wanted to record for Wish You Were Here, though it didn’t work out at the time. The bassist modified the lyrics to make them fit his new conceptual approach, turning them into a biting satire on capitalism.
The dogs, as mentioned earlier, symbolize the middle- and lower-middle classes. You could say there are two kinds of dogs in this song: the first in the section played by David Gilmour at the beginning, and the second in the section played by Roger Waters. The first kind that Waters targets is the opportunist class, those prepared to do anything to scale the social ladder and haul themselves up to the level of the pigs; those that can pick out the easy meat, and strike when the moment is right without thinking, and who lie to those who trust them, but whose lives end in loneliness or illness.
The second category, to which the narrator of “Pigs On the Wing” seems to belong, is that of the dogs that have turned into pigs. Again they are described in uncompromising terms: broken by trained personnel, a stranger at home, found dead on the phone, dragged down by the stone. The stone being the burden of life? Or the burden of remorse? One thing is for su
re: Waters adopts a venomous tone as he savages a political and economic system, a dominant ideology, which, as he sees it, invariably leads to repudiation and alienation. He calls for some kind of awakening, for the mind to triumph over the forces of profit.
Production
The difference between “You’ve Gotta Be Crazy” and “Dogs” is not as striking as one might imagine, except for the end of the piece, which has been extensively reworked, and the key, which is a tone lower. The song has been taken down from E minor to D minor, forcing Gilmour to tune his acoustic and electric guitars a tone lower. “It was fundamentally the same song, but the lyrics changed a little to suit the ‘Animals’ concept,” he later said. “I did one or two very nice, slightly different, guitar solos on it that I was quite pleased with.”29 The live version from 1974 (which can be found on the CD Wish You Were Here [Experience Edition], released in 2011) feels generally much closer in style to Wish You Were Here, or even The Dark Side of the Moon. The Animals version is colder, harder, but just as remarkable. The Pink Floyd sound was evolving, probably due in part to technological advances, but also to the punk wave, which had an undeniable influence. The internal strife that was brewing at Britannia Row also contributed to their new musical approach, which was sharper and more cutting. This epic lasting over seventeen minutes—this would be the last piece of that kind of length in the Waters era—is quite unusual in terms of harmonics, with a chord progression more reminiscent of progressive bands like Yes or Genesis.
“Dogs” opens with the sound of David Gilmour’s acoustic guitar, his Ovation Legend (taken down a tone). It is double-tracked, laid down in stereo, and is faded in. Rick Wright comes in with his organ playing chord tones, rather in the style of “One of these Days.” The sound, which switches from left to right, resembles the Farfisa, but is more likely to come from his Hammond B-3. Then Gilmour takes the lead vocal. His singing is as excellent as usual, the key still rather high for him (despite it having been lowered by a tone), but it enables him to express himself with both power and fragility, in the very same way Waters does. The sound is clean, with only a slight delay audible. Cymbals (with inverted effects), bass, and electric rhythm guitar put in an appearance, marking the end of the first verse, before Nick Mason comes in on the drums. His playing has much more of a groove to it than on Wish You Were Here; we sense he is enjoying his playing, despite the fact that the sound recording is perhaps not as good as on the previous albums.
David Gilmour performs an initial guitar solo at the end of the second verse (from 1:50 onward). In his own words: “[it was] a custom Telecaster. I was coming through some Hiwatt amps and a couple of Yamaha rotating speaker cabinets—Leslie style cabinets that they used to make.”29 His playing is markedly different from previous recordings: it is more aggressive, more jazz-rock, distorted by his Big Muff and heavily tinged by his Yamahas. And, as ever, his touch is what makes all the difference. The solo is a success, demonstrating his absolute mastery of his instrument. His bandmates won’t be outdone, though: Waters provides a very good bass line that feels taut and sinewy (and is slightly undermixed), Mason adds some overdubs of tom-toms and crash cymbals, and Wright sustains the harmony with a generous B-3 part.
The third verse (at 3:00) is followed by the first instrumental sequence. Wright plays a solo on the Minimoog, and Gilmour’s electric rhythm guitar (his Strat?) comes more to the fore, with a very pronounced Leslie effect from his Yamahas. Gilmour then launches into a melodic motif on his Telecaster, which he harmonizes on a second track (from 3:42). Responding to these two guitars is a third guitar (with reverb and with some Binson Echorec), played in descant. Wright brings in his Fender Rhodes piano and his ARP Solina to support Gilmour with layers of strings.
This part then gives way to the acoustic guitars, doubled in stereo as in the introduction, and fully foregrounded. Gilmour is strumming chords, Wright is still on the Rhodes, and Waters is on the bass. The sound of dogs barking can be heard (from 4:50), sinister and desolate. Now comes the second Telecaster solo, Gilmour as brilliant as before, proving himself once again as one of the best guitarists of his generation. It is interesting to note, though, that he places less emphasis on the melodic aspect of his lines than in the past, focusing rather on technique and energy.
Then it’s back to vocals, with Gilmour, who sings the whole of the fourth verse and harmonizes with himself. He adds rhythmic power chords, and ends his lead vocal on the word stone, which is repeated about fifty-six times before finally fading away. These repetitions are not perfectly matched to the tempo. This central section, which is purely instrumental, is one of the strengths of “Dogs.” The atmosphere is oppressive, partly due to the constant repetition, but also because of the multiple string tracks from the ARP, which produce a swirling effect (Leslie cabinet), and the percussion, which emphasizes the rhythm with a ride cymbal and a bass drum with reverb marking the start of each bar (it’s in 6/4). The sound of the bass drum is very compressed, perhaps a little too much, producing a less-well-rounded overall effect. At 9:18 the barking of dogs is heard again before being repeated by a vocoder and fed through a Leslie (or the Yamaha rotating cabinets). The effect is supposed to lend the signal a “robotic” character, but the execution on the record is not particularly spectacular. (Some thought that it was Wright’s keyboards that are repeated by the vocoder, but it definitely is the dogs.) This sequence is followed by a solo part on the Minimoog, featuring effects produced by a VCS3. Someone whistles to the dogs at 10:50, and they reply, still through the vocoder.
The piece moves on into the last two verses. Waters’s lead vocal is excellent. His voice is taut, charged with emotion, and the message is clear: sooner or later the dogs will be forced to pay for the choices they have made, and will have to fight to survive. Gilmour follows him with a very impressive last solo, not unlike Steve Howe’s in its phrasing and sound, which he concludes by harmonizing his guitar with various parts (listen at 13:55). He explains: “The last line of the first solo, I believe, [Wrong! It’s the third line!] is a three-part descending augmented chord. Which is quite nice, and I was very proud of it; I thought it was very clever.”29 But before he arrived at this definitive version, Waters had had the unfortunate idea of putting himself behind the console, and, as had happened with the solo for “Pigs On the Wing,” he deleted what Gilmour had just recorded. “I had to re-create it,”29 Gilmour later commented… But asked whether it had been done deliberately, he replied without hesitation: “By mistake, by mistake.”29
After a repeat of the melodic theme harmonized on two guitars, the final sequence of “Dogs” is sung by Roger Waters, who takes a moralizing tone similar to that of “Eclipse” on Dark Side (from 15:20). This final section is colder and more violent than in the “You’ve Gotta Be Crazy” version. In the 1974 version, there were backing vocals sung by Gilmour and Wright in answer to Waters, giving the piece a spiritual quality that it no longer has, which is a shame.
“Dogs” is certainly one of the standout tracks on Animals, illustrating a noticeably different musical approach that is more aggressive than before. We sense a shift toward a more Waters-led feel, even though Gilmour composed the majority of the music. The latter delivers a convincing demonstration of his talents as a first-rate guitarist, at the same time revealing a more rugged side to his playing. Wright’s and Mason’s contributions are still just as essential to the Pink Floyd sound.
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
During Gilmour’s first guitar solo, at 2:19, we hear jubilant cries and laughs, which seem to come from Waters.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
“Dogs” has much in common with “Howl,” an important Beat Generation poem in which Allen Ginsberg, denounced a society founded on the power of money. What’s more, most of the lines of the last verse of “Dogs” start with Who… ?, the same repeated formula used by Ginsberg in his poem. However, Waters would deny having taken his inspiration from it.
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
Betwee
n 5:17 and 5:24, some electronic interference is audible, probably coming from Gilmour’s Ovation.
Pigs (Three Different Ones)
Roger Waters / 11:26
Musicians
David Gilmour: electric rhythm and lead guitars, bass guitar, sound effects
Rick Wright: Hammond organ, ARP Solina, piano, Clavinet (?), Minimoog (?), VCS3 (?)
Roger Waters: vocals, vocal harmonies, VCS3 (?)
Nick Mason: drums, cowbell
Recorded
Britannia Row, Islington, London: April–December 1976
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineer: Brian Humphries
Assistant Sound Engineer: Nick Griffiths
Genesis
In this song Roger Waters continues his attack on liberal society. Three verses—presenting three types of pigs he loathes. The first is the businessman, whom we imagine all buttoned up in his three-piece suit, smoking a cigar, and drinking a well-matured whiskey while checking the share prices in the newspaper. When your hand is on your heart/You’re nearly a good laugh/Almost a joker, Waters writes. But in reality, these kinds of people make him want to weep.