101 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
101 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
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Thoughts about the meanings of _Animals_ songs
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From: ntaal@dutiba.twi.tudelft.nl
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Subject: From Scott Frank:Animals
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To: echoes@tcs.com (The Pink Floyd mailing list)
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Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 13:09:28 +0100 (MET)
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Hi, this is a text by Scott Frank,
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I'm posting this as is, with no additions to it,
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except for a few NOTEs,
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clearly marked [1] etc...
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Have fun, enjoy
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__o/________________________________________________________________________
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o\
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Animals: What Does It Mean ?
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by Scott Frank
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Some of my favorite Animals quotes:
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(said of "Raving and Drooling (aka Sheep)")
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"Roger's venomous lyrics depicted violence, anger and a
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growing displeasure with the human race in general."
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- Ron Fleischer 1991
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"Animals is a song suite that deals with subjects like
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loneliness, death, and lies."
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"Somehow you get the impression that this band is being
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metamorphosed into a noodle factory"
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- Rolling Stone 3/24/77
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"But on Animals the lack of anything musically or lyrically
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significant really shows."
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- Down Beat 5/5/77
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"Nobody could ever accuse Pink Floyd of understatement."
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- Rolling Stone 6/30/77
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Animals, as you know, is really just three very angry songs
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sandwiched between two love songs to Carolyne (Roger's second
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wife). These three middle songs are about (in Roger's words),
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"the pressures which are anti-life". One of these songs even
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goes so far as to include a seriously altered version of the
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Lord's Prayer. This of course led to the album's being banned
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occasionally. There was even some talk about Pink Floyd being
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"Satan's Music" because of this "hidden" verse.
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Whenever I hear "Dogs", I always think of a used car
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salesman, but I suppose it could refer to anyone that sells
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something to someone else (insurance salesman, politician, etc.)
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The first three verses tell what a good salesman does and how he
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does it. The fourth verse refers to this salesman in old age
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reflecting back on his life, unsure how well it was spent. The
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fifth and sixth verses seem to be the salesman's thoughts of
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depression, paranoia, social position, etc brought on by his age.
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The seventh verse is a bit more of the same, but with a more
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dehumanizing (pathetic) bent to it. (There's a great deal self-
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pity and pain.)
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"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is a rather straight forward
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song. It basically picks out three types of people that Roger
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doesn't like much and ridicules them. The first type "big man,
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pig man" is in my mind a slave driving "big wheel" from the early
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1800's type guy. A really fat guy with a whip in one hand and a
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pork chop in the other. The second type "rat bag" seems to me to
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be a really unpleasant female. Possibly the type that seem to
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feel its their personal obligation to make men suffer.[1] The third
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type "Whitehouse" the "proud town mouse" is very obvious. If you
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don't get it, I'm not going to tell you.
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"Sheep" is the ultimate "be politically aware or die" song.
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It says quite clearly that the majority of people don't care
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what's really going on in the world. These people therefore
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blindly accept whatever the government tells them and die
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promptly in a war as a result.
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"Pigs On The Wing pt 2" suggests that even if you have a
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large burden to bear, much comfort can be taken in love. This
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song, sadly, didn't go over at all well in concert and was
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promptly dropped from all future shows. This song is also the
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first time Roger ever acknowledges that the company of a female
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might be a pleasurable thing occasionally. [2]
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END OF TEXT
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My notes:
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[1] During the KAOS tour, Roger was presented with the following question:
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"When you sing the second verse of Pigs,
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do you think of Margaret Thatcher ?"
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" I confess that ,from time to time ,I do.
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And then roger said some vagueries about the 1st verse reminding him
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of quite somepeople different,
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but he wouldn't go into that again.
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Probably he was referring to DG &co
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[2] I'm not sure, but I allways thought that IF was a kind of lovesong as well
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