![]() A flirtation with Nazism was borne out by punks adopting the swastika, and the gesture David Bowie appeared to be making to fans as he arrived at Victoria Station that May seemed to give credence to a new right within popular music. Although it’s far too reductive to suggest that it was solely an era of industrial unrest, football violence, bovver boots and the National Front were all contributing to a sense of unease. Recording began in April 1976, just as Harold Wilson resigned as UK Prime Minister, ushering in the ‘Sunny Jim’ Callaghan era. When they had finished touring, they all went on holiday, so of course I had to keep Britannia Row running because I was the only engineer there at the time.” I think he was bluffing his way through it because I don’t think he knew anything about soundproofing, so I kept away. “They had got a friend of theirs who was an architect. “I went and looked at it, but I did feel a bit ‘Do they know what they are getting into?’” Humphries says. ![]() ![]() He had also engineered Wish You Were Here. He had first worked with them on More, and become their front of house sound man from the Wembley shows in 1974. ![]() Brian Humphries was employed by the group as their full-time engineer at the studio. The old Architectural Abdabs themselves, Waters and Nick Mason, brought in architect Jon Corpe, their old friend from Regent Poly, to help them realise their dream of a purpose-built studio and, after some recordings by Robert Wyatt and Michael Mantler, Pink Floyd were ready to begin work. And this was the root of Animals.Īfter the recording and touring of Wish You Were Here, 1976 marked a fresh start for the band – they had bought a property in Britannia Row, Islington, the previous year. But you can even grow used to magic when there is enough of it.” By now, the Floyd had grown used to everything. Hard to credit what with the noise and the heat, and the girls urging the crowd to clap along, and Dick Parry busting a gut in Money and the boys so close you can see the beads of sweat burst from their brows. Sedgwick captures the creeping malaise perfectly: “I watch Dark Side Of The Moon from the stage, though off to the side and from the audience… Amazingly, one of the crew is asleep on a pile of cables. The dissatisfaction, that is commonly seen as setting in three years later, was already taking hold. It would be more expensive for the kids, what with train fares and the rest, but we’d do much better gigs.” “What the fuck are we doing playing in a building like this?” Waters said on seeing the hall. The band visited Stoke-On-Trent’s crumbling pleasure palace, Trentham Gardens, on a Tuesday night in November 1974. The mood of despondency in Pink Floyd was exacerbated by the regional tour that followed. Just how did a group that had the world at its feet come to make quite such a bitter, idiosyncratic record? Even in the US, where singles had repeatedly been taken from albums, they knew the game was up, and had nothing to offer. With three pieces all over 10 minutes long, there was no track to take to radio. Given that the group had already attained megastar status: it was a difficult album to promote, aside from the fact it was by Pink Floyd and they promoted themselves. Released at a time when anything more than a three-minute, three-chord thrash was an early candidate for cancel culture, Animals stands as odd and as proud as those four thrusting chimneys on the cover.Įven today, for an album with such a well-known, iconic sleeve, comparatively few know the music within. With one eye looking over his shoulder, Roger Waters wrote a Pink Floyd album that remains discrete within their catalogue even today. Far-right groups were stirring, punk rock was emanating from the children of those who’d welcomed Floyd a decade earlier. Britain was in the grip of industrial unrest and a drought that seemed to provide a metaphor for the lack of direction in the country.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |