Pink Floyd - "Animals" (reimagined)

Last month I posted about a double album version of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. I included two live tracks, "You've Got to be Crazy" and "Raving and Drooling," that Floyd would later rewrite as "Dogs" and "Sheep" for the band's album Animals. A comment was posted by danielmartin273 asking what then would Animals have been without those two tracks. Until his comment, I hadn't really considered it. My response was "Maybe the remaining tracks from Animals along with selections from Gilmour's solo album?"

But afterward, I started thinking about it a bit more. Removing "Dogs" and "Sheep" from Animals takes away more than half the album because both tracks are so long. Besides Gilmour's first solo album being released in 1978 (a year after Animals), Richard Wright also released his first solo album that year. So I looked to both to see if I could cannibalize and recreate Animals (don't ask me what would then happen to the solo albums -- this could go on forever).


SIDE A
1. Pigs on the Wing (Part 1) 
2. I Can't Breathe Anymore
3. Pigs (Three Different Ones) 
4. Cat Cruise 
5. Message from the Sheep (Field Recording) 

SIDE B
1. Deafinitely 
2. No Way 
3. Pink's Song 
4. So Far Away 
5. Pigs on the Wing (Part 2) 

First, I wondered if I should even call the album Animals, as the remaining tracks all have "Pigs" in the title. But two tracks I included led me to keep the album title. Also, the lyrics to "Pigs on the Wing (Part 2)" include the line, "And any fool knows a dog needs a home," so there's at least one other animal reference.

Since "Dogs" and "Sheep" were essentially written back in 1974, only the "Pigs" tracks were new. I wonder if Waters' strong Type A-personality pushed other band members' potential contributions aside in order to create his concept for an album loosely based on "Animal Farm." It seems possible given that both Gilmour and Wright picked the time right after Animals and its supporting tour to release their first solo albums.

I looked for outtakes from Animals hoping to find something that hadn't been included initially, but there appears to be nothing other than one very short track of sound effects (which I used -- more on that later).

When it came to choosing which tracks to use from the solo albums, I decided against any that weren't completely written by a band member. I didn't think the band would go for that at this point in their career. That left us with six tracks from Gilmour's self-titled album and nine from Wright's Wet Dream album.

Like the actual Animals, this version of the album begins and ends with the two parts of "Pigs on the Wing." I used Gilmour's "I Can't Breathe Anymore," "Deafinitely," "No Way" and "So Far Away." I couldn't resist Wright's "Cat Cruise" to add an additional animal-titled song. And "Pink's Song" sounded like something that should be on a Pink Floyd album, both musically and title-wise.

I found "Message from the Sheep (Field Recording)" on a bootleg. It's supposedly an outtake from Animals. It's basically just a bunch of sheep yelling, "Baa!" I found it amusing, and at 37 seconds, it seemed like a good way to end the first side. It ends up being sort of a reprise of the end of "Pigs (Three Different Ones)."

The two sides are fairly even, being 21:47 and 20:41 respectively.

Interestingly, I think this sounds more like a Pink Floyd album than the actual released Animals because of more input from Gilmour and Wright. To my ears, after Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd releases became increasingly more like Roger Waters albums with the rest of the band backing him.

Since we're keeping the album title, at first I didn't see a reason to change the album cover (especially since the only animal shown is the floating, inflatable pig). But then I thought in keeping with using earlier concept art for my double disc version of Wish You Were Here, I'd do the same with this entry. This was a concept sketch by the design group Hipgnosis for Animals that the band rejected. I assume if it had been chosen, Hipgnosis would have created a more finished artwork, but this rough sketch is as good as we're going to get.