#20 - Sheep from Animals (1977)
Appeared On: 22 ballots (out of 33 . . . 66.7%)
Total Points: 262 points (out of 825 possible points . . . 31.8%)
Top Rankers: @Mt. Man @Anarchy99 @Pip's Invitation @Yo Mama @Dwayne Hoover @DocHolliday
Highest Rankings: 3, 5
London - 1974,
Early Studio Version,
Knebworth - 1975,
Oakland - 1977,
Rock In Rio - 2006,
Kansas City - 2022
Live Performances: PF: 111,
RW: 187
Covers: Brit Floyd,
Les Claypool,
Numira,
Arthur Brown,
Dream Theater
Initially entitled Raving And Drooling, Sheep continues the theme developed in the album. Lyrically, it describes a circumstance where people follow an ideology without knowing the reason. Similarly, in George Orwell's Animal Farm, the novella that
inspired the album, the sheep were the animals that would burst blindly into a chant of “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.” They did as they were told without any hesitation—they went along with the ideals of the rest of the sheep and the majority of the animals. This theme evidences itself through the lyrics of the song where the sheep follow the rules set for them. Raving and Drooling (with different lyrics) was originally planned for the WYWH album.
Mason felt that the album's perceived harshness, compared to previous Floyd releases, might have been the result of a "workman-like mood in the studio", and an unconscious reaction to accusations from some punk artists that bands like Pink Floyd represented "dinosaur rock". Gilmour said "It wasn't one of the more productive periods of our life I don't think. We used those two tracks which went back to '74, changed the names, doctored them around and stuck them on the album. It was a great, I love the album, it was exciting and noisy and fun. It really had some great bits and stuff of effects on there but it was not one of our creative high points really. Sheep was always good fun. "Wright said: "I didn't really like a lot of the music on the album. I didn't fight hard to put my stuff on the album and I didn't have anything to put on. I played well but did not contribute to the writing and also Roger was not letting me write. Animals was the whole start of the whole ego thing in the band."
Sheep contains a modified version of Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He makes me down to lie, Through pastures green he leadeth me the silent waters by, With bright knives he releaseth my soul, He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places, He converteth me to lamb cutlets, For lo, he hath great power, and great hunger. When cometh the day we lowly ones, Through quiet reflection, and great dedication, Master the art of karate, Lo, we shall rise up, And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.
Towards the end of the song, the eponymous sheep rise up and kill the dogs, and later retire back to their homes. Wright played the song's introduction unaccompanied on the
electric piano, but did not receive a writing credit for it.
Apart from its critique of society, the album is also a part-response to the punk rock movement, which grew in popularity as a nihilistic statement against the prevailing social and political conditions, and also a reaction to the general complacency and nostalgia that appeared to surround rock music. PF was an obvious target for punk musicians, notably Johnny Rotten, who wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt on which the words "I hate" had been written in ink. Mason stated that he welcomed the "Punk Rock insurrection" and viewed it as a welcome return to the underground scene from which PF had grown.
In live versions from 1977, backing guitarist Snowy White played bass guitar as Waters shared electric guitar duties with Dave. The performance was almost identical to the album version except that had a slower ending with Wright playing an organ solo. On their In The Flesh tour, relations within the band became fraught. Waters took to arriving at the venues alone, departing as soon as each performance was over. On one occasion, Wright flew back to England, threatening to leave the band. The size of the venues was also an issue; in Chicago, the promoters claimed to have sold out the 67,000 capacity of the Soldier Field stadium, but the band was suspicious. They hired a helicopter, photographer, and attorney, and discovered that the actual attendance was 95,000; a shortfall to the band of $640,000. The end of the tour was a low point for Gilmour, who felt that they had by now achieved the success they originally sought, and that there was nothing else they could look forward to.
Vulture Ranking (out of 165 songs): 36
UCR Ranking (out of 167 songs): 26
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 21
WMGK Ranking (out of 40 songs): 37
Ranker Ranking (out of 132 songs): 22
Billboard Ranking (out of 50 songs): 13
Vulture Ranking (36 out of 165 songs): Ten+ minutes of sheep, fronted by almost two minutes of wan jazzisms courtesy of Wright. The song has one thing to recommend it: Waters’s own vocal attack, which threads the needle of his difficult voice, which is weak when it’s normal and shrieky when it’s not. Here, it’s lacerating — one of his best vocals — particularly on the neat effect at the end of the first line of each verse. Still, this is another song that could have benefited from some song doctoring; Waters’s sense of subtlety is disappearing by the minute, and there are a lot of minutes here. Things get a bit tedious in the middle four minutes or so. At the end, the sheep rise up, only to become, climactically, Animal Farm–style, the new oppressors. (That’s how I read it, anyway.) This is accompanied by some appropriate and long-overdue actual rock at the end — Gilmour pulls a great-sounding guitar sound out of his *** — and you can even hear NM breaking a sweat. (Sometimes you actually feel for Waters when it comes to his lazy bandmates.) To sum up: Animals is nothing to sneer at, an authentic work of defiant misanthropy by a man facing the Me Decade on one side and on the other a snotty new generation of punks whose contempt for PF (however misconceived) became a cliché of the era. Some people like it. YMMV.
UCR Ranking (26 out of 167 songs): Sheep is RW's merciless excoriation of society’s followers – that is, until they briefly turn on their oppressors, only to return to their humdrum lives. If the lyric-writing isn’t razor-sharp, DG and RW guitars are. Midway through each verse, the instrument enters like a Jack Nicholson in The Shining, slicing and dicing its way to the next calamity. Dave also plays bass here, galloping alongside NM’s drums while dodging in and out of the way of RW’s off-kilter organ. The whole ordeal ends in a shower of sparks, a glittering waterfall of jagged guitar that sends the sheeple back home.
Louder Ranking (21 out of 50 songs): Often described by DG as the band’s “punk album” (or also as “a slog” by late keyboard player Rick Wright, whose relationship with self-appointed band leader RW was deteriorating to the extent that RW would instigate Wright’s sacking during the making of follow-up The Wall). If Animals, Waters’ treatise on society in a manner akin to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, was heavy going, then the 10 minutes of Sheep was the heaviest song on the album, building to a caustic Gilmour guitar attack, with Waters equally venomous in his lyrical delivery. In contrast to the despotic Pigs and combative Dogs, Sheep represented the mindless, easily led herd who would occasionally rise up and riot if provoked too far. As Waters put it: “Sheep was my sense of what was to come down in England, and it did with the riots in Brixton and Toxteth. And it will happen again.” And he was right.
WMGK Ranking (37 out of 40 songs): You can almost imagine the disappointment from the record label when PF submitted Animals. It's 5 songs: 3 are more 10 minutes and the other 2 are less than a minute a half, each. And they’re all named after animals. Animals was never going to be a radio behemoth, but it’s still a classic. The music was incredible, and the lyrics featured some of Waters’ sharpest social commentary. Here, Waters compares humans who choose to ignore the world around them to sheep on a farm.
Billboard Ranking (13 out of 50 songs): The thrilling 10-minute climax to Animals, with racing organs and bass and portentous vocals that make the band sound like Evil Steely Dan — especially in time for the “bad dream” moaning synth breakdown halfway through. But the song picks back up for the song’s unexpectedly righteous close, a triumphantly chiming guitar riff that either proves that the animals in power are vanquishable after all, or that we’re simply long past the point of fighting them anyway.
Coming up, back to back tracks from DSOTM.
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