Dogs Pink Floyd

1 year ago
227

Dogs Pink Floyd
Around 15:30 into the song, Roger Waters says: "Who was trained not to spit - in a fan." Although it is probably a coincidence, Waters once spit at a fan. Pink Floyd performed at a concert in Montreal, and when a fan tried to climb onto stage, Waters hocked a loogy into the guy's face. This gave Roger the idea for the movie and album The Wall -in an interview he said that the event created a barrier or a "wall" between them and the fans.

This was the only song on the album not written solely by Roger Waters. David Gilmour wrote all the chords - the main music part of it. And the two together wrote some other bits at the end.

Originally this was titled "You Gotta Be Crazy." The lyrics were then changed a little to suit the "Animals" concept.

Gilmour told Guitar World February 1993 about the harmony leads on this song: "Three-part, in some cases; it's two-part in the melody sections. But the last line of the first solo, I believe, is a three-part descending augmented chord. Which is quite nice, and I was very proud of it; I thought it was very clever. Then Roger went and (accidentally) wiped it out and I had to re-create it."

Gilmour played on "Dogs" a custom Telecaster guitar coming through some Hiwatt amps and a couple of Tamaha rotating speaker cabinets.

Asked in a 2017 Uncut interview what his view on Animals is now, Walters replied:

"It's a sketch, a sort of cartoon sketch of how I saw the way society was organized. And obviously it leans heavily on Orwell and Animal Farm and the idea of anthropomorphizing animals to represent aspects of human behavior.

That round at the end of 'Dogs' is, I think, very powerful and quite chilling. 'Dragged down by the stone' is the last line of it. 'He was told what to do by the man...' It's a bitter reclamation against authoritarianism and against what I perceived when I was growing up."

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking

And after a while, you can work on points for style
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder
You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older
And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south
Hide your head in the sand,
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer

And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone
Dragged down by the stone (stone, stone, stone, stone, stone)

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused
Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise
If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?

Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And everything's done under the sun
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer

Who was born in a house full of pain
Who was trained not to spit in the fan
Who was told what to do by the man
Who was broken by trained personnel

Who was fitted with collar and chain
Who was given a pat on the back
Who was breaking away from the pack
Who was only a stranger at home

Who was ground down in the end
Who was found dead on the phone
Who was dragged down by the stone
Writer/s: DAVID JON GILMOUR, ROGER WATERS

Loading 3 comments...