Bob Dylan revealed his favourite Pink Floyd song
There aren’t too many artists that get the Bob Dylan seal of approval. Going through the hundreds of interviews from his glory years, there were hardly any conversations that could get a straight answer out of Mr. Zimmerman, let alone a decent grip on his taste in music. Although Dylan let his music do the talking most of the time, he did admit to having a flair for progressive rock.
In the wake of Dylan’s turn to electric music in the mid-1960s, the rock scene quickly changed. Thanks to acts like The Beatles immersing themselves in unconventional song structures, acts like Pink Floyd began coming out of the woodwork, playing a psychedelic twist on traditional rock and roll.
Once Pink Floyd started seeing widespread acclaim, though, things started to take a turn for the worse when founder Syd Barrett started to lose his battle with mental health, struggling to compose himself when playing live amid a concoction of narcotic stimulants. Although the band would continue with David Gilmour behind the fretboard, the next handful of albums would have the ghost of Barrett looming across the track listing.
Across albums like Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd was coming to grips with losing Barrett to his own mind while also processing the grief of being alone in an industry that isn’t known for its bedside manner towards sensitive rock stars. As time passed, though, Roger Waters saw his platform as a place to warn people about the rock and roll lifestyle.
Aside from the main tribute tracks to Barrett, Wish You Were Here also contained tracks like ‘Welcome to the Machine’, a cry for help against the music industry and the various tricks they try to pull on unsuspecting musicians in the early stages. For their follow-up, Animals, Waters started to paint with a broader brush, taking big businesses to task for their unjust practices and breaking down the intricacies of society.
While later touring for the record, Gilmour would remember Dylan stopping himself to let him know how much he loved the song ‘Dogs’ taken from Animals, telling Record Collector: “The second time we met was around the time of ‘The Delicate Sound Of Thunder’. He said, ‘Hey, I love your record, ‘The Dogs’, man. I was so thrilled. Not many Pink Floyd fans like this track. But Bob does. So it was OK with me.”
Given Dylan’s history with writing, though, it’s no surprise that he would gravitate towards the Pink Floyd songs that have the most in common with literature. Throughout Animals, Waters borrows heavily from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a dystopian novel focusing on the pieces of society slowly falling into decay.
Spinning the lyrics into poetry, ‘Dogs’ also features the most ambitious playing of the group’s career, with both Gilmour and Richard Wright putting together the finest textures they have ever committed to tape. Then again, all of the music was beside the point for Dylan. Usually, it was about how the music made someone feel, and for someone who had been through the wringer of fame more than a few times, Dylan had come across more than a few dogs before Floyd had even put the song to tape.
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