The Pink Floyd album Richard Wright thought was a slog: “It wasn’t a fun record to make”
Every great album usually comes from a bit of tension in the air before anyone picks up an instrument. There are many great avenues that you can go down once everything starts sounding right, but once artists hit a snag in the production, something as easy as tracking a guitar becomes an albatross around their neck half the time. And while much has been said about Pink Floyd going through hell creating The Wall, Richard Wright had said that going into making Animals wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either.
Then again, anyone looking to bring ideas to Pink Floyd was going to have to get past Roger Waters at this stage. There was still room for collaboration when they wanted, but most other times, Waters had a vision and was bound to use the rest of the group as glorified session men if it meant trying to get the take to sound absolutely perfect.
And to give Waters credit, Animals might be one of the more underrated concepts that he had ever created for an album. Most people could latch onto the themes of The Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here if they wanted to, but hearing the group dissect the disgusting parts of society by equating them to George Orwell’s Animal Farm is much more advanced than anyone could have predicted.
Once Wright got to lay down some of his parts, though, he thought that he didn’t have much room to work in, telling Mark Blake, “Animals was a slog. It wasn’t a fun record to make, but this was when Roger really started to believe that he was the sole writer for the band. He believed that it was only because of him that the band was still going, and obviously, when he started to develop his ego trips, the person he would have his conflicts with would be me.”
It’s not that hard to see why Wright would have issues with the record, either. Since Waters and Gilmour wrote the entire project, there wasn’t any room for him to express himself other than playing the chords and adding tiny pieces of accompaniment when he could. Then again, there’s a case to be made that this is one of Wright’s best contributions to a Floyd project.
Sure, he’s not flying up and down his keyboard or anything, but by keeping things incredibly simple, his keyboards act like a solid foundation for the haunting atmosphere of every song. Since most of Gilmour’s job on a song like ‘Dogs’ is singing and playing acoustic guitar, hearing Wright’s ominous sounds behind him is the musical equivalent of seeing a gigantic hound that will tear you limb from limb if you aren’t careful.
As it turns out, though, that kind of dog that Waters warned everyone against is what he would turn himself into in the next few years. Since Wright wasn’t doing what he wanted on this album, Waters figured that it would be better not to have him in the group at all, eventually firing him halfway through the sessions for The Wall.
But in doing that, Floyd lost a core part of their musical foundation, and that human element of Wright and Gilmour harmonising would be lost for a while. Wright may have had to take a backseat on Animals, but even if he wasn’t front and centre, his presence is felt as much as it is heard on Floyd’s classics.
