Pink Floyd, Dogs

I often think about the trajectory of an artist's career. How they change their styles over time and then peak before they backslide and release lesser material. Or maybe they don't backslide and progress to different levels before they break up and the band members proceed with their solo careers.

Much has been made about the Beatles' transformation during the 1960s, but other bands had also remarkable artistic growth. Pink Floyd had an artistic curve that I have never seen before. I know there are some serious Pink Floyd fans out there, but here is how I see it. They began recording in 1967 under the leadership of Syd Barrett, issuing Piper at the Gates of Dawn, one of the great psychedelic albums of all time. British psychedelia, with humor and a hard-candy sound. Then Syd left the band, David Gilmour joined, and the band sort of meandered for five or six years, issuing mediocre to decent albums year after year with pleasant meandering melodies, sitting in the second and maybe third tier of rock acts through the early 1970s. While they were popular in the United Kingdom during this time, they did not really make it in the United States. Had they broken up during this time, I am not sure you would know who they were.

Then something happened. In 1973, Pink Floyd issued The Dark Side of the Moon, which instantly threw them into mega-superstardom, and for good reason. I know of no other band that turned it around so quickly without any lineup changes. They just got better overnight. They had just released one of their average albums only one year earlier. The songwriting became more disciplined, the albums became more focused, and they became one of the "coolest" bands of the 1970s, along with Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, dominating the high school parking lot where the longhairs blasted their eight-tracks.

I wonder what an American Pink Floyd fan felt like upon hearing Dark Side for the first time. None of his friends are into the band yet, the album is released without fanfare, and suddenly this album is sprung from nowhere that is so profound it becomes one of the best-selling records of all time. Everyone has The Dark Side of the Moon. Word of mouth and radio airplay sold records back then. Dark Side must have caught fire right away.

But Pink Floyd's new discipline and focus continued through the rest of the decade. Every two years, another great concept album, each with its own lyrical and musical themes. Including Dark Side, that was four albums through 1979. None of the songs on any of these albums would have fit on their other records that decade, and they developed a mystique with artsy-fartsy album covers that did not include band photos. The last album in this sequence was The Wall. Then Pink Floyd became average again. The magic faded away. I know there are Pink Floyd fans who disagree with my "average" assessment, but you know where you can put your objections.

That brings us to 1977, the third album in this sequence, Animals. Every song is named after an animal. This one is Dogs. The theme is alienation, with an Orwellian focus. This is Animal Farm put to music. The songs are longer, so you don't hear them on the radio. Dogs is my favorite. It starts off with interesting acoustic syncopation before Gilmour unloads a wild guitar solo, then some meandering before we return to the strumming. The lyrics are among the most profound in rock history. Roger Waters describes a businessman who spent his life kissing ass and playing the game before he retires to Florida and dies of cancer. Along the way, he wonders if he was "just being used" and he briefly wonders about his "creeping malaise." The killer lyric: "deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending, that everyone's expendable, and no one has a real friend." I still get chills listening to it.