Classic Album Covers No.7 - Animals by Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd was founded in 1965 in the UK and featured Syd Barrett and Bob Klose (at the early stages) Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and David Gilmour. Pink Floyd has been one of the most influential and successful bands in progressive rock history. They have sold 200+ million albums worldwide earning 16 gold, 13 platinum and 10 multi-platinum albums.
Animals, their eighth studio album released in 1977 was loosely based on George Orwell’s political novel Animal Farm; hence the dogs, pigs and sheep.
Hipgnosis was commissioned to create the cover and the packaging for the album but the final concept was actually designed by Roger Waters who decided to use an image of a power station located at Battersea, an inner-city district of South London.
For the cover of the album Waters used a huge pig shaped balloon floating in between the two major chimneys of the Battersea power station.
Animals entered at number two in the UK and number three in the US and the Brittish rock newspaper New Musical Express evaluated the album as “one of the most extreme, relentless, harrowing and downright iconoclastic hunk on this side of the sun.”
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