GOTTA ADMIT THAT I’M A LITTLE BIT CONFUSED

What’s happening with the supposed Animals box set?

In 2018, Roger Waters talked openly about a new edition of Animals coming our way by the end of the year. “I’ve just been working with Po [Aubrey Powell],” he said. “There’s a reissue of Animals, a 5.1 mix of Animals, so I’ve been working… Well, I haven’t been working, he’s been working. He came up with some new photographs of Battersea Power Station to use as a CD cover for the new 5.1 mix. It’s beautiful.”

Three years on, we have yet to see this thing of ugly beauty. There are reams of web pages (121 of them on the Steve Hoffman Forum alone) surmising where it’s gone, what could be included, and what may have happened. There are supposedly alternative versions of all the tracks, the unedited Pigs On The Wing, and, as Brian Humphries suggested, a 1975 studio version of You Gotta Be Crazy.

However, Waters spoke bluntly in April 2020 to Rolling Stone saying that he’d had a meeting with Gilmour and Mason and that, fundamentally, his “plan didn’t bear fruit”. He wondered if they could release “the remastered vinyl version of Animals without it turning into the third world war?”

Waters suggested they went “democratic” and had a vote as there were just three of them. But that was vetoed. No reason was given why. Further sleuthing has sadly revealed little – no word from the record company; nothing further, apart from a phenomenal amount of speculation on the web.

The truth, as always, may be a little more prosaic than some grand conspiracy. All three of them have had releases that would clash; as we know, Nick Mason is now in his own touring band with a Top Five album; Gilmour has been working on Yes, I Have Ghosts and his Von Trapped Family presentations; plus the post-Waters Floyd juggernaut has rolled on with the gargantuan The Later Years box set and the new Delicate Sound Of Thunder release. Waters, too, has hardly let the grass grow – the Us + Them tour and album, and now working hard on his next multimedia project, This Is Not A Drill. So, at the moment there seems to be more chance of us seeing a airborne hog than hearing this version of Animals. But as we all know in Pink Floyd world, pigs can – and do – fly.