Even though I had know idea what the hell Roger Waters was getting at, as an angst filled teenager I felt the foundation of the establishment tremble in the wake of his rebellious ramblings within the lyrics of “Sheep,” from Pink Floyd’s 1977 satirical sound scape, “Animals.” When Waters resurrected the song for his 2006/2007 “Dark Side of the Moon” world tour, he used it to comment on the brooding political storm as the Bush era was coming to a controversial close. During the song, the famous Pink Floyd flying pig was introduced to a new generation of Floyd fans. Anyone who has attended a Waters concert understands that three quarters of the show is about rock and roll, and the remaining quarter is about his extreme left wing politics. Perhaps images speak louder than words…
http://www.the-emperor-has-no-clothes.com/images/pig2.jpg
http://californiafaultline.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/coachella_sunday_37_pig_blimp.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2418/2451734690_8741f957dd.jpg?v=0
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/10892169.jpg
…and if you were there, regardless of your political affiliations, it was difficult not to get caught up in the fervor of the crowd. But still, words – particularly the words of Waters’ compositions, dripped from the lips of Waters’ fan base as they sung along to a song that had not been preformed by Waters or the Gilmour led Pink Floyd for thirty years. To understand the significance of this resurrection, an explication of the lyrics is necessary.
Waters obviously intended sheep as a pseudonym for the blind patriotism of the far right moral majority. The connotation of the word in his song drums up the religious imagery of Christ as the divine shepherd, and waters brazenly alludes to this in his mockery of the twenty-third psalm within the song. Waters begins by painting a picture of an oblivious society too used to living well on the pasture of apathy.
“Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away / Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.”
I always find it astounding that the Obama detractors are the same people who buttoned their lips during the obvious failure of George W. Bush’s presidency. The opening line of “Sheep” does not only illustrate the shameless denial of America’s right wing in the face of America’s arguably worst president, but also exemplifies Bush’s own obliviousness to the threat of terrorism. The verse continues with…
“You better watch out / There may be dogs about / I have looked over Jordan and I have seen / Things are not what they seem”
The first line of the second verse asks the question that was on the tip of my tongue immediately following the terrorist attacks of 9/11…
“What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real?”
And even after Bush’s bungled immediate response to America’s most deadly attack on continental soil, the right wing fanatics did exactly what Waters penned next…
“Meek and obedient you follow the leader down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel”
And the verse concludes with a hauntingly appropriate description of blind patriotic bravado…
“What a surprise / A look of terminal shock in your eyes / Now things are really what they seem / No, this is no bad dream”
After a considerably and uncomfortably long instrumental passage, Waters defiles scripture with the following sacrilege…
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want / He makes me down to lie / Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by /With bright knives He releaseth my soul / He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places / He converteth me to lamb cutlets,For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger / When cometh the day we lowly ones / Through quiet reflection, and great dedication / Master the art of karate / Lo, we shall rise up / And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.”
…and I’m not even touching that. Besides, what comes in the last verse is what I consider to be the most haunting and controversial verse of the song. Please, if you come from a military background and have voted Republican your entire life because you buy into the notion that only under a Republican can the American military successfully protect us from the evil axis, stop reading now. Seriously.
The final verse of “Sheep” reads like a commentary on war: its purpose, the negative consequences it has on young American soldiers who witness the worst of humanity, the unquestioning loyalty of extremists, the profits paid in blood to war profiteers, the division of a people clinging to a fledgling democracy, the gross misinterpretation of the constitution, the vulgar hypocrisy of the think tanks that want you to believe individuals who protest war do not support the plight of soldiers who enlisted to protect freedom, democracy, and the American dream, and the psychological damage and post traumatic stress for everyone involved – the soldiers, their families, the civilians, and the psyche of a nation. In the aftermath of the attack, Waters writes that…
“Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream.”
And didn’t we? Are there more than a handful of Americans who can honestly say that they did not call upon George W. Bush to punish someone, anyone, who might have been responsible for the terrorist attacks on 9/11? Did we not believe justice should have come swiftly and tenfold? Did we think about the ramifications of war? I find the next line to pretty much sum up the ugliness that the war in Iraq has become.
“Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.”
This line inspires its own essay. In an attempt to keep it brief, I will stay this – and this may piss you off depending on what you consider to be sacred – with the fulfillment of each tour of duty, our demented avengers return to a society which misunderstands them, a society that makes heroes out of cowards and cowards out of heroes, a society that seems to no longer understand what the dream is, or what it was, or that it has become a nightmare in which no patriot will allow themselves to awaken from. The men and women who enlisted as a means to get through college, or as a way to keep their family financially stable enough to live the dream, to have the big house and three car garage within the picket fence which harbors the 3.2 children from the dangers of the American streets, these ordinary human beings, our neighbors, relatives, and friends, these once obscure faces among the shepherds tending the flocks have bled into a demented type of celebrity, heroes for a cause no one is sure about anymore, and no one wants to admit to. We, they, all of us are the sheep. And perhaps the sickest punch line to this joke is that it took an aging rock star and a pig to get the attention of a generation so baffled beyond functionality that they, without question, pledge allegiance to a man with a bass guitar who made an entire rock opera based on three chords, they pledge this allegiance through the dope-smoke haze aglow in aggressive stage lights, flickering and beaming to accentuate the trivial scribblings on an inflatable sow, lead just as easily as the far right into the far left, my God is there no salvation? And just as we are about to abandon hope, the news from Murdochs’ emporium of insanity scrolls across the screen…
“Have you heard the news? / The dogs are dead / You better stay home and do as you’re told / Get out of the road if you want to grow old.”
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