![]() ![]() Griffiths brought 25 kids from Islington Green School in North London into the studio and had them sing the part. (Ezrin and Waters both claim today that they had the idea themselves.) But when he went into a Los Angeles studio to cut the song with producer Bob Ezrin, they sent the tape off to engineer Nick Griffiths in England and instructed him to have a choir of children sing it. ![]() On his original homemade demo, he sang the chorus (“We don’t need no education/We don’t need no thought control/No dark sarcasm in the classroom/Teacher leave these kids alone”) by himself. They didn’t even bother releasing a single from Animals, since the prospect of any commercial station airing all 18 minutes of “Dogs” was unthinkable. The sole single from the album was “Have a Cigar,” and it largely sank without a trace. The title track from Wish You Were Here could have become a massive hit, but they didn’t even release it as a single. “Money” did manage to reach Number 13 on the Hot 100 in 1973, but Floyd became a quintessential album band after that brief triumph and didn’t even try to compete with the likes of John Denver, the Bee Gees, and Fleetwood Mac for Top 40 airtime. The only thing the group had never quite figured out was how to score a big radio hit. Seventies superstar bands like the Eagles and Led Zeppelin were running on fumes by this point and would split before the year ended, but Floyd had just started their ambitious Wall tour that was unlike anything rock fans had ever seen. Their four most recent albums (1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, 1975’s Wish You Were Here, 1977’s Animals, and 1979’s The Wall) sold by the millions and they packed stadiums across the globe whenever they toured. By the spring of 1980, Pink Floyd were one of the biggest bands in the world. ![]()
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