Pink Floyd light up Battersea Power Station for Animals reissue

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The new reissue of Pink Floyd's Animals sees them return to the scene of the original album cover

Pink Floyd
(Image credit: Pink Floyd)

Footage of Pink Floyd lighting up Battersea Power Station has appeared all over social media, with the band promoting their just-released new remix of 1977's Animals album. You can watch video footage below.

The band teased images of Battersea last week on social media suggesting something might be afoot and now they've lit up the renovated power station, which famously formed the backdrop to the album cover for the original Animals.

"To mark the release of Pink Floyd's Animals 2018 Remix, London's Battersea Power Station will be an eminently suitable canvas next Wednesday and Thursday, between 8:30pm - 11pm, with a sneak preview on Tuesday night at the same time, as a test run..."

Sadly there's no sign of Algie the pig, who famously broke free of his moorings in December 1976 when the original Hipgnosis photo shoot for the album cover took place.

So the story goes, the marksman, who had been on standby at the shoot the first day, was not told to return for day two. Bad weather meant the inflatable pig wasn't used. On day two, a gust of wind tore Algie from his moorings, sending him into the sky, forcing cancellation of flights from Heathrow (pilots had even spotted the huge pig mid-air). He was eventually fund in a farmer's field in Kent, repaired and returned to photograph the now iconic album cover.

The cover of Pink Floyd's recent remix album shows a more contemporary view of Battersea with a pink pig floating between the chimneys, but the skyline has since changed due to ongoing modernisation works. According to the official website, the former power station is due to reopen as a leisure and entertainment space on October 14, 2022.

Jerry Ewing
Jerry Ewing

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.