The Animals' Christmas

The Animals' Christmas is the sixth solo album by vocalist Art Garfunkel. It is a Christmas-themed album which also has Garfunkel teamed with Amy Grant. It was released in 1986.

Originally a concept album about the Nativity, written by Jimmy Webb, Garfunkel was attracted to it because, as he put it, “It was born out of the love of a musical person to make music."^[1]

Track listing

All songs were written by Jimmy Webb.

1. "The Annunciation" – 2:38
2. "The Creatures of the Field" – 2:31
3. "Just a Simple Little Tune" – 2:54
4. "The Decree" – 3:25
5. "Incredible Phat" – 4:59
6. "The Friendly Beasts" – 3:24
7. "The Song of the Camels" – 2:46
8. "Word from an Old Spanish Carol" – 3:41
9. "Carol of the Birds" – 2:00
10. "The Frog" – 5:15
11. "Herod" – 4:21
12. "Wild Geese" – 3:33^[2]

Personnel

• Art Garfunkel – producer, remixing, vocals
• Jimmy Webb – piano, producer
• Amy Grant – vocals
• Christopher Austopchuk – art direction
• Stephen Bayly – vocals
• Stuart Breed – assistant engineer, remixing
• Greg Calbi – mastering
• Elizabeth Coatsworth – composer, text
• Del Costello – vocals
• Carl Davis – conductor
• Nicholas Dykes – vocals
• Anne Thaxter Eaton – compilation
• Geoff Emerick – engineer, producer, remixing
• Steve Gadd – drums
• Gordon Gottlieb – percussion
• Nicole Graham – remixing
• Roy Halee – engineer
• Paul Halley – organ
• Michael Jenkins – choir director
• Jon Kelly – engineer
• London Symphony Orchestra – orchestra
• Rob Mounsey – synthesizer
• Joe Osborn – bass
• Elliott Randall – electric guitar
• Eric Weissberg – banjo, acoustic guitar
• Wimbledon King's College Choir – choir, chorus
• George Young – saxophone^[3]

The Animals' Christmas took up the middle of the Eighties for me; it finally came out in Christmas of '86 after four years of my performing it and then recording it. In the early Eighties, in September of 1981, Paul Simon and I did a concert in Central Park. We followed it by touring the world; a European tour, an Australian tour, a Japanese tour, and finally a baseball-stadium tour in the U.S.A. in the summer of '83. As that baseball-stadium tour was finishing with two Swiss shows and two shows in Israel, I knew that the future was mine. I was open to what would come next. That's how I began to write what became this book. And I also started The Animals' Christmas. In '83, my friend Jimmy Webb showed me a piece he was writing, a cantata for children's choir and small orchestra for his local church in Tuxedo, New York. And it being a noncommercial endeavor, I was particularly interested in it, because I had become cynical about the fact that the record business will professionalize one's musical attempts in a way that can hurt them. And I followed Jimmy's rehearsals in Tuxedo and loved The Animals' Christmas. I told him I wanted to get involved. By the next year, he had written an extension, doubled its length and wrote various sections for me as solo singer, narrator and the angel Gabriel. He added a woman's part — the Virgin Mary. We all performed it with orchestra, children's choir, boy singer, girl singer, at St. John the Divine Cathedral that December in New York, and also at Festival Hall in London. We made a live recording of the shows, which later seemed to me too loose. So we planned to record it in the studio, the following Christmas. I started in London in '85 and recorded the London Symphony Orchestra; we added the choir from Wimbledon that winter; come the spring I was in Montserrat doing my vocals with Geoff Emeric; I traveled to Nashville to get Amy Grant's vocals on the album, then came to New York for some percussion overdubs — Steve Gadd on drums, and others. I had it finished by Christmas of '86, which I gather is when it came out. It's a gothic cathedral of an album; it's very ambitious. It was the type of project that would have been done by papal commission long ago. — Art Garfunkel from Still Water^[4]

References