Pink Floyd achieved worldwide fame and phenomenal commercial success after they released their eighth studio album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ on March 1, 1973. The album was regarded as one of the best rock albums of all time as it hit the charts and sold millions of copies all around the world. Moreover, the album’s themes such as conflict, greed, time, death, and mental illness also drew great attention.
Following their rising success after the release of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon,’ Pink Floyd members were under the pressure of producing a better and more successful album than the previous one. Therefore, they felt like they had to prove themselves once again with the help of a very peculiar way of creating and composing music.
Pink Floyd’s Experimental Project With Household Objects
Back in those days, Pink Floyd members came up with an experimental concept while they were working on their ninth studio album. So, they decided to use different kinds of household objects such as aerosol cans, forks, and wine glasses instead of common musical instruments to compose and record their tracks for the album.
Roger Waters worked for many days to create a bass like-sound by using a pencil and rubber while Nick Mason kept hitting cans to find the perfect drum sound. However, it wasn’t a successful attempt and they had to give up on that idea. As a result, that caused great tension between the band members, especially between Waters and Gilmour.
As reported by Far Out Magazine, Richard Wright recalled the recording process in the documentary ‘Which One’s Pink?’:
“I think it was Roger Waters who said, ‘Let’s make an album without using any of our instruments, but using household objects. So we’d spend days getting a pencil and a rubber band till it sounded like a bass … spend weeks and weeks doing this. Nick Mason would find old saucepans and stuff, and then deaden them to try and make them sound exactly like a snare drum. I remember sitting down with Roger and saying, ‘Roger, this is insane!’“
According to the same source, in the book ‘Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd,’ Manson also stated that:
“We never managed to produce any actual music. All the time we devoted to the project was spent exploring the non-musical sounds, and the most we ever achieved was a small number of tentative rhythm tracks.”
Consequently, Pink Floyd stopped working on their household objects project and it remained the band’s unfinished album. Following that, they focused on composing an album about absence. Finally, they released their ninth studio album entitled ‘Wish You Were Here’ on September 12, 1975, in spite of various problems that they experienced during the creation process.
