| Being At The Top |
As the group's last album was selling very good the band decided to do something very unusal. They were experimenting with non musical instruments trying to record an album made entirely from sounds produced from found objects. The project was called "Household Objects" but was never completed. Dave:" We used rubber bands: we actually built a long stretched rubber band thing about two feet long. There was a G-clamp one end fixing it to a table and another G-clamp at the other end. There was a cigarette lighter under one end of a bridge and there were a set of matchsticks taped down the other end. You stretch it and you can get a really good bass sound."
Roger:" It seemed like a good idea at the time but it didn't really come together. Probably because we needed to stop for a bit."
In December a compilation album A Nice Pair was released being a repackaging of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets.
 | A Nice Pair | (for songs and ratings go to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets) |
In the beginning of the year 1974 the band has been resting but made a short French tour in July where they premiered a few new songs - Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Gotta Be Crazy and Raving And Drooling. It was very uncommon to go on the road with the song and record it later but the band thought it was a very good way to make the song better.
Rick:" If you do a few
tour with a number, then it improves immensely. We always play heavier when we don't know songs so well but as we get to know them better we tend to play it quieter."
Because the group became very popular at the time there was a danger of commertializing and entering the area where money rules and not music. Fortunalely Pink Floyd tried to maintain a low profile. Rick:" We are not trying to sell ourselves - just the music. Right from the start we adopted this policy. We never had a publicity agent and we've never found one necessary. We're just not that kind of a band."
From November 1974 till July 1975 the band toured, improving the composition and the sound of their new songs. One concert was especially noticable: Knebworth Festival on 5th July 1975.
Miles:" The Floyd waited until it was beginning to get dark and a bit chilly before they took the stage. As they did so, two camouflaged Spitfires flew low overhead - just the beginning of the special effects that the Floyd had planned for this massive outdoor show. They had augmented their own PA with three other 2,5 KW PA stations set on towers among the audience which enabled them to completely surround the audience with quadrophonic sound. The sound balance was virtually perfect. The first set consisted of Wish You Were Here, with Roy Harper joining in on vocals for Have A Cigar and the second set was composed entirely of a performance of "Dark Side Of The Moon". For this they used their huge back projection screen and showed the movie of cash registers, coins tumbling and copies of the album stacked up in record shops. They played Echoes as an encore and got everyone up on their feet. The concert was very highly acclaimed both by fans and critics."
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