The album Richard Wright said was too crazy for Pink Floyd: “This is insane”
Rock and roll isn’t always meant to be a pick-me-up. Most people would be perfectly happy with music that takes them away from their worries, but as songwriters like John Lennon have taught us time and time again, it’s sometimes better for artists to reflect the times they live in, even if they aren’t the most flattering pictures of society. And while Pink Floyd already had a habit of making music that was a little bit too bleak for some people, Richard Wright knew his limits when it came to some of their best material.
Then again, nothing was really off the table when it came to Pink Floyd in the early days. There would be times with Syd Barrett where things could go off the rails more than a few times, but by the time they found their footing with Roger Waters and David Gilmour, it was much easier for them to fly off the handle and see where inspiration took them, whether that was on ‘Echoes’ or the massive soundscapes that were happening in the middle of Animals.
Going through their entire body of work, though, Wright never seemed to fit into the exact model of what Waters wanted in a keyboardist. The band had always been a democracy, but the minute the frontman kicked Wright out of the group during The Wall, they had clearly lost a vital part of their soul. He eventually came back into the fold once Waters was kicked out, but since they made The Final Cut in the interim, the fact that it sounded so half-hearted was a direct result of Wright not being there.
And it’s not like he wasn’t interested in going down the same rabbit holes Waters was used to. He wasn’t a snob when it came to music, and he would have gladly gone along with an idea if the band felt it was strong enough, but looking back on his time making the beginnings of the album Household Objects, there was no way that they were going to get through an entire album’s worth of material with only a handful of things they would find around the house.
According to Wright, that album was the moment where their experimentation crossed a line a little bit, saying, “We would spend days with a pencil and a rubber band until it sounded like a bass. I remember sitting down with Roger and saying, ‘This is insane.’” But Household Objects was never destined to be the strange detour everyone thought it would be.
If anything, it was an idea that they used as therapy to process their grief after becoming one of the biggest bands in the world. It’s hardly a bad thing to become one of the most successful artists of one’s time, but since Barrett was no longer there, Household Objects may as well have been a way for them to get back to their roots in some respects.
And when they eventually came for air and made Wish You Were Here, they also preserved pieces of their material. Out of all the objects they used from around their houses, the piece known as ‘Wine Glasses’ would eventually open up their follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon, with Wright eventually taking over for the glasses with those majestic synth pads on ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’.
Anyone can try something new for the sake of experimenting, but compared to every other aborted album by a legendary rock band, it’s probably for the best that we only got the ‘Wine Glasses’ segment here. Because had they gone through with the whole thing, it was going to be a lot more difficult for them to make an emotional masterpiece with the sound of a rubber band bass.
