
It’s believed Pink Floyd performed the first version of their new instrumental on Januat the Lawns Centre in Hull. The piece was fashioned out of found sounds, with its composer ranting in a Scottish accent. They’d stopped releasing singles after December 1968 and had followed their second album, that year’s A Saucerful Of Secrets, with a soundtrack for the art house movie More.įloyd’s next release, 1969’s half-studio/halflive double album Ummagumma, included Roger Waters’ musique concrète experiment, Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict. The early Pink Floyd embraced the unexpected and the concept of being, as drummer Nick Mason put it, “more than just a pop group”. They arrived in Rome to start recording in November ’69.Īntonioni’s 1966 movie Blow-Up had been a clumsy portrayal of Swinging London, and Zabriskie Point was a drama about US student radicals fighting ‘the man’, blowing stuff up and having lots of sex.

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni had commissioned Pink Floyd to score his next film, Zabriskie Point. An album that ended with a cow in a field in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire began more than a year before in Rome.
