These iconic rock songs that use non-musical items as instruments to stunning effect offer an invaluable lesson for songwriters and producers. You don’t always need the most expensive gear or proficient players to create an enduring, ear-catching song. Sometimes, all you need is a comb. Or a sugar packet. Or, let’s say, a slight tickle in the back of your throat.
Indeed, these songs prove that as long as the sound and groove are there, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing a concert grand piano or an anvil.
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“Money” by Pink Floyd
We’ll start our list of iconic rock songs that use non-musical items as instruments the same way British psychedelic band Pink Floyd opened the B-side to their 1973 hit record, Dark Side of the Moon: with a cash register. “Money” opens with a series of audio clips Roger Waters recorded of a cashier’s till, jingling coins, tearing paper, and a bill counter. An obvious choice for a song called “Money,” the most impressive thing about the non-instrumental musical intro is how well Waters managed to get a ringing cash register to groove along to ⅞ time.
“Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith
During a 2020 appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler recalled adding auxiliary percussion to the band’s hit single, “Sweet Emotion.” His first feature is a rattly hit of a vibraslap. (Tyler actually broke the vibraslap on the third hit, which they ended up keeping on the final record.) But even more fascinating is his next auxiliary addition: a set of maracas sitting forward in the mix on the beat drop. Except they weren’t maracas, a rainstick, a shaker, or an instrument at all. It was a sugar packet Tyler found lying on the floor of the studio.
“Panama” by Van Halen
Most people have heard at least some of the 1984 Van Halen classic “Panama,” but fewer listeners might be aware that the song is actually about a racecar David Lee Roth saw race in Las Vegas called Panama Express. Thus, it’s only appropriate that the revving engine you hear on the song’s bridge would be an actual sportscar. The car belonged to guitarist Eddie Van Halen and is a 1972 Lamborghini Miura S. Van Halen backed the car up to the studio, and engineers attached microphones to the exhaust pipe. Van Halen put pedal to the metal, and the rest is rock history.
“Crosstown Traffic” by Jimi Hendrix
Hearing a kazoo on a Jimi Hendrix song would have been odd enough on its own. But this is a list of non-musical items used as instruments, and a kazoo, no matter how strange, is an instrument. However, Hendrix took this eccentric instrumental feature one step further on his 1968 track, “Crosstown Traffic,” by using a comb with a piece of tissue paper as a makeshift instrument. The largely antiquated musical technique is also a feature of the Beatles’ “Lovely Rita” and Graham Nash’s “Sleep Song.” “Crosstown Traffic” was the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s follow-up single to “All Along the Watchtower.”
“Sweet Leaf” by Black Sabbath
Normally, a cough or clearing of the throat wouldn’t make it past the first mixing stage of a professional record. But Black Sabbath is anything but an ordinary band. So, when guitarist Tony Iommi started hacking in the studio from bandmate Ozzy Osburne’s massive doobie, they opted to keep it in. “I took a couple of puffs and nearly choked myself,” Iommi later recalled. Considering the fact that “Sweet Leaf,” the opening track off their 1971 album Master of Reality, is an obvious ode to marijuana, we’d say using Iommi’s coughing was only appropriate.
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