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Nick Mason on the Pink Floyd feud: ‘I’m not Henry Kissinger – I’m more Neville Chamberlain’

Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright
Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright

If Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason gets to number one this week with his band Saucerful of Secrets, he is planning a celebration. “Oh, we’re going to have a wild party,” he declares. “We’re going to have all five members of the band, and then we’re going to have a guest. What we can’t decide is should we have a celebrity, or should we just get someone who could make sandwiches?”

Mason chuckles down the phone from his palatial Grade II listed Georgian home in Wiltshire (“the obligatory house in the country”) where he has spent the pandemic months. These are strange times. He should have been out on tour, promoting his concert movie and double album, Live At The Roundhouse. “Everything stopped. Who knows when we can get back to playing live? It seems entirely predicated on a vaccine coming along.”

He jokes that, in the future, every gig might have to be like the 1972 Pink Floyd film, Live At Pompeii, in which the band performed amidst Roman ruins with no audience. “Maybe we will get used to it, a bit like soccer games with no crowds. It's hard to get your head around it.”

But now, having postponed his tour to next year (“Whether those dates will really happen, I have no idea”) and finally released his film and album, the Floyd faithful have responded enthusiastically, buying enough copies to put a live prog rock album in a race for the number one spot with US pop diva Ava Max. “I’m bemused and delighted,” he admits. “When we kicked off the Saucers, it was pretty casual, just a bunch of mates playing music together. There was no auditioning process, it was who’d volunteer? Very much the same way Pink Floyd first got together. It sounded like a fun idea and we thought we’d sort it out from there.”

Our first interview took place in March, with album and tour scheduled for April amidst looming Covid uncertainty. We met in Mason’s colourful north London office, packed with memorabilia from his life as a professional musician and amateur motor racing enthusiast. A red Formula One Ferarri was parked on the first floor, in front of shelves of books and a pinball machine. “You can take racing cars to pieces,” he points out. “Get the wheels off, all the body work comes off, the engine comes out. So getting it in here was a four hour job, not a week’s work.”

Sir Elton John once joked that the worst job in the world for a musician would be drummer in Pink Floyd. The old trouper was not denigrating their music so much as the lack of it. As a founding member, Mason has played on all 15 Floyd albums and every live show since 1967, but it hasn’t exactly been a demanding schedule.

The fractious group stopped touring in 1994 and made their final bow at Live8 in 2005. It was still a little scratchy in places but the fact that we could do something for the right reasons, and do it together, was terrific.” It effectively involved a temporary ceasefire between Pink Floyd’s warring parties, bassist, vocalist and lyricist Roger Waters with guitarist and lead vocalist David Gilmour. Mason, though, has somehow maintained good relations with both.

“I’m not Henry Kissinger. I'm more Neville Chamberlain,” jokes Mason, who has a very dry, understated sense of humour. “Non-confrontational, keep your head down, tin helmet on. I do get a bit between David and Roger when they’re arguing about stuff. I can’t explain the endless conflict. It is to do with people holding rather entrenched views about what’s important. Roger doesn’t have the same respect for guitar playing and singing that he does for writing. That seems to me to be where it all hinges.

“But I like and admire both of them. I consider myself very lucky to have been part of a band which did so much good work. And perhaps some of the best of it wouldn’t have happened if it had all been sweetness and light, but it’s a shame now not to be able to go out and celebrate.”

Roger Waters and Nick Mason - David Parry
Roger Waters and Nick Mason - David Parry

Mason’s post Floyd musical career has been fitful at best. “I’m not really a songwriter. And who wants a two-hour drum solo?” But he has missed performing. “I sometimes pick up the sticks for what I’d laughingly call practice. Which means sitting at the drum kit thinking about things, then getting up and doing something else.”

Saucerful of Secrets started as a playful idea with his friends Guy Pratt (regular bassist for later Floyd and solo Gilmour projects) and Blockheads guitarist Lee Harris. Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, a lifelong prog rock fan, volunteered himself, and has been a revelation as lead guitarist, playing with a virtuoso swagger that little in his New Romantic back catalogue might have suggested.

“It was a nice surprise for all of us,” says Mason. “Gary’s a friend. I didn’t ask him because I’m mad about Tony Hadley. It was more, oh, do you want to have a go?” Kemp, Pratt and Harris share the vocals of Gilmour, Waters and the late Syd Barret. The only specific recruit was keyboard player Dom Beken, to fulfil the role of the late Rick Wright. “We sometimes neglect how important Rick was to our sound, which, in a way, The Endless River (a final 2014 Floyd album using Wright’s last recordings) was intended to address. Dom worked with Rick, so he has a very good sense of how Rick plays.”

Pink Floyd's final live show in 1995 - Eagle Rock
Pink Floyd's final live show in 1995 - Eagle Rock

Named after the second Pink Floyd album, Saucerful of Secrets play material from the early albums, focusing on the original and more experimental Floyd before they developed the epic gravitas of 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. “I’d rather not venture into that territory, because there is an expectation of doing it just like the records.”

He compares it to tribute band The Australian Pink Floyd. “They’re very good but they copy everything exactly. If I dropped my stick during a take, they’d do it.” Mason wanted something more free flowing, recreating the garage band energy of early Floyd. “The drum fills never have to be same for me. There’s always a better one and I like to be able to try and find it.” Mason pulls out a letter from a devoted fan, enquiring why he played an extra two beats on the hi-hat during Saucerful of Secret’s version of 1967 single Arnold Layne. “That’s what you’re up against.”

The sound conjured by Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets is immense, mesmerising and still deeply strange, bending the formats of primal rock into all kind of weird and wonderful shapes, from the pop eccentricity of See Emily Play to the blazing psychedelic warps of Interstellar Overdrive and Astronomy Dominie and music hall wackiness of Point Me at the Sky.

“I’ll tell you what, I still don’t quite understand how we got to that point of such free experimentation,” admits Mason. Pink Floyd started playing together when Mason, Waters and Wright were architectural students. “We thought of ourselves as an R’n’B band, playing hits. It was just a bit of fun.”

They started to develop in more interesting directions when Mason’s childhood friend Barrett joined on guitar in 1965 and began writing original material and introducing long solos. “We were floundering around. We wanted to be a pop group. We wanted to meet girls and have a wild time and be famous. I think we jumped on the bandwagon. All of those A&R guys at record companies were searching for the next big thing, and it looked like it was a toss up between psychedelic music and reggae. And you should hear us play reggae. So, so bad.”

Pretty in pink: Pink Floyd - Getty
Pretty in pink: Pink Floyd - Getty

It was not, initially, a very fruitful avenue. “The interesting thing is how unpopular we were with our funny old psychedelic music. We used to go up north and the crowds would boo. They hated us. I can’t understand why we didn’t just fold it there and then.” He speculates that a confluence between a growing hippy alternative community in west London and the opening up of a new university gig circuit around the country kept them on track. “The social secretaries were people like Richard Branson and Harvey Goldsmith, and it gave us an audience that hadn’t existed before.”

He says even in the early days, Floyd's music was only ever an approximation of psychedelic drug experiences. “Roger says the audiences were stoned and we were drunk, which is roughly true.” Barret was the only LSD user in the group. "Syd probably put us all off the idea of LSD full stop. He was a lovely guy when I first met him and a burnt out guy when we lost him."

Barret became increasingly mentally incapacitated and was effectively replaced by his friend Gilmour for the making of Floyd’s second album. “Saucerful of Secrets is probably my favourite Floyd album. It was an exciting period. It marks Roger’s arrival as a writer, really getting his teeth into the job, and David as a player. Jugband Blues is a really poignant goodbye to Syd. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is still one of my favourite tracks to play. The album itself is a statement of intent, mapping out where we could go.”

It is fertile ground that he would like to be able to keep exploring. “There’s a lot of lovely material from that period that is by far the least overworked. Of course, I listen back to the albums for reference. Sometimes I go, ‘how did I do that?’ More often it’s ‘why the f*** did I do that?’”

Technical over physical: Nick Mason
Technical over physical: Nick Mason

At 76, Mason looks fit and healthy. “I’ve never been the most physical drummer. You can use different techniques to get the same results.” He recalls a post gig conversation with Taylor Hawkins, the energetic drummer with Foo Fighters. “I said to him, I think you’ve played more beats in that show than I’ve done in my entire life.”

Mason’s net worth has been estimated at £75 million. “Our rock generation was more than blessed. I think we all get a little embarrassed about the wealth we have. And how we use it. My carbon footprint is appalling. I am reconsidering some of it.”

He is concerned about the next generation of music makers and devotes some time to his role as co-founder and chairman of music lobbying trade body, Featured Artists Coalition. “I don’t think Covid’s going to kill music off. We will find ways of socially distanced playing. But the hardest hit of all are the young bands who normally play in small venues. It was always tough to make it in music, but it’s even harder now.”

In the meantime, there is always something to keep him occupied. “It’s been a bit odd lately, but its not often I wake up and think I’ve got nothing to do today. I’m thinking of writing a cookbook. I’ve got the title.”

Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets?  “Oh no,” he smiles. “Dark Side of the Spoon.”

Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets: Live at the Roundhouse is out now on Sony