Floydian analysis - Will Pink Floyd return?

[Mike]

`As far as I'm concerned, we still exist.'

~Nick Mason

Drummer Nick Mason wants to set the record straight on Pink Floyd with his new book.

But what he really wants, it seems, is to tour again

PETER HOWELL

ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

NEW YORK—The coincidence is positively cosmic, although in this case it's probably better to call it Floydian.

Pink Floyd's Nick Mason strolls into the lobby of The Mercer, a hip SoHo hotel, and the burgundy shirt and black slacks he's wearing match the uniform of the waiters in the adjacent lounge.

He blends in so well with the staff, he could pick up a tray and start serving cocktails and no one would be the wiser — except for maybe the crazed fan peering through the glass from the street, with his vinyl copy of Dark Side of the Moon clutched to his chest, anxiously awaiting an autograph.

Mason, the drummer and unofficial historian for the influential band — the brand name and icon for highbrow rock — isn't the least bit bothered about blending in with the scenery. At 61, with his hair cut short and quite grey, he long ago abandoned all rock-star pretensions along with the shaggy black hair and handlebar moustache of his youth.

"If I wanted to be a rock star, I'd have done something about it years and years ago, you know?" he says, sliding into a banquette for an exclusive Canadian interview with the Star.

"I'm not a famous pop star, I'm someone who is in a famous band. And there is a difference. I think that's how we always played it. We settled absolutely into that (anonymous) groove, and we thought we were lucky to do it. And what does it matter? The only time I would ever describe myself as `Nick Mason of Pink Floyd' is when I'm doing a radio gig. The rest of the time it's just `Nick Mason, Boy Drummer.'"

He smiles at the joke. But he's not kidding about the anonymity. Pink Floyd is one of the most successful rock bands in history — Dark Side, the classic 1973 album clenched so tightly by the above fan, has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide — but the group has always been known for its sound, not its personalities. Even rock fans might have trouble naming all the members of the Floyd, which besides Mason include guitarist/vocalist (and unofficial leader) David Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright.

Hovering in the wings are the two black sheep of the Floyd story, bassist/vocalist Roger Waters (he quit the band in 1985 and still feuds with Gilmour, but is still involved in major decisions) and guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett (fired in 1969 for aberrant behaviour later diagnosed as mental illness, the impetus for the Wish You Were Here album).

The groupthink of the Floyd has historically been so strong, it's something of a head-rattler to see Mason doing a one-man world tour promoting not a new album, but rather a coffee-table book called Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Orion, $60). It's a superbly written story, rare for rock tomes, told from the generous and self-deprecating perspective of the quiet man behind the monster drum kit. He also happens to be the only member of Pink Floyd who has been there through all of its personnel changes.

If he'd had his druthers, Mason would have been a contributor to an official band biography. Even better, he'd be out promoting a new Floyd studio album and tour, which the world hasn't seen for more than a decade, even as the band's legend has continued to grow. Such current bands as Radiohead, Coldplay, Sigur Rós, The Secret Machines and countless others are all children of Pink Floyd.

But with the band currently on hiatus, awaiting the muse to strike the recalcitrant Gilmour, the quiet man decided to take matters into his own hands. He decided to go the solo route with the book because it was faster than trying to seek out "the agreed-upon story on every subject."

Still, much agreement was needed and proffered. Mason's innate sense of fair play and diplomacy — he refers to himself only half in jest as "the Henry Kissinger of the group," dating himself with a memory of when Kissinger was considered a peacemaker — prompted him to confer censor's rights upon Gilmour, Waters and Wright. They were allowed to read and red-pencil Inside Out prior to publication, an invitation Waters took up all too eagerly (he dismissed as "bollocks" parts of an earlier draft of the book).

"I have the advantage and disadvantage that I get on with everyone still," Mason says.

"I talk to Roger, David and Rick. And I don't want to do a book that upsets one of them so much and one of them feels so marginalized by it that the equilibrium is upset. I worked quite hard at that. Because at the end of the day I'm trying to tell the readers something about what they want to know, bearing in mind that I want to retain the friendships with the rest of the band."

Despite its collegial tone, Inside Out is chock full of the kind of revelations that could hit Floyd freaks like an acid flashback. Mason describes in fascinating detail the inspiration and perspiration that went into the creation of such Floyd landmark albums as The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), Atom Heart Mother (1970), Meddle (1971), Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and the two most recent works, made without Waters (who threatened to sue them over it), A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994).

Mason talks about such Floyd arcana as the giant inflatable pig that was hoisted over a London power station for the Animals album cover (interfering with aircraft landing at nearby Heathrow Airport), which became a mainstay for subsequent tours by the band. He details the ups and downs of the fabulously creative but insanely expensive brief tour behind The Wall, which involved erecting a stadium-sized white-brick structure and a "shadow band" to play Pink Floyd in effigy.

He sadly recalls the necessity of sacking Barrett, so much a part of the band's image in its original '60s incarnation, after he fell prey to the psychedelic drugs of the era; and the bitter battle with Waters in 1985, when the mercurial bassist demanded complete control and the firing of the timid Wright, gaining both before finally leaving the group himself. (Wright later rejoined the group.)

The book is also loaded with unseen photographs of the extended Floyd family at work and play, the latter including a 1967 romp on the beach at St. Tropez in which the band's loyal lighting man Peter Watts holds his baby daughter, whom we now know as the actress Naomi Watts.

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`As far as I'm concerned, we still exist.'

Nick Mason

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Mason reveals himself to have a keen memory, putting the lie to the old joke that if you can remember the '60s, you weren't there.

"Funnily enough, I think the early stuff is fairly easy to remember. Perhaps because there's less of it, perhaps because it's a bit more crystallized in the mind because it's so important. The first American tour is actually much easier to remember that the tenth."

He is self-critical almost to a fault about his drumming style, which despite his mammoth drum kit — his kit list for the 1994 tour included 30 drums, 40 cymbals, 20 pads, one gong and one division bell — is far more melodic than the typical rock basher.

"I think when you've got that sort of multi-layering of sound, you probably are better off with a drummer like me who is looking for spaces rather than things to hit, because it just works better with the music."

Mason owns up to numerous regrets, including the wish that 1980's The Wall tour had done more than just New York, London and Los Angeles (it was just too bloody expensive), and that the band had toured more in general during the 1970s and early 1980s, when it was at its creative peak.

He also feels the group did a fair bit of wheel-spinning creatively prior to its 1973 breakout with The Dark Side of the Moon, which also benefited from the iconic prism imagery by the band's visual mastermind, the artist Storm Thorgerson, who has lately suffered from ill health.

But most of all, perhaps, Mason seems to regret the current inertia of Pink Floyd, which for the past decade has simply contented itself to put out greatest hits collections and reissues of back catalogue, rather than record new material or tour like a rock band should.

It's clear from listening to Mason in the interview, and from the questions he's received from fans during months of bookstore meet-and-greets for Inside Out (Toronto isn't on the itinerary yet; maybe later this year), that he's restless and raring to go.

He refuses to think of Pink Floyd in the past tense, even though many people seem to assume the group is finished.

"As far as I'm concerned, we still exist," Mason says firmly.

"If there's some sort of official recognition that we don't, if Dave says, `Right, never again,' then maybe it's never again. But we are still active in terms of revitalizing some of the old stuff." (Watch for a DVD release of PULSE — a concert recording released on VHS in 1995 — soon and a rarities anthology further down the road.)

"I suppose the truth of the matter is that I live in hope. I'm definitely not going to be the one that declares no sign of life."

One of the revelations of Inside Out is the lack of communication between the various band members. Even when they were all getting along well, they never really spoke with one another.

"I suppose we didn't talk in the American sense that we didn't actually have a way of addressing our real feelings," Mason explains. "Actually, we're all reasonably articulate. We would talk, but we never really got to grips with how we all felt about each other, in a way of trying to be constructive rather than just trying to piss people off."

Hardest of all is trying to persuade Gilmour to get out of his luxury houseboat and hit the road.

"Dave does not like being pushed. The line I've used on this tour is you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink — and Dave you can't even get to the water."

But Mason is keeping his fingers crossed that Pink Floyd might yet make new music and yet again tour — maybe in a year or so, after Gilmour finishes a solo project he's working on. The quiet man has heard that the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney are planning to hit the road this year.

"I'd love to go out and compete with them. Because I think we could do really well. The technology exists now to do fantastic shows. And I think also, particularly as some of the other (bands) are beginning to pull away from the big show, I think we could actually get in there and knock their socks off."

Might the porker fly again? Stranger things have been known to happen, especially for Pink Floyd.

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[Aunt_Acid]

Poor Rick Wright. Nobody knows who he is. I saw a site talking about other members in comparison to Syd Barret once, and he said "Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and that other guy" I feel like Rick Wright's my little boy, and I'm excited for him when he makes an accomplishment. I felt like a proud father when I found out he wrote Us And Them and Great Gig In The Sky.