Weird Tales of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason

[RonJonSurfer]

Pink Floyd Drummer Tells Tales of Feuds, Madness, Music

Mark Brown - Scripps Howard News Service

It's a tale that Pink Floyd fans have repeated over the years, wondering if it was true or not.

Founder Syd Barrett left the band in 1968 after succumbing to madness and drugs, replaced by guitarist David Gilmour. Barrett's madness was the impetus for the song cycle of "Dark Side of the Moon," Floyd's 1973 masterwork.

Bandmates Gilmour, bassist Roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Rick Wright were in a London studio working on a follow-up in 1975. That song was "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," another Floyd classic with Barrett as its subject.

As they were mixing it, a man came in and just stood there.

Eventually it dawned on the band that the man was Barrett - a pasty, heavy, shorn version of his former self, who appeared after seven years of missing in action, just as they were mixing a song about him.

Mason's new book, "Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd," confirms the story and shows fans what happened that day, with a picture of the haunted Barrett in the studio included in the book's hundreds of photos.

Fans remain fascinated with Floyd mostly for the body of musical work, including "The Wall" as one of the best-selling albums of all time. But the rifts in the band are just as fascinating, with Gilmour and Waters feuding bitterly for years over the band's name and legacy.

Mason's from-the-inside view of it all fills the 360-page coffee-table book with photos, memories and a not-sugar-coated look at the band.

As the years pass, the animosity is waning. Waters at one point refused to have anything to do with any band member. Not only did he participate in the DVD of "Dark Side of the Moon" last year, he lent his memories and reviewed Mason's manuscript.

"Because it was my version of events, I ended up running the whole manuscript past the other members of the band. They certainly were very helpful," Mason says.

He's self-deprecating in the book and he delights in deflating the myth at times.

"The band is perceived as a serious band. So I thought it was an opportunity to write a funny book about a serious band. It's something only someone inside the band can do," he says.

Interestingly enough, chronicling the band's start was easier than nailing down the band's well-documented success.

"The difficult stuff was to document the areas where either Roger and Rick were disagreeing, or when Roger was leaving, to be fair to all parties. . . . I did the best I could," he says with a chuckle.

Mason rides a fine line. There are no kiss-and-tell stories of partying, but he also is direct and pointed about what went on.

He stayed away from the more scurrilous stuff because "all the rest of the band has very good lawyers. No point in doing anything that'll bring them out of the woodwork. And the other thing is all three of them are still friends of mine. I'm certainly not interested in writing a book that would break up a 30-year-old friendship or stories that would upset them."

He's hardest on himself, criticizing his own contributions to the music.

He never kept a diary, but photos and anecdotes would spur memories.

"Funnily enough, music tended not to jog the memory at all. Whether it was the show in Idaho or the show in Seattle, it's almost indistinguishable. . . .It was much more to do with photographs that were taken backstage by people who'd worked for us over the years, really useful things that the crew had taken."

The band still has a majority-rules procedure for releasing old material. Over Waters' objections, projects like a live Wall box set have come out over the years, as well as surround-sound remix of "Dark Side of the Moon."

Producer James Guthrie is working with the band on the 5.1 remix for the DVD of Pulse, a live Floyd concert taken from the post-Waters era. A surround-sound mix of "The Wall" is long rumored, but it's not happening at the moment, Mason says.

That leads to the inevitable will-they-ever-reunite question. Rumors float every year of a Pink Floyd reunion, a prospect that is particularly exciting to fans because the band is one of the last supergroups with all four members alive and well and musically active.

"The answer is we have absolutely no plans to work together as a band in any way, shape or form. That said, as far as I'm concerned, I' d love to do it at some point. We'd just have to wait and see if it ever happens."