In an interview for the Telegraph, Nick Mason admitted that he and his companions feel mortified when they think about how much money they have made.
Nick Mason talks about keeping the band’s legacy alive as the frontman for Saucerful of Secrets (Raeder Digest)
Excerpt from the Readerdigest.co.uk, to read the full article click here.
...Dad loved cars. He was what is now called a petrol head, having an old car and racing it, and I was taken to Silverstone as a very small boy. I eventually got into motor racing and collecting classic cars, so it’s stayed with me all my life. If I had to pick one word to describe Mum it would be “patient”. A lot of dad’s work was in the summer so she was in charge of myself and my three younger sisters, with Dad being in and out whenever he could.
…We had an African drum in the house. A musician friend of my parents gave me a pair of wire brushes and that’s where my love of drumming began. I’d played a tea chest bass but the drums were a lot more fun. Then someone invented rock ‘n’ roll and the rest is history.
…Meeting Roger Walters at Regent Street polytechnic was slightly scary. It was the first day of term, when we were both studying to be architects. I suspect he was somewhere at the back being rather aloof or trying to blag a cigarette off Rick Wright.
…Someone at poly had written some songs and needed to play them for a publisher. He asked if anyone could play an instrument and Roger said he played a bit of guitar, I said I played a bit of drums and Rick played keyboards. So we learned the songs and the publisher said they were quite good but the band was truly dreadful. That set something alight in us, a sense of That’s what you think! and that led to the formation of a band that had various names—like Sigma 6, the Spectrum 5 and the Tea Set—and line-up changes before we finally became Pink Floyd.
…When our first single "Arnold Layne" was banned from the radio we were outraged. If you listen to the words now [which reference cross-dressing] it’s hardly likely to have a bad influence on the morals of young people, and what’s bizarre is that later “Walk On The Wild Side”—Lou Reed’s song that was definitely dodgy—was played on the radio. There was no logic to it.
…Jimi Hendrix was lovely man. We supported him on tour in the late Sixties and he was charming, softly-spoken and absolutely not the wild man. And through him I became friends with his drummer, Mitch Mitchell, who was a big influence on my playing.
…We were thrilled when Dave Gilmour joined the band in 1968. I knew him anyway because he was a friend of Syd and Roger’s, a great guitar player and a great singer. Syd was beginning to crumble [from drugs and mental health issues] so Dave was sort of the salvation of the group. The remarkable thing is that Syd had been front man and the main writer but within three months we simply didn’t miss him.
…We knew Dark Side of The Moon was the best thing we'd ever done. But no one ever knows, however good the work, if the public will have the same opinion. It just seems that a number of things worked with that album. The timing was right, people were interested in more complex rock music, Roger’s lyrics were written by a 23-year-old but still relevant to a 60-year-old, and the technology at Abbey Road was sensational at the time.
…I learned to fly because I was frightened of flying. I was talking to a friend of mine who runs a flying circus and is also a pilot and I said, “The only trouble with touring is having to fly”. His reply, which turned out to be the most expensive therapy on the planet, was “You need to learn to fly yourself”. My first lesson was a trip to Paris and I ended up doing five or six years flying fixed-wings before Dave Gilmour and myself shared various interesting old aeroplanes. Then he took my wife for a flight in a helicopter, she loved it and we both learned how to fly them ourselves. She does it for fun and I do it for therapy!
