Nick Mason > Quotes

“Въпреки че притежавахме забележителната способност да се вбесяваме и тревожим взаимно с абсолютно безизразни физиономии, ние никога не развихме умението да разговаряме помежду си за важните въпроси. След „The Dark Side of the Moon” се наблюдаваше отявлената тенденция да се критикуваме жестоко един друг и да приемаме критиките още по-зле. Мнозина смятат, че Роджър се наслаждава на конфронтацията, но аз не мисля, че случаят е такъв. Според мен Роджър често не осъзнава колко много притеснява хората и веднъж, щом сметне, че конфронтацията е необходима, е толкова непреклонно решен да победи, че влага всичко от себе си в свадата , а неговото „всичко” може да бъде доста плашещо. Ако погледнем на нещата от добрата им страна, това е огромно преимущество, когато играе голф, тенис или покер... Дейвид от друга страна може и да не е толкова заплашителен на пръв поглед, но щом веднъж реши какъв курс на действие да предприеме, трудно може да бъде отклонен. Когато неговата неподвижна устойчивост се срещна с всепомитащата енергия на Роджър, стана очевидно, че предстояха проблеми.

Защо бяхме готови да се примирим с това, което приличаше на преврат от страна на Роджър? Приемахме много неща като неизбежни, а сега, когато се обърна назад, това ми се струва безсмислено. Подобно малодушно примирение може да е било резултат от постепенните промени в структурата на групата през изминалото десетилетие. Може би, недостатъчно уверен в способностите си на композитор, Дейвид е смятал, че ако се противопоставим на тези промени, рискуваме за загубим Роджър и да се окажем неспособни да продължим напред. Или след напускането на Рик може би сме се страхували да не бъдем маргинализирани и в последствие изхвърлени един по един. Боли ме да го призная, но каквито и да бяха причините, тенденцията Роджър да бъде сочен с пръст като злодея, ако и да е съблазнителна, вероятно не е справедлива.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Беше фантастично да свиря отново с останалите – Рик наслояваше уникалните си текстури, Дейвид беше надежден както винаги, перфектно точен и лиричен, а Роджър редеше онези познати басови мотиви и съкровени текстове, докато езикът на тялото му подсказваше, че той се наслаждава истински. Цялото изпълнение беше стегнато и овладяно, и ние успяхме да потушим превъзбудата си от важността на събитието, като за щастие се възпряхме да не извикаме „Здравей, Лондон!” Но премерените думи на Роджър преди „Wish You Were Here”, в които той спомена Сид, осигуриха достатъчно смислен контакт с публиката.

След финалния поклон се отправихме зад сцената, където избликнаха много неприкрити емоции, свързани с шоуто, но се радвам да доложа, че тъй като сме истински войници, и четиримата демонстрирахме типичния си непроницаем стоицизъм, изключващ навлажнените очи – част от традицията на „Пинк Флойд”...”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“По мое мнение няма една-единствена причина, а няколко фактора, които действаха заедно и увеличаваха ефекта . Първопричината – която важи за всеки велик албум – е силата на песните. „Dark Side” съдържа силни песни с мощно внушение. Общата идея, която свързва тези песни – напрежението на съвременния живот – намери универсален отклик и продължава да пленява въображението. Текстовете имаха дълбочина и резонанс, към който хората лесно можеха да се съотнесат, бяха достатъчно ясни и прости, за да ги разбират тези, за които английският не е майчин език и това може и да е било фактор за международния успех на албума. А качеството на музиката, придадено от китарата и гласа на Дейвид и клавира на Рик утвърди фундаменталния звук на „Пинк Флойд”.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“David, on the other hand, may not be so initially alarming, but once decided on a course of action is hard to sway. When his immovable object met Roger’s irresistible force, difficulties were guaranteed to follow.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Many fine keyboard players could and did emulate and recreate his parts, but nobody else other than Rick had the ability to create them in the first place.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“The Wall as a piece represents large amount of material spread across a range of media: the record, the concerts – enhanced with film, stage effects an props – and a movie. This has been Roger’s intention from the outset. He had already shown his fondness for exploring the possibilities of multimedia, but the Wall took things considerable further. The whole project also covered a large amount of time, a period of work that actually lasted from mid-1978, when Roger was creating the initial version, until 1982, with the release of the movie.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Когато двамата с Линди решихме да се преместим от Камдън в Хайгейт, отидох при банковия си мениджър, за да поискам краткосрочен заем. Той ме попита какво мога да предложа като гаранция. Казах му : „Ами имам албум номер едно в Америка”. Той не остана особено впечатлен и каза, че му трябва нещо по-конкретно...”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Bernie Ecclestone’s comment that ‘If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“The album feels much more home-made, very much as a band playing together in one space. I think that Rick in particular felt significantly more integrated in the process this time, compared to Momentary Lapse. It was nice to have him back.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“Clearly, our communication skills were still troublingly nonexistent. We left the restaurant with diametrically opposed views of what had been decided.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“That complexity may only have been ‘quiet, loud, quiet, loud again’, but at a time when most rock bands only had two volume settings – painfully loud and really, really painfully loud – this was groundbreaking stuff.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“I had dinner one night with Roger, who said that he would settle for being released from Steve’s contract. Unfortunately, Steve was a significant part of our enterprise and I think we felt that we were bound together, perhaps more than necessary. Part of the problem was that nothing was written down. There was a verbal agreement – just as binding as a written one, so the lawyers tell us – between Steve and the band, which meant that any actions by one individual had to be ratified by the rest of us. Discussions were muddied by a lack of understanding, certainly by me, of what the implications really were – as a result the issues remained unclear and any trust uncertain. In retrospect, we should have settled with Roger then and there.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“much of an anticlimax. Miming feels pretty daft at the”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“Whatever bond Rick had enjoyed with Roger in the previous fifteen or so years was terminally broken, and Rick’s downfall was swift. Steve was happily cruising to America on the QE2 when he was called by Roger and told to have Rick out of the band by the time Roger arrived in LA, where the album was due to be mixed.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“In fact, I found myself overwhelmed by the computers on this record. I hadn’t played seriously for four years and didn’t even like the sound or feel of my own playing. Perhaps I had been demoralised by the conflict with Roger. Certainly I ended up struggling to play some parts satisfactorily. With time pressure on, I surrendered a number of parts to some of the best session players in Los Angeles, including Jim Keltner and Carmine Appice – an odd feeling, a bit like handing your car over to Michael Schumacher. This was not only a defeatist attitude, but meant I then had to learn the damn drum part to play it live (an experience to file under ‘never ever again’).”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“It was a pity that before I’d even started work on The Final Cut, Roger felt it necessary to announce aggressively that since whatever I did ‘was drumming’, I couldn’t claim either extra royalties or credit for any of this work. This really did seem like behaviour beginning to border on the megalomaniac, particularly since I posed no threat to his plans. I decided to look on the bright side: at least it was a way of escaping from the fraught atmosphere in the studio.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“No more hired guns; just David, Rick and myself, with the engineer at the desk, a two-track left running – and as much time as we needed. Although bitter experience had taught us to be prepared for disappointment, and though there was no pressure to come up with anything concrete at these sessions, the very fact of booking the studio was an indication of our commitment.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“We also used a Mellotron, with its weird fluxing tape loops of string sounds, which the Musician’s Union were up in arms about, as they thought it would mark the end of live string players. The instrument now seems so quaint it feels as though it should be in a museum alongside the serpent and crumhorn, but its sound is so distinctive it is now digitally re-created in soundboxes with all its imperfections part of the continuing charm.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd was unfashionably outgoing; my enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Within a couple of years, I had gravitated towards a group of friends from the neighbourhood who had also discovered rock ’n’ roll, and it seemed an excellent idea to put a band together. The fact that none of us knew how to play was only a minor setback, since we didn’t have any instruments.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Live At Pompeii had turned out to be a surprisingly good attempt to film our live set a year or so before. We had been approached by the director Adrian Maben, whose idea was to shoot us playing in the empty amphitheatre beneath Vesuvius. Adrian described the concept of the movie as ‘an anti-Woodstock film, where there would be nobody present, and the music and the silence and the empty amphitheatre would mean as much as, if not more than, a crowd of thousands’. Opening and closing the set with ‘Echoes’, we played as if to an audience, intercut with shots of bubbling, steaming and flowing lava, or of the band stalking across the volcanic landscape. At a time when rock films were either straight concert footage or attempts to copy A Hard Day’s Night, the idea was appealing.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“could not continue with Syd in this state, coupled to which it just was not fun any more – and doubtless no fun for Syd either. We did not want to lose Syd. He was our songwriter, singer, guitarist, and – although you might not have known from our less than sympathetic treatment of him – he was our friend.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“Regrettably these tapes still exist.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Roger and I constructed the tape loop for ‘Money’ in our home studios and then took it in to Abbey Road. I had drilled holes in old pennies and then threaded them on to strings; they gave one sound on the loop of seven. Roger had recorded coins swirling around in the mixing bowl Judy used for her pottery, the tearing paper effect was created very simply in front of a microphone and the faithful sound library supplied the cash registers. Each sound was first measured out on the tape with a ruler before being cut to the same length and then carefully spliced together.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“Steve came from a very different background to the band. His father Tommy was a fisherman on the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland; when the great American documentary maker Robert Flaherty made his film Man of Aran about life on the islands in the 1930s, Steve’s father was one of the featured characters.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“I still find it hard to really cover some of the events of this period properly. Roger was probably still my closest friend, and we were able to enjoy each other’s company. But our friendship was increasingly put under strain as Roger struggled to modify what had been an ostensibly democratic band into the reality of one with a single leader.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition):

“There was, though, a sharp divide between classical and pop in the upper echelons; although the pop releases were subsidising the classical recordings, the staff who created them were treated like other ranks by the top brass. The chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, must take a lot of credit for bringing down this antiquated hierarchy. To put things in context, two years before he joined EMI, the board had decided there was ‘no future’ in the long-playing record.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“Years before MTV, the system was for a band to appear on one of the celebrity shows then current. The presenter, usually a popular singer of a certain age anxious to extend his career, would sing a couple of numbers, and then bring guests on to chat, with musical interludes from the likes of us. With Syd approaching a catatonic state, you might think this was not a recipe for success, and you’d be right.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“In his autobiography, Is That It?, Bob also tells the story of one scene in the film in which an American actress, keen on method acting, had to show that she was frightened of Pink. She asked Alan Parker what her motivation for doing this was. Alan sighed and told her, ‘The money’.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

“One still unused experiment from this time was an exploration of backward vocals. A phrase written out backwards letter for letter and then read out will not sound correct when reversed, but a spoken phrase recorded and played backwards can be learnt and recited. This gives a very odd effect when it is in turn played backwards. ‘Neeagadelouff’ was one I remember: it should come out as ‘fooled again’.”
― Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd