Inside Out

by Nick Mason

  What was clear to me was that David had perfectly good reasons for not wanting to regroup for Live 8. The band was not in a working state, and he’d spent the last few years working on his own solo projects. He knew that if we did play, everybody, including the record company, the press and our fans, would be clamouring for us to release some new product and announce a tour. From his point of view the timing was exquisitely poor – and so, in the light of subsequent events, I think that his was the greatest sacrifice.

  Bob asked if I could help broker a deal with David. I said no, simply because I thought that adding my voice to the swell might not sway him – in fact, it might have completely the opposite effect. As I later remarked, you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink; in David’s case you can’t even get him near the water. However, bringing the Waters to David might just work…

  I felt I had to do something, at any rate mention the idea to Roger. However, I did not want Roger to think I was using our recently re-established friendship to start calling in favours. Caution was called for. I e-mailed Roger and made the most diffident of references to Bob wanting us to help him in his endeavours to save the planet. If Roger didn’t reply, so be it. At least I had given it my best, if rather feeble, shot.

  Roger e-mailed me straight back, asking what Bob wanted us to do. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure,’ I replied, reverting to the same mixture of duplicity and diplomacy that had marked our first conversation in the Regent Street Poly over forty years earlier. So Roger rang Bob. Despite the distractions of Bob’s domestic life rumbling in the background, Roger managed to establish that Bob wanted us to re-form. Then the Geldof household took precedence again, and Bob said he’d have to call Roger back.

  Roger was immediately positive about the idea of playing together again for an event that was politically in tune with his own sentiments, especially as Bob’s intention was not to raise funds but to hoist a massive, global rallying cry and send a clear message about needless poverty to the leaders due to attend the G8 summit at Gleneagles.

  By the time Bob rang Roger again, two and a half weeks had elapsed. Roger asked Bob the date of the Live 8 concert and was suddenly struck by the fact that it was less than a month away: there was no more time for reflection. He offered to make the ultimate gesture and place a call to David. ‘Hello,’ Roger said when he got through, ‘I think we should do this.’ David was still uncertain, worried that his voice and guitar parts would be too rusty, an idea that Roger was quick to counter. David asked for some time to ponder the matter. Twenty-four hours later he had successfully pondered.

  Thus it was that, one Friday in June, barely three weeks before the event, David called Bob, Roger and me to say ‘Let’s do it.’ To all of us it was clear that since Live 8 was about increasing awareness, the re-forming of Pink Floyd would bring more attention to the event, although Roger made it adamantly clear that, whatever else, he was not prepared to be a support act for the Spice Girls or an ABBA tribute band. Despite this, Bob was moved to describe Roger as a great diplomat – this really was breaking new ground.

  However, there was still one more person who had to agree. Rick had not been party to these early negotiations since they mainly concerned Roger and David, but it was imperative that he be part of any re-forming of the band. If we were going to do it, we were going to do it properly. Rick said yes unprompted, although there may have been a slight quiver of alarm in his voice at the prospect of voluntarily re-entering what had once, for him, been something of a gladiatorial arena.

  By Sunday the news had officially broken after weeks of the rumour mill working harder than an Italian waiter’s pepper grinder. David issued a statement in which he said, quite rightly, that ‘any squabbles Roger and the band have had in the past are so petty in this context’. Roger, responding to suggestions that this was merely an excuse for some geriatric rock musicians to promote their back catalogue said, with glee, ‘The cynics will scoff. Screw ’em!’

  The headline writers had a field day. Hatchets were buried. Loggerheads were prised apart. And pigs that could fly were suddenly breeding all across the broadsheets and a tabloid or two. Richard Curtis got in touch to suggest that if the band could agree on a set list, then surely the G8 summit could agree on a practical commitment to resolving Africa’s problems.

  For some reason our internal difficulties, really no different from those of many other bands, had been built up into a mythical representation of rock’n’roll’s greatest feud. Having lived through it, I can honestly relate (and hope that Inside Out has reflected this), that it was not actually World War III, or if it was, I’d have to say I think I had quite a good war.

  I was amused by a spoof piece by Toby Moore in The Times that gave readers ‘an exclusive peek’ inside the rehearsals, each of us sitting in the studio as a row of lawyers conferred over whether an F sharp could or could not be included. And I liked a line that he attributed to me, saying that rock’n’roll was all about ‘rows, recriminations and lawyers’. One paper also reported that Syd’s sister Rosemary had asked him what he thought about the reunion. She remarked he had not reacted at all. ‘He’s no longer Syd,’ she said. ‘He’s Roger now.’

  Once the decision was in place, one of our first tasks was to decide what to play. Initially Roger and David discussed this, with some input from Bob. I did suggest that the numbers we played should be the slower ones…

  With ten days to go, the four of us convened at the Connaught Hotel in London to make the final choice. It was a remarkably businesslike meeting. We were doubtless all on our best behaviour and quickly got down to discussing what had to be done, although, as ever, we were able to draw on a deep well of longstanding band jokes to dispel any tension.

  We had brought along a selection of video tapes – some from Roger’s shows, the rest from the last Pink Floyd tours – for use in the show. Unable to break the habit of a lifetime, we felt a little extra tweaking was required, which meant I was able to sit with Roger in an edit suite selecting sequences to accompany the set. It reminded me of how much I enjoy the way Roger likes to work. Under pressure, no time was wasted, but although Roger kept a sense of clarity about what he wanted, he was still able to take on board other ideas if it looked like they would work.

  We had agreed to rehearse over a three-day period at Black Island and to invite Tim Renwick and Jon Carin to play – a neat link back to the original Live Aid when Jon had been in Bryan Ferry’s band with David. Dick Parry brought along his sax, and we were joined by Carol Kenyon as a backing singer on ‘Comfortably Numb’. We had also managed to bring together a team of longtime collaborators and crew, including Phil Taylor (our longest-serving NCO), my drum tech Clive Brooks, Roger’s guitar tech Colin Lyon, Andy Jackson at the mixing desk and James Guthrie, looking after the sound for television. We were all a little older and maybe a tad wiser, and we even managed to have some healthily creative differences of opinion about how pieces should be played without hitting the self-destruct button. A frisson of tension did occur when Rick was talking about a particular bassline that Guy Pratt had used on one of the previous tours (Guy married Rick’s daughter Gala shortly after the Division Bell tour). Roger, hearing this, announced, ‘Rick, what you and your son-in-law get up to in private is none of my business…’

  On the eve of the Live 8 show we gathered at Hyde Park. In the area immediately in front of the main stage, scattered knots of event staff, security, band members and their families watched Madonna work out her white-clad ensemble. I was also pleased to notice my two boys, Guy and Cary, grinning back at me from up on stage, obviously showing early promise in the art of bluffing their way past security. As dusk fell, and with individual sound checks complete, we began to play our set. The rehearsal ran fairly smoothly, although there was, I must confess, a certain level of instability in the drum department. However, like all good dress rehearsals, this left plenty of room for improvement on the night.

  Come Saturday, 2nd July, we knew we
were going to be on late – it was clear that it would be a physical impossibility for the show to run on schedule – so we had planned to head down to Hyde Park for five or six o’clock. On reflection, it seemed absurd to miss the opening of such a significant occasion, and I think we all turned up in time for the kick-off. I headed out front to watch Paul McCartney and U2 perform ‘Sgt Pepper’ and even as a fully paid-up, jaded and jaundiced veteran of the music business, was moved by the power and strength of what was happening both on stage and in the audience.

  Backstage the shortage of dressing rooms meant each one only became free an hour or so before each artist was due on stage, which excluded any diva-like excesses. We were able to do some media interviews and push the message of what Live 8 was about, all of which helped me feel that we had made the right decision to reconvene; in the absence of any jugglers or fire-eaters, we provided the necessary ‘novelty act’ that might just make the audience wonder ‘What on earth made them do it?’ and reflect on the real message of the cause.

  Our slot moved ever backward, as an overcast sky gave way to a shepherd’s delight sunset. By the time we hit the stage at eleven o’clock, we had drawn on all our communal experience of waiting, adrenalin bubbling underneath while nervousness crept stealthily in. But once the tape of the heartbeat for ‘Breathe’ started in the pitch black arena I was already relaxing, easing into being part of a band, rather than concentrating on audience numbers.

  It was fantastic to be playing with the others again – Rick layering in his unique textures, David as reliable as ever, pitch-perfect and lyrical, and Roger delivering those familiar bass patterns and personal lyrics with body language that told me he was really enjoying himself. The whole set felt tight and contained and we managed to keep a lid on any over-excitement despite the importance of the event, thankfully restraining ourselves from hollering ‘Hello London!’ However, Roger’s more measured words before ‘Wish You Were Here’, mentioning Syd, ensured that we did make some meaningful contact with the audience.

  After our final bow, we headed backstage where there was plenty of undisguised emotion on show, but I am delighted to report that, great troopers that we are, the four of us displayed that inscrutable and dry-eyed stoicism that is part of a fine Pink Floyd tradition…

  And there for now the story must pause. The allegedly impossible had come to pass, and we genuinely felt we had all made the best contribution we could have done to support Bob’s vision, passion and mission.

  Before our Live 8 reunion, Roger had already made his own distinctive contribution to this book. Towards the end of its gestation, after he had finished reading the manuscript, we met up in a London hotel to talk through his comments. He had gone to a lot of trouble to make corrections, and to question some of my interpretations and emphases. These observations had been made in green ink, and as he flipped through the pages I was occasionally alarmed to see sections where the use of green ink was remarkably liberal. On one page Roger had simply scrawled ‘Bollocks’ across the whole text. However, after our session on the book, we were still feeling sociable enough to go out for a convivial dinner with my wife Nettie and Roger’s girlfriend Laurie, where who should we run into but Gerry Scarfe, who crept up behind Roger and placed his hands… Oh no, not again.

  David must frequent the same stationer’s as Roger, as his comments were also made with a green highlighter, and he had taken equal care over the exercise. In David’s case I particularly appreciated his comments as I know he has always had reservations about any one of us attempting to write a history of the band, since none of us can have been present at every decisive or creative moment in a history, and so it can never be definitive. I have done my best to capture the mood of each period, and although I have tried to be even-handed I know that most moments are inevitably coloured by my own feelings of joy, sadness or fatigue.

  Rick also added his comments, faxed from a yacht in the Caribbean. I was particularly intrigued to find that after all these years he was finally able to reveal the real reason he had refused to give Roger his cigarettes when we were at the Poly. First of all, Rick said, Roger had been somewhat aggressive in asking for them – little surprise there. But worse, having secured possession of the cigarettes, Roger had taken the packet and ripped off the cellophane protecting it, which Rick was zealous in keeping intact.

  And there is Syd. Or, as I now must write, there was Syd. When I was writing this book, I just did not feel it right to try and contact Syd. He had had his own life for a very long time, and to burst through his door in Cambridge waving my text in his face would have been extremely invasive and unfair. After Syd’s death on 7th July 2006, I wrote a few lines about him for Time magazine, and I include from the briefest of obituaries these words in tribute: ‘Syd was the nucleus that created Pink Floyd. Although the band continued and grew after he had gone, my own view is that in a business that makes the theory of chaos look like a Machiavellian strategy, without his initial influence, the odds are that none of us might have found our way into the music business and Pink Floyd in any form would simply not have existed.’

  There seemed far too little time to recover after Syd’s death before Rick died, just over two years later, in September 2008. Rick had not been well for some time, but the news was no less shocking. What I felt most was the sense of imbalance caused by his loss. Rick perhaps never received the credit – both inside and outside the band – that he deserved for his talents, but the distinctive, floating textures and colours he brought into the mix were absolutely critical to what people recognise as the sound of Pink Floyd. Musically he knitted us all together. His approach to playing was genuinely unique: he once summed up his musical philosophy by saying ‘technique is so secondary to ideas’. 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.

  His memorial service was held at the Notting Hill Theatre. It was a wonderful send-off to a friend who had been part of my life for more than four decades, and an event that induced a feeling of enjoyment, rather than sadness, both socially, with so many familiar faces there, and musically. Jeff Beck played a beautiful, unaccompanied guitar solo, the more beautiful for being unexpected, and Dave and I performed Rick’s ‘Remember a Day’ for the first time in nearly forty years. Rick had said he wanted a party that was not too formal, and he absolutely got his wish.

  Since I started work on this book there have been a number of people who were helping or supporting the project who are no longer with us. June Child, Tony Howard and Michael Kamen died during this period (as did Nick Griffiths shortly after the first edition was published); Storm Thorgerson suffered a severe stroke, although he rallied sufficiently not only to produce the jacket, prelims and pyramid spread for Inside Out, but also to inflict the particular brand of forceful questioning which has made him the terror of the record industry upon the publishers. I also have to report the deaths of Bryan Morrison and Mick Kluczynski. Bryan was the archetypal music business rogue we loved to hate; even Roger had a tendency to allow a wry smile to appear at the mention of his name. And I have to credit Bryan with being enormously helpful with this book, generously supplying stories he was intending to retain for his own memoirs. Mick was a stalwart of the road crew from the early 1970s onwards – a time when the crew was small enough for us all to get to know each other well – who could provide a steadying influence whenever mayhem threatened to intervene. However, by far the most upsetting loss for me was that of Steve O’Rourke, after a stroke in October 2003. Given that a fair amount of this book is taken up with Steve being given a rather hard time by the band I have included a few lines from a letter that I wrote after Steve’s funeral.

  ‘It’s that shared experience element I miss. We can tell other people the stories, but to re-live it with someone who was present tends to be a more intense version of the comedy, humiliation or raw fear shared. I was devastated to realise just how much of my life was sh
ared with Steve, and how irreplaceable he is.

  ‘Not a bad description might be to suggest that I feel like I’ve lost a shipmate. On the good ship “Floyd” Steve and I worked together for over thirty years – mainly before the mast. We served under harsh captains. Mad Cap’n Barrett was the first; his gleaming eyes with tales of treasure and strange visions nearly led us to disaster, until mutiny put us under the domination of the cruel (Not So Jolly) Roger… Later Roger was to carelessly walk his own plank to be replaced by Able Seaman Gilmour.

  ‘Throughout these adventures, despite endless promises of promotion (some, I regret to say, from Steve) I remained Ship’s Cook. Steve, I think, was Bos’un. He was never allowed to wear the captain’s uniform, but was frequently required to sail the ship through stormy seas whilst all the crew squabbled below decks about how to divide the treasure.’

  Given that there never is enough credit to go around with the vast cast of egomaniacs that accumulate with a band it is unlikely that Steve’s contribution would ever be properly recognised. To be fair he was wise enough to know this, and smiled at the occasional ‘Thanks to’ or even ‘Special thanks to’ that would grudgingly creep onto the odd record sleeve or programme. Inevitably there are significant contributions from Steve in this book, but I do regret the fact I wasn’t able to go through it all with him while he said, ‘No, no, no, Nick, it wasn’t like that at all.’

  Rereading this, I felt that the list of those who are no longer with us might be too morbid an ending, and if I sit back and muse on what this book represents, I am reminded of all the good times, rather than the bad or the sad ones. So I was delighted when at the Goodwood Revival meeting a couple of years ago, I was reunited with an 89-year-old Joe Mayo, the year tutor at Regent Street Poly who granted me the sabbatical year I needed just as the band was taking off. Even better, Joe told me in his opinion I might have made a perfectly good architect, something I had never dared to ask, so there’s still time for a career change.