Screengrab from Thesaucerfulofsecrets.com
Back in May 2018 Nick Mason’s new group Saucerful of Secrets played a few intimate gigs in London. It was Mason’s first live show since Pink Floyd played Live 8 in 2005. After such a great reception, they announced they’d be going on a European tour. That tour begins 2 September in Stockholm and runs for 21 dates.
The former Pink Floyd drummer’s band includes Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, bassist Guy Pratt, guitarist Lee Harris and keyboardist Dom Beken. And the band focus on playing Pink Floyd’s early music from their psychedelic albums like The Piper At The Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets, centring on the songs they created when Syd Barrett was a member of the band.
Pink Floyd at the mixing desk whilst recording their album 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' in Abbey Road Studios. © Andrew Whittuck
Songs from the London gigs included, “See Emily Play”, “Arnold Layne”, “Bike”, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, “Meddle” and “Obscured by Clouds”. And with Mason being the only member of Pink Floyd who has played on all their studio albums and live shows, he’s perfectly placed to tour their much-loved and praised early music.
But learning all the old tunes didn’t come easy. In a recent interview with Billboard Mason notes, “Being an eternal optimist, I thought it would just come straight back to me. Sadly, I was wrong. Once you start examining Syd’s work carefully it’s quite often more complex than you expect. It's not necessarily written like so many pop songs with an eight-bar section and the middle eights and whatever. It's quite often a completely different set of bar counts to what you're expecting. And that in a way was fun and challenging to get at the feel of the song, but not necessarily feel that we had to sound exactly like Syd or like David or whatever.”
Syd Barrett, whilst with the rest of Pink Floyd, photographed on one of their early shoots. © Andrew Whittuck
The popularity of how the songs went down at the London shows surprised Mason. Although, any fan of Pink Floyd would probably have been able to tell him that Mason and his band playing the early classics, in the same improvised spirit to the freewheeling way they were performed back in the 1960s, was going to be a dream come true.
“It's a real return to some of the improvised sections and the atmosphere of the songs.” said Mason. “The tendency in this day and age is to try and recreate things perfectly. We bring imperfection.”
Nick Mason shot on one of the earliest Pink Floyd photo shoots in 1967 with the band's special lighting effects. Nick describes the lighting as consisting of a 'hand-built rig and some underpowered Aldis 35mm projectors - the kind of machines families used to display their summer holiday snaps - containing slides filled with mixes of oil, water, inks and chemicals that were heated with small butane blow lamps. © Andrew Whittuck
Just don’t expect any songs from The Wall though, because that’s not what this live show is about. Mason explains that using Pink Floyd's’ second album as a name for the band was a quick way to show what music they’d be focusing on. “What I didn't want to get caught up in were a lot of people going, 'Well, why don't you play "Comfortably Numb"?' or 'Why don't you do something from The Wall?' I think the name itself indicates where we are and what we're doing.”
American fans can expect to see Mason and Saucerful of Secrets turn up stateside too. In the Billboard interview he says that he’d underestimated the enthusiasm of the band. Which means more touring may be happening, “Pink Floyd was always enthusiastic, but not like this lot is now. Everyone wants to do everything: 'We want to go to America.' 'We want to go to South America.'” notes Mason, concluding that he’s “delighted” and “really enjoying” how it’s all going.
Pink Floyd in an early shoot in 1967. This image was used in the Pink Floyd V&A exhibition 'Their Mortal Remains'. © Andrew Whittuck
Check out Saucerful of Secrets website for more info and to get tickets for the upcoming tour. And check out a video below of the band playing “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” from one of the London gigs.
