Nick Mason On Revisiting Early Pink Floyd During Saucerful Of Secrets Tour

Since 2018, co-founding Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has celebrated his band’s earliest days, focusing on the group’s pre-Dark Side of the Moon era as the five piece Saucerful of Secrets.

In the midst of their second U.S. tour, the group - Mason, guitarists Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet) and Lee Harris (The Blockheads), bassist Guy Pratt and keyboardist Dom Beken (The Orb) - celebrated the contributions of late Pink Floyd members Syd Barrett and Richard Wright on stage earlier this week in Chicago, tearing through a slide guitar-fueled take on “One of These Days” to open the show.

“It’s taken more than a little time to get back here,” joked Mason of a pandemic-postponed tour that was initially scheduled to take place in 2020, recalling a 1968 appearance by Pink Floyd at Kinetic Playground, a tiny former nightclub on the city’s north side. “Anybody remember that gig?” joked the drummer on stage at Chicago Theatre.

Guy Pratt, who, performed alongside Mason during Pink Floyd tours in support of A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, stepping in for Roger Waters on bass and vocals, sparkled on lead vocal during “If” while Kemp stretched out on “Candy and a Currant Bun,” highlights during a nearly two and a half hour performance featuring a newly reworked setlist.

“America is still, for a rock and roll band - even an elderly one - it’s still the promised land,” said Mason over the phone. “We’ve now changed the setlist and we’re doing a revised show,” he continued. “For people who came to the show last time, we’ve revamped and elongated it - in particular, the working of ‘Echoes,’ which is, for me, sort of a transition from Pink Floyd with Syd to Pink Floyd with David, Roger, myself and Rick.”

I spoke with Nick Mason about getting back on stage inside American theaters, part of an intimate Saucerful of Secrets North American tour which runs into November, celebrating Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd’s multi-generational reach. A transcript of our phone conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below.

I know you’ve done some European dates this summer. What was it like finally getting back on stage after the last two years?

NICK MASON: It’s really exciting. It’s been a very odd two years. I tend to say to the audience, I’m not sure who’s the most excited here tonight, us or them.

When I’ve seen performances of Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall, obviously it’s the type of production that just doesn’t really allow for any degree of experimentation or improvisation on stage. In this setting, with your band, does it free you up to experiment a bit?

NM: I think it’s got to be very important. We’re not a Pink Floyd tribute band or a Roger Waters tribute band or a David Gilmour tribute band. So, I think we keep our identity by working in a very different way.

What’s nice is that it’s very much sort of in line with what we were doing in 1967 - most songs were an opportunity to sort of play the song and then take off a bit.

To a certain extent, I feel like sometimes the contributions of Syd Barrett can be overlooked by the segment of fans out there fixated on one or two albums. How important is it for you guys to celebrate Syd during these shows?

NM: Importance is sort of a funny word. But I think it is a good thing to celebrate, I suppose, the beginnings of Pink Floyd really.

I think, particularly, that’s relevant in America. Because I think a lot of people over here sort of see Pink Floyd as something that started with Dark Side of the Moon. Europe is a little bit different in that respect because we were working there more. So there’s more knowledge I’d say of the early work.

But it’s inevitable that with the band’s success that actually so much of the early music got dropped to be replaced by the current albums or music that we were playing.

Coming into venues like this, American theaters, you can see your bandmates on stage - they’re not blocked by props. You can see almost every fan. How does an experience like that after so many years in stadiums impact what you guys are doing?

NM: Oh, it’s great. It’d be nice occasionally to do a stadium for the income. (Laughs) But, on the other hand, it is great to actually interact with an audience. As you say, it’s not only the band members that I can see, I can see right to the back of the auditorium pretty well. And that’s very different.

Stadiums are great and they give you the opportunity to do all sorts of things. But you never have the whole stadium paying attention. There’s always a few people doing drugs and playing frisbee at the back.

While you guys aren’t necessarily radically changing these songs, you are reworking them a bit. How important is it to do that and find new ways to continually push the music forward?

NM: I suppose that’s the balance that we hope we get right, which is for the songs to be recognizable to people who particularly know the detail of them but also for people who may be less familiar with it.

There’s not a lot of improvising and such but there is a certain sort of freedom that we certainly would never have now and Pink Floyd hasn’t had for many years in terms of doing the big gigs and so on.

You guys have had a few years now to work together and hone the way you present this music. In the process, you’re also sort of exposing fans to a new side of someone like say Gary Kemp for example, for whom people may only know him for his work in Spandau Ballet. What’s it been like working with this band?

NM: It’s great. Gary is probably the best example. But when you look at sort of the mixture of influences we have on stage with Lee from Ian Dury & The Blockheads and Dom Beken from The Orb, I think it just makes it a terrific sort of melting pot for playing early Pink Floyd.

How did you guys go about sort of reworking the setlist a bit for this tour?

NM: We reworked it during the European tour this summer. There’s no substitute for doing your rehearsing on stage I always think. More ideas get thrown up then. We’ve now changed the setlist and we’re doing a revised show. In fact, what we’re doing is kicking off with “One of These Days.” That’s what we used to end with. So we’re sort of suggesting for people who may have saw us two or three years ago, that we’re sort of starting where we left off.

For people who came to the show last time, we’ve revamped and elongated it - in particular, the working of “Echoes,” which is, for me, sort of a transition from Pink Floyd with Syd to Pink Floyd with David, Roger, myself and Rick.

Pink Floyd has had sort of that rare luxury of reaching different generations. What’s it like seeing that play out each night from your perch on stage?

NM: It’s terrific. I think, for us, that big thing where occasionally parents will bring kids is enormously gratifying.

That feeling that you’re not just a nostalgia band and the music has some relevance in the 21st century is one of the nicest things about going out with this band and touring.