In an excerpt from this month’s Pink Floyd cover story, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets – aka Mason, Guy Pratt, Gary Kemp, Lee Harris and Dom Beken – reveal their 10 favourite vintage Floyd songs to play live…
PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE
“CANDY AND A CURRANT BUN”
“ARNOLD LAYNE” B SIDE; 1967
LEE HARRIS: I absolutely love this song. I think it might be Syd at his best – a three minute pop single that still manages a freakout section. When we first played it, it only took us a couple of rehearsals and it sounded amazing.
“SEE EMILY PLAY”
SINGLE; 1967
DOM BEKEN: There are so many wonderful, unusual sounds on this. Unlike some other tracks, where we were able to sample the original sound effects on the records, I had to recreate them all here. I made my own Rick Wright-style prepared piano by taking apart an old girlfriend’s piano and sampling every single note! I love the piano gliss going into the last chorus. It’s such a great pop song, isn’t it?
“ASTRONOMY DOMINE”
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN; 196
NICK MASON: This is enormous fun to play, lots of tom-toms, lots of double-bass drum pounding. I love the vocal harmonies, like a Gregorian choir. People think of it as a freakout, but it’s deceptively complicated, with lots of very unusual chord changes.
“INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE”
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN; 1967
MASON: There’s a lot of muddled labelling between ‘psych’ and ‘prog’, which I’ve always thought were very different things. This is Pink Floyd at our most psychedelic. It is always fun to play. It has that same structure you get in a classic jazz song – you play the melody, improvise around it, then restate it at the end.
“BIKE”
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN; 1967
MASON: It’s a very funny lyric, isn’t it? “I’d give it to you if I could/But I borrowed it…” You have to follow Syd’s very odd metre to get the rhythm right. Apparently, we never played this live at the time, so it’s wonderful to give it another life.
“SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN”
A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS; 1968
GARY KEMP: I first played this in 1971, jamming along to the record with my mates from the Anna Scher drama school, Phil Daniels, Peter Hugo Daly and Miles Landesman. It’s fabulous to play – it’s not busy, but a real energy boils up. It’s like a sonic voyage into the sun. It’s almost shamanic.
“THE NILE SONG”
MORE; 1969
GUY PRATT: This is another one Floyd never played live, to our knowledge. I got into this as a teenager, buying that cheap 99p Relics album and falling in love with it. This is Floyd at their punkiest and heaviest. I have to get into a zone where I’m able to howl the vocal part, screaming my guts out.
“ONE OF THESE DAYS”
MEDDLE; 1971
PRATT: This was one of only three songs from this era I’d played before – the others being “Astronomy Domine” and “Arnold Layne”. We often play this as a set opener, a way of setting out our stall. It’s a reminder of how experimental Roger was as a bass player – that wonderful, throbbing groove.
“ECHOES”
MEDDLE; 1971
KEMP: This is the most ambitious thing we’ve done. There are so many sections, so many moods. It took five days of rehearsals to nail it. There’s a gentle, very English, pastoral formality about the vocals that Guy and I have to cling to when we sing those harmonies.
“OBSCURED BY CLOUDS”
OBSCURED BY CLOUDS; 1972
PRATT: I think this is the most recent song in the Floyd canon that we do. Like a punky piece of krautrock. It’s so blissful. Nick said it would work in Ibiza and I think he’s right. It’s heavy and trancey. A lovely world to inhabit.
PINK FLOYD ARE ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE