LET THERE BE MORE LIGHT!

AS MAN-CAVES GO, NICK MASON’S IS MORE THAN USUALLY impressive. Tucked away in Islington, north London, it’s split over two floors and every wall and shelf abounds with trophies from his musical career and, even more spectacularly, his great passion for motor racing. Occupying pride of place in the airily expansive main room of his lair gleams a scarlet racing car, reassembled in situ “like a ship in a bottle”, as its careful owner explains. Whereas almost every other band of their era will muster surviving members for victory lap after victory lap, the co-founding drummer of one of the biggest stadium machines ever is on the eve of a rather more select but also more intriguing spin round the live circuit. Starting off in venues of a size he will last have played half a century ago, Mason has gathered a motley crew from the ranks of the family firm, The Orb, The Blockheads, and, jaw-droppingly, Spandau Ballet, to reboot songs from Pink Floyd’s first five years, almost none of which have been aired by an actual member of the group since The Dark Side Of The Moon changed everything in 1973. In honour of Floyd’s second album, he has called the band Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, “which can then be shortened to the Saucers.” Our story starts in the Pyrenean foothills where dwells Lee Harris, occasional guitarist and sometime manager of The Blockheads following Ian Dury’s death; his cinematogra-