Inside Out: A Personal History Of Pink Floyd

Nick Mason

(Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2004)

PART INSIDER, PART outsider, Mason seems to have been a both the centre of the action and a passive observer during his time with Pink Floyd, enabling him to take a more knowing view of it all. The result is a book crammed with minutiae but also plenty of wry anecdotes (to help fund Pink Floyd’s mid-’80s comeback tour, Mason hocks his prized 1962 GTO Ferrari), several subtle digs at both Waters and Gilmour (“Somewhere around this time, Dave had decided he would rather be known as David”) and some fascinating, never-before-published photographs – such as a ridiculously youthful Waters horsing around with Mason at Regent Street Poly – that can’t help but make you wonder how sad it is that, for a time at least, it all went so horribly wrong for these long-time friends.

The Floyd renaissance tours of the 1980s and ’90s are pored over with a little too much detail, but Mason’s memories of this time will naturally be much clearer. For a man enamoured of fast cars, aeroplanes and boys’ toys, the nuts and bolts of the band’s increasingly overblown stage sets clearly prove irresistible, and hardcore fans will find much trainspotterly detail to keep them occupied.

Concluding with a postscript outlining his reconciliation with Waters, Inside Out even manages a happy ending. Mason’s stoic English humour, while a natural trait, enables him to play to the gallery, not least in one incident when Gilmour’s houseboat, Astoria, containing his studio, becomes jammed up against a pier and starts listing as the Thames began to rise.

As charmingly English as Pimms and heatstroke on a balmy summer’s day, no Floyd should miss out on this treat. (Mark Blake)