Drummer Nick Mason delivers a grand night of vintage Pink Floyd
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets touched down Friday at The Masonic, delivering a spellbinding evening of early Pink Floyd music for the fans who filled the San Francisco venue to capacity.
It was part of the band’s inaugural North American tour, which marks the first time Mason — who cofounded the British rock act Pink Floyd with vocalistguitarist Syd Barrett, bassist Roger Waters and keyboardist Richard Wright in 1965 — has performed on this side of the pond since Floyd’s blockbuster Division Bell trek in 1994.
But one would have to go further back — much, much further — to see a show like the one Mason and company so wonderfully delivered at The Masonic.
The genius of this project is that it concentrates solely on Pink Floyd’s pre-1973 catalog, which significantly differentiates it from the classic-rock nostalgia fests that fellow Floyd mates Waters and, to a lesser extent, David Gilmour have been peddling over the years.
“I knew I couldn’t play ‘Comfortably Numb’ better than David or Roger, or indeed even the Australian Pink Floyd,” Mason told Rolling Stone magazine. “It became a matter of finding something else that engaged us.”
The result is a heady, psychedelic workout that, simply put, all Pink Floyd fans should experience.
And what makes it so necessary is that it shines a much-needed spotlight on those early records — beginning with the 1967 debut “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and continuing through 1972’s “Obscured by Clouds” — which are so often overlooked in favor of Floyd’s blockbuster later releases like “The Wall.”
Despite what classic rock radio would have you think, the Pink Floyd journey does not start with “Dark Side of the Moon,” and it’s worth the time and energy for fans to get familiar with the works that led up to that 1973 masterpiece.
The drummer and his terrific band — consisting of Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp, longtime Pink Floyd touring bassist Guy Pratt, guitarist Lee Harris and keyboardist Dom Beken — kicked off the evening with a trip back to the beginning, opening the show with an epic workout of the “Interstellar Overdrive” from “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”
The group stayed course through “Astronomy Domine” and “Lucifer Sam,” the first two tracks off “Piper,” before veering off into a gorgeous, acousticguitar-driven “Fearless,” from Floyd’s masterful 1971 release, “Meddle.”
The whole band sounded terrific, but special recognition goes out to Kemp and Harris, who did a great job filling in for the guitar parts originally laid down by Barrett and, later, Gilmour.
I almost had to do a double take at times while watching Kemp, because it was hard to reconcile that the guy burning through those big guitar hero moments at The Masonic was the same person who crafted the glistening Spandau Ballet prom/pop anthem “True” in the early 1980s.
Kemp was the closest thing this swirling, spacey concert had to a front man, handling the lion’s share of the lyrics, with some help from Pratt and, to a lesser extent, Harris.
The group touched on six of seven studio albums that Pink Floyd released before the career-altering “Dark Side of the Moon.”
The only one missing, thankfully, was 1969’s “Ummagumma,” by far the worst album Pink Floyd ever made. (To be fair, the live half of the two-disc affair is worth hearing, but the studio recordings are dreadful.)
It was great to finally get to hear such relative rarities as “When You’re In” (from 1972’s “Obscured by Clouds”) and “Remember a Day” (from this band’s namesake album, 1968’s “A Saucerful of Secrets”) live.
And “Vegetable Man”? A tune that Pink Floyd never officially released or even played live?
Yeah, that’s the type of moment that made this show so special.
And it just kept getting better as the night progressed, as Mason and company locked into a pair of soaring “Saucerful” tracks — “Let There Be More Light” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” — and then closed the main set with a thunderous take on “One of These Days” from “Meddle.”