Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Reading Edition): by Nick Mason
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Pink Floyd emerged from two overlapping sets of friends: one was based around Cambridge, where Roger [Waters], Syd Barrett, David Gilmour and many future Floyd affiliates hailed from. The other - Roger, Rick and myself - came together in the first year of an architecture course at the Regents Street Polytechnic in London, which is where my recollections of our common history begin."

When I talk with people about Pink Floyd, everybody seems to like them. "Yes, yes, a great band," I invariably hear. And then most people drop the names of albums, such as The Dark Side of the Moon (one of the best-selling records in the history of music) or The Wall. My problem is that I do not like these records; I find them cheap, completely commercial, and musically limited. I love Pink Floyd's early oeuvre, roughly until their Atom Heart Mother album (1970). Basically, I am only into their psychedelic and sort of avant-garde rock music.

I find Nick Mason's Inside out. A Personal History of Pink Floyd an excellent read. Mr. Mason, the band drummer, has been the only constant member of the band for their entire 56-year history. Inside Out (2017) is an extremely detailed and thorough history of the band, a comprehensive account of all their recordings, major performances, and personnel changes, all shown on the backdrop of the music scene evolution between the mid-1960s and the late 2010s.

Obviously, for me, the most interesting are the beginning chapters of the book that focus on the mid- and late 1960s, particularly the times of the intellectual underground movement centered around the Indica Bookshop and the London Free School. These were the times of joint performance with Soft Machine, the times of recording Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the times when Syd Barrett was the most important member of the band.

In 1967, Syd Barrett begins to unravel, likely an effect of psychedelic drugs overuse. David Gilmour replaces Barrett in 1968, and, as Mr. Mason writes:

"[...] there was, and still is, a school of thought that Syd's departure marked the end of the 'real' Pink Floyd, a point of view I can understand, even if I don't concede it."

Then come two other great albums, A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma, and the band closes their psychedelic, Barrett-influenced period with Atom Heart Mother:

"[...] an ambitious piece we have [...] recorded complete with French horns, tuba, trumpets, trombones, a solo cello and a twenty-strong choir - the kitchen sink must have been unavailable for session work."

The fans of Dark Side will find detailed analyses of individual pieces on this album. The fans of rock music presented as a theatrical spectacle will find detailed accounts of various opulently staged performances and descriptions of the band's famous stage decorations (flying pigs, etc.)

I like the author's muted, balanced, and unsensationalistic coverage of the well-publicized conflict between Roger Waters, one of the founding members, and David Gilmour. In general, I admire the author for omitting the so-called juicy details so characteristic of any famous rock band's history. Almost nothing about debauchery, and precious little about drugs. Well done!

I love Mr. Mason's admission that there existed many bands with better musicianship than Pink Floyd (oh yes; Soft Machine immediately comes to mind!) I love the generous helpings of understated, British humor, very helpful in reading the rather dense text. But most of all, I commend the author for displaying an unusually sympathetic attitude toward everybody featured in the story, toward every single person he writes about. No personal sniping; all criticisms are expressed nicely and with a dose of humor, whenever possible.

Very highly recommended book, for all fans of rock music.

Four stars.

(I also recommend my review of Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey by Nicholas Schaffner.)


View all my reviews