Inside Out - Nick Mason

By Harbinger

I sat down on last week and watched Children in Need, during which I was surprised to see Nick Mason drumming on a 'making of video' for Bandaged (the Children in Need Album). Now Hagelrat or indeed any one who knows me will tell you that Pink Floyd are my favorite band. It is one of the few things I obsess over. Pink Floyd music is useful for me to help collect my thoughts and when I listen to it I find my imagination goes into overdrive. So I don't think you will be to surprised to find Nick Mason's personal history of Pink Floyd on my book shelf.

Nick Mason's involvement in Pink Floyd began in 1963, when Roger Waters asked to borrow Nick's 1930 Austin Seven 'Chummy', which is also where the book begins. Generally autobiographies are not my thing, I think I have got only two or three as a lot of them are quite badly written, or have been mucked about with by ghost writers. As you can gather by that fact that I am reviewing it this book is an exception.

I don't know how else to describe Mason's writing other than, charming. It is rather like sitting down with some tea, coffee or what ever is your poison, listening to him relate hilarious anecdotes. It feels very personalised, like he is writing to you a very odd experience for me in an Autobiography as I normally find them arrogant back slapping affairs, usually written by the kind of people I despise (Katie Price or Jonathan Ross anyone?). Certainly a temptation with Autobiographies (like political memoirs) is to take the opportunity to attack anyone you feel has done you wrong. This does not really happen here, as I expected, considering Pink Floyd's volatile history. The very fact that the book is subtitled 'A Personal History of Pink Floyd' indicates Mason's wish to show that it was his own view and by no means definitive. Which I respect when it would be so much easier to be malicious and arrogant. He even thanked the other members of Pink Floyd in the book.

Mason plods through Pink Floyd's history in a witty way, you can almost see him grinning from ear to ear as he writes. Appearing within the book are lots, of what you know I love, PICTURES!! Right from the time when Nick was playing in a band (looking impossibly young) called the 'Hotrods', to a picture with the famous lineup in 2005. So as you can imagine a person as easily distracted as me found himself constantly looking through the pictures.

It is just great to read about a part of music history that will never come again, due unfortunately to the untimely deaths of Syd Barrett and Rick Wright.

So read on you crazy diamonds! (Alright alright I know that joke is a step too far, but you should have heard the ones I decided NOT to add). Give the book a go.

TTFN Chaps and Chapesses