Nick Mason - Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

I laughed out loud so many times my wife thought that I had Tourettes. Its so well written, full of detail, self-deprecating and funny. A seminal book an intelligent, literate rock and roll memoir full of candour and wit Alan Parker

A real pleasure a rich, funny and fascinating story. Nick is a wonderfully dry and laconic guide Peter Gabriel

The fact that this man can remember anything about the orgy he calls his career is a miracle an amazing view of a life most of us would kill for Ruby Wax

With a wit drier than an AA clinic, and a charm more disarming than a UN peace-keeping force, Nick Mason gives us a literary drum solo par excellence Kathy Lette

There cannot be many stories left in rock that are as big as Pink Floyds. And I doubt whether anyone could tell this story so well as the patient, witty man who watched it all unfold from his perch behind the drum kit

Paul Du Noyer, founder of Mojo magazine

Mason could very probably have plied a successful trade as a writer. He has a measured, uncluttered style which he leavens with a dry, original wit he writes with the calm authority of someone who was actually present at the time One of the greatest stories in the pantheon of rock David Sinclair, Guardian

A wise and witty addition to the canon of worthwhile rock biographies Ian Rankin, Herald

As charmingly English as Pimms and heatstroke on a balmy summers day, few Pink Floyd fans will want to miss out on this

Q magazine

Debonair detachment, engaging wit, always readable

Dominic Maxwell, Time Out

Anything but a hymn of praise to the mighty Floyd. Masons drummers tale is unstintingly and amusingly disrespectful about the band Robert Sandall, Sunday Times

With scores of unseen shots from Masons personal archive, the book celebrates the little-noted fact that the Floyd were a fabulously photogenic group Word magazine

Tracing the bands journey from those primitive beginnings to the stadium-filling sights and sounds that are Pink Floyd today, the changes in rock n roll and its technology make this a strangely fascinating read Sunday Express

Nick Mason was born in Birmingham in 1944. He is of course best known as the drummer in Pink Floyd. When not behind the drums Nicks other passion is motor racing. He has raced extensively in both historic and contemporary cars and competed in five Le Mans 24-hour races. In 1998 he wrote, with Mark Hales, Into the Red, a celebration of 21 cars from his collection of classic sports and racing cars (the book, updated and enlarged, was republished as Passion for Speed in 2010). Nick has also written for a wide variety of publications including The Sunday Times, the Independent, Time, Tatler, GQ, Autosport, Classic Cars, Red Line, Octane and Cars for the Connoisseur.

Philip Dodd is an author and editor who specialises in music and popular culture. He co-edited The Rolling Stones: A Life on the Road and, with Charlie Watts and Dora Loewenstein, According to the Rolling Stones. He was the interviewer and editor for Genesis: Chapter and Verse, and is the author of The Book of Rock.

INSIDE OUT

A PERSONAL HISTORY OF PINK FLOYD

NICK MASON

EDITED BY PHILIP DODD

P HOENIX

R OGER W ATERS only deigned to speak to me after wed spent the best part of six months studying at college together. One afternoon, as I tried to shut out the murmur of forty fellow architectural students so that I could concentrate on the technical drawing in front of me, Rogers long, distinctive shadow fell across my drawing board. Although he had studiously ignored my existence up until that moment, Roger had finally recognised in me a kindred musical spirit trapped within a budding architects body. The star-crossed paths of Virgo and Aquarius had dictated our destiny, and were compelling Roger to seek a way to unite our minds in a great creative adventure.

No, no, no. Im trying to keep the invention to a minimum. The only reason Roger had bothered to approach me was that he wanted to borrow my car.

The vehicle in question was a 1930 Austin Seven Chummy which Id picked up for twenty quid. Most other teenagers of the time would probably have chosen to buy something more practical like a Morris 1000 Traveller, but my father had instilled a love of early cars in me, and had sourced this particular car. With his help, I learnt how to keep the Chummy operational. However, Roger must have been desperate even to want me to lend it to him. The Austins cruising speed was so sluggish that Id once had to give a hitch-hiker a lift out of sheer embarrassment because I was going so slowly he thought I was actually stopping to offer him a ride. I told Roger the car was off the road, which was not entirely true. Part of me was reluctant to lend it out to anyone else, but I think I also found Roger rather menacing. When he spotted me driving the Austin shortly afterwards, he had his first taste of my penchant for occupying that no-mans-land between duplicity and diplomacy. On a previous occasion, Roger had accosted Rick Wright, who was also a student in our class, and asked him for a cigarette, a request Rick turned down point blank. This was an early sign of Ricks legendary generosity. These first, mundane, social contacts during the spring of 1963 contained the seeds of the relationships we would enjoy and endure over the years ahead.

Pink Floyd emerged from two overlapping sets of friends: one was based around Cambridge, where Roger, 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 Regent Street Polytechnic in London, which is where my recollections of our common history begin.

I had in fact already retired as a drummer by the time I arrived at the Poly (since rather grandly retitled the University of Westminster). The college was then based in Little Titchfield Street, just off Oxford Street in the centre of the West End. The Poly, in retrospect, seems to be from a bygone era, with old-fashioned wooden panelling reminiscent of a giant, utilitarian public school. As far as I can remember there were no real onsite facilities, other than some tea-making equipment, but the Poly in the heart of the rag trade area around Great Titchfield and Great Portland Streets was surrounded by cafs offering eggs, sausage and chips up to midday, when steak and kidney pie and jam roly-poly would be the menu du jour.

The architectural school was in a building housing a number of other related disciplines and had become a well-respected institution. There was still a fairly conservative approach to teaching: for History of Architecture a lecturer would come in and draw on the board an immaculate representation of the floor plan of the Temple of Khons, Karnak, which we were expected to copy, just as they had been doing for thirty years. However, the school had recently introduced the idea of peripatetic lecturers, and played host to some visiting architects who were on the frontline of new ideas, including Eldred Evans, Norman Foster and Richard Rodgers. The faculty clearly had a good eye for form.