Nick Mason is the luckiest drummer to have ever lived. Just like Kevin Costner is the luckiest "actor" (?) to have ever lived. Costner CANT act, full stop. He survives ONLY with a stellar supporting cast.
Mason struggled with Mother on The Wall so they had to bring in Jeff Porcaro to play what anyone with a sense of beat would have played. Just listen to the acoustic guitar for ALL your cues, duh.
THEN to learn that he STRUGGLED to learn the parts for Momentary Lapse, that were all recorded with a drum machine, for the subsequent tour. Really? Struggled with THOSE songs?
If you've never been blessed to hear Mason absolutely miss the mark on Mother, here you go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5eHu8s31Uw
Its not just bad, its embarrassing. With ALL the squabbles they had in PF, you'd think Mason would have spent ALL his energy and emotion to keep from letting this version see the light of day.
Sure Jeff Porcoro is a legend, but they could have hired any homeless guy off the streets of Hollywood blvd to play what Jeff played. I bet Jeff walked in and thought to himself "Why am i even here? They seriously hired me for this?". I am sure Ezrin could have stood over Mason next to the kit and shown him exactly what to play but clearly he was in the "F*ck It" stage of this album and just called in a favor from Jeff.
To think, Mason struggled playing songs off Momentary like 'Learning to Fly', 'One Slip' or 'Dogs of War' just boggles the mind.
Nick Mason is the Kevin Costner of drummers. There, i said it!
Pompeii is godlike though.
There are 2000 bodies that can attest to this. All hail Vesuvius !!
They all went crazy on Pompeii. Even Roger who isn’t the world’s best bass player, went fucking insane during echoes.
It's because he had a hearty breakfast
It’s honesty pretty crazy seeing how badly out of practice he let himself get. Nick was a good drummer by the beginning of the 70’s (seriously listen to his playing on Saucerful of Secrets or Pompeii ) and by the end he was so checked out he could barely play the most basic beats possible
A Saucerful of Secrets saw Mason get replaced for the first time on a song by their producer Norman Smith on “Remember a Day”
I meant the actual song Saucerful of Secrets
His drumming with their early stuff with syd barret had some really ahead of its time drumming. Really punk sounding and has a lot of the classic psychedelic drum style cliches that you hear in more modern music. Also in some of their really weird 20 minute long noise jams, you can tell it's Mason half the time that's leading the whole thing, and directing the energy of what they're all playing/improvising
Per his own book, he lost confidence when all the arguing started and he was never really the same until being convinced to do the Saucerful shows.
Aww :((
I have been in many rock bands (none of them amounted to diddly although one had a spec deal with A&M records). We always fought, always. Its 4 or 5 egos in a room. When i saw the movie "Rockstar" i saw the early parts as more of a real life documentary.
My point is arguing is baked into a band. History is littered with this. Arguing never got in the way of my abilities, however.
Arguments are a lot more stressful when you’re in the biggest band in the world with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, generally speaking.
True, and i will NEVER have to worry about that problem. The most my bands made on a given night were 300.00 split 4 ways.
Maybe musicians from Cambridge are just more sensitive 😂 Or maybe drugs fucked his abilities up.
In my opinion he was fucking great 69-77 (those Animals bootleg shows are something else), lost his way, then got his groove back way way later in life.
Honestly if I was rich af and 20-30 years already deep into a career/profession that had a lot of highs and lows, I could see how easy it is to just detach from all that when you add some unnecessary drama to the mix.
/uj I really think Nick was just checked out at this point and couldn't be arsed.
/rj The rest of the band just couldn't handle Nick's polymetric approach to "Mother".
yes, but could Porcaro play simple crappy beats like Fearless for 30 minutes straight ?? no way !
Mason is the King
taking a look at Jeff's Discog, i'd say he could do a 2 hour fearless marathon performance, with one arm tied behind his back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Porcaro#Discography
sarcasm bro
Oh i got it, but had to reply back to defend Jeff, just the same! I speak fluent Sarcasm, just look at my screen name.
In the early 70s he was class and he’s gotten better in the last 20 years or so. Because of the band’s really bad relationship with each other by the end of the 70s he lost motivation which is totally understandable. Rick had the same thing, although he was suffering with addiction and the end of his marriage.
I agree that he is the weakest link but he’s still a good drummer.
I would say in terms of musical ability:
David
Rick
Syd
Roger
Nick
Nah no offense to Dave but he's number 2 for me. I love the guy, I was always a Dave guy and tbh for most of my life up to now I would have agreed with you, but Richard Wright is just so criminally underrated from 1967-1969. I think if he didn't get sabtaged by Roger waters so much and if everything didn't happen the way it did with Syd leaving the band and their sound drastically changing, maybe we would have seen more of what Richard was capable of at that time.
Honestly those two are interchangeable for me. Rick’s my personal favourite for sure.
I think this is a bit unfair to Nick.
Tbf, Nick is the weakest member of Floyd. He is a competent but unexceptionable drummer who could have been swapped out with any session musician of equivalent skill and nothing would have been lost in the performance.
But in Nick's defense:
Nick was the one there doing the work and deserves credit for having done it. He, alongside Roger, also did a lot of the sound effect work that the albums are famed for. Nick was never useless, even if he was the least prominent member.
Nick being a more dynamic, flashy drummer akin to Stewart Copeland/Ginger Baker/whoever wouldn't have made the music better imho, just busier. And Floyd already had enough fighting over creative differences without the drummer adding to it by wanting bigger drum fills or whatever.
Nick admits he has a bad habit of letting his skills lapse. I can say as someone who played clarinet for a decade that constant practice is mandatory to keep your skills up to snuff. Even brief lapses in practice cause your skills to slip very noticeably. And Nick was on years long hiatus before AMLOR - a contentious project David and Nick risked a lot to make and both knew needed to be perfect. As for The Wall, considering what a stressful rush job recording it was, with Roger acting the bully and dictator, I can't imagine that left Nick in a good headspace to play. Nick's famous conflict-aversion made him check out pretty quickly (can't entirely blame him). Maybe in a more relaxed atmosphere he could have managed.
TLDR: Did Nick strike it lucky? Absolutely. But so did the other band members. None of them would have gotten where they are now without each other. Not even Roger, a self-admittedly mediocre musician, would have gotten so big on the strength of his writing without the talents of David and Rick to elevate him musically.
And TO your point, had Floyd swapped Nick out for a more capable drummer, it would NOT have been floyd. Nick's mediocrity lent itself to the space that we all love in floyd songs. Had he been a more capable drummer, Floyd would not have the sound it does.
I have played bass since 1986 and you are correct, if you dont practice, you do struggle to get your chops up. I know this from experience.
While i agree Roger was a bit of a dictator, a name that often gets left out who is 1000% a control freak, is Bob Ezrin. He, as a producer, does not suffer fools lightly, he set goals and pushed an album to a finished product no matter how many bodies are laid to waste. Ace Frehley did not solo on a song on the Destroyer album because Ezrin pulled rank and got tired of Ace's antics. Ezrin is the type of record producer that quickly sizes things up and see who is capable and who is not. If you are hitting on all cylinders, you are sidelined. Record Producers report to the Record Company, not the band.
I imagine Bob heard what Mason did on Mother and after his best take (the demo we have today) he knew the swing was not right and knew someone who'd fit the bill. Ezrin is NOT the type of producer to put Tommy Lee on an Enya album. He knows what works. Porcaro was a PERFECT fit for this song. His playing does not make him or the song stick out like sore thumb.
Yep, no disagreement. You bring up a good point about Ezrin. Finger pointing at Roger is easy but often misses the greater picture.
Nick said in his biography that he never liked ceding his drummer's chair to others. That he did so on Mother and AMLOR without throwing a tantrum shows maturity, especially when the stakes on both albums were so high. As unambitious as Nick is, he had the good sense and integrity to leave his ego at the door for the sake of quality control. That's something to admire.
Saw Roger in 1999 during the In The Flesh Tour. Nick was sitting front Row. He stood up at the end of the show and went to the edge of the stage and Roger bent down to greet him. Never once felt Nick had an ego at all.
So lucky you got to see that tour! I was 9 at the time, lol. And that story about Nick is so heartwarming!
Missed the This Is Not A Drill tour and I've been kicking myself ever since. Here's to hoping Roger tours again.
Saw Roger in 1999 and again in 2000 (same tour, different cities). Then saw The Wall tour in Houston and Nashville. Then saw the tour for 'Is this really the life we want' tour (or whatever he called it) then saw 'This is not a drill' in Nashville. Saw the Drill show in Nashville with a close pal who's a grammy winning mastering engineer. On our way to the venue he said "Aw man, left my high end ear plugs in the car" we both agreed this is a Waters show and neither of us would have anything to worry about (i am a part time recording engineer, so i worry about my ears). I saw KISS in 1977 and i saw AC/DC in 1987, neither of those shows came close to how LOUD Rogers "Drill" show was. HOLY COW it was loud. Why? The stage was a giant plus sign. Each side of the sign was a projection screen. At the end of each part of the Plus was a speaker array. We sat right in front of one of those speaker arrays. The loud thunder clap at the beginning of the opening song, a reinterpreted Comfortably Numb, nearly scared me out of the cloths i was wearing. Was it his best solo show? Nah, a strong #3. My favorite was The Wall, it was a religious experience. Second best were the 1999/2000 'In the Flesh' tour. SO good and it was mixed live in 5.1 surround sound. That tour he played at least 4 tracks off Amused To Death which brought me to tears.
I'm so jealous, but so happy you had those experiences!
Ok but he played in pompeii tho
Is this what it means to be outside the wall
He has his moments but yeah overall he's a bit too boring and not particularly skilled.
I've read him talk about how he doesn't like being compared to Ringo because to him, he's on a higher level. That made me roll my eyes so hard lol. Ringo shits on him any day.
you, sir, are a clown.
I am not a clown, i am a Charade! HAHA!
Agreed. He’s dead wrong about Costner.
Costner is the same person in all his films. Dry, deadpan and emotionless. He's been lucky that he's had amazing supporting cast members.
This is truth. Quite possibly the biggest dollar per kick drum ration in history.
None of the members were incredible with their instruments, except maybe Wright... maybe. Compare any Floyd member to other Prog legends and they all fall behind on a technical level.
That said though their limited abilities mixed incredibly well and they had the songwriting powerhouse that is Stone. I also feel their limited abilities prevented them from leaning into the ridiculous songwriting of most other prog bands.
Idk, gilmour is a pretty decent guitar player lol.
I think they're all great in their own way. Even stone before he gave up on playing bass.
Rolling Stones ranked him as the 14th greatest of all time. The general consensus is gilmour is one of the goats on guitar.
AND he hammered out what is arguably the greatest guitar solo of all time. Beyond that, its not even the WHOLE solo, just the first one.
THAT is a magical place in history when a guitar player can pull something like that off!
You make a valid point. Had they all been true Prog masters, we'd have a catalog of stuff that only 100 musician men on the planet would care about. Jimmy Paige was a super sloppy (and drunk) guitar player and he's given us some pretty legendary tunes.
You're telling me david gilmour isn't an incredible guitar player?? LOL
You raise a good point. They were performers more than technicians. The magic came from their idiosyncratic styles blending together in a one-of-a-kind way. Other musicians might have better technical chops, but musically complicated isn't the same as better, and that can't replicate the flavor/creative spark Floyd created together.
What's really interesting to me is the Wright/Gilmore dynamic. More so then then anyone else in the band. Really when they shifted from whatever we want to call atom heart/ummagumma to more focused songwriting I really feel that they both spoke to each other through the songs and really supported each other. Listen to how Wright kind of leans back during Dave's solos and doesn't just provide the rhythm that Dave was doing but kind of just creates the atmosphere, I feel like Dave did the same thing whenever Rick stepped up
Not sure if that makes sense
I think so. Those two were very simpatico artistically. It makes sense they would develop such tight musical chemistry.
Richard Wright is the ultimate prog master actually from like 1967-1969 as someone that used to not appreciate his playing as much. I thought he was kinda overrated when I got into bands like king crimson, Genesis, ELP, but going back to pink floyd after listening to those bands, and specifically listening to pink floyd syd barret era from 1967-1969, you'll realize this stuff is directly influential to all those other prog bands. If you watch interviews with Tony banks and Peter Gabriel from Genesis they specifically mention 60s Pink Floyd as their influence. I can hear so many classic/iconic prog nuances and cliches played by Richard Wright like 5 years before anyone else had done it. They just weren't as polished or maybe overly technical, but gotta give credit where it's due
What Tony Banks actually said is that he likes early Floyd but that Wright "wasn't a particular influence."
I love Rick, but let's not stretch the truth. If there are similarities between them, it's because guys like Emerson, Banks and Wakeman were drawing from the same inspirational wells as Rick (classical and jazz).
Yeah, I remember a Tony quote that Ian McDonald's playing was very significant for him
He sounds great on all the 60s and 70s bootlegs, and he was great in the Saucerfuls. Personally I think they just became more of a studio band with The Wall, and had lost the rigor that comes from constant touring.
I mean, by the Wall shows they had like 50 extra musicians on stage with them, and how does that even work??? In the 70s there were only four of them and they sounded phenomenal. So I dunno, some kind of laziness or bloat must have set in.
Just like the Beatles and Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd wouldn't have been as great with another drummer. Nick Mason knew how to service the song and had the emotional depth and artistry to make the bands music profoundly impactful. End of story.
I saw his Saucerful of Secrets band and thought he was pretty good.
Had tickets for the Memphis show and they cancelled. Truth be told, i was more excited about seeing Guy Pratt than anything else....
What can i say, i am a bass playing nerd!
How would you personally rate Guy?
Overall, one of the best professional bassists on the planet. First learned of him with his amazing bass parts on Toy Matinee. Prior to TM, his producer pal (Patrick Leonard) was using him on all his sessions. After TM Guy went straight to PF. Guy is a bass player's bass player. On top of that, he's super funny. During covid he did some 'this is how i did it' videos where he gives backstory and breaks down his parts. Naturally he was more restrained with PF. Here is a lock down video of one of the Toy Matinee songs where he was truly able to shine. Busy but quite tasteful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6KNilGmDJE
Mason works best when the music ebbs and flows, when the energy intensifies and fades and the dynamics rise and fall.
Playing to a click and dropping the drums in after a lot of other instruments were tracked was alien to him and he was perhaps a little exposed.
I'm so glad he's put the Saucer's together and can just play again.
But aye, he's a lucky guy 🤣
I think Pink Floyd and the Beatles both benefit from having members that individually aren't really super extraordinary, but together are amazing.
They also brought in Lee Ritenour to help write David's guitar solos.
I know this group is a 'take the piss out of floyd' but is there truth in the Ritenour claim?
They brought him in to help with the ending of the solo on Another Brick In The Wall part 2. So, yes, but just for a little help.
https://youtube.com/shorts/F1ADIis96hE?si=bHIMtKYxD79MvEI0
Lee Ritenour also played rhythm guitar on "One of My Turns." Dave admitted once in an interview that he asked Lee to take a crack at it because he (Dave) could not think of anything to play.
WOW and thanks for sharing.
Hey guys, Roger here -- he was great on his day, but even better at finding his fair share of connections for FUCKING QUAALUDES!!! Hahaha!! That's the thing about the band, while I was the heart, soul, passion, creativity, concept leader, main singer-songwriter, Nick was the petrol. Gilmour was the pretty sounds guy. Rick a useless cunt who tried to make himself Mr 80s with his sugar coated silver spoon welded to his hand. Prat!
haha. I have an insisde joke with my friends that goes something along the lines of "Pink Floyd were incredibly lucky bastards". (sounds better in my language :)) )
but yeah.. I believe this goes for basically all of them.. I mean they all had a drive, but they couldn't really play their respective instruments well, they were just wingin' it with drugs and psychedelic light shows in the clubs.
As far as technical ability on their instruments/vocals I think the ranking is:
5 stars: Gilmie
4 stars: Syd and Rick
3 stars: Nick
1 star: Stone
also, I think they got better with age, except for Stone haha
No rock musicians play their instruments "all that well" if we're being honest. Rock fans will put up with some dumbass non- playing shit and be like "oh I'm incredibly impressed".
Honestly this is kinda true for most of them - there's some true virtuosos out there like Dave Navarro, but most rock repertoire is incredibly simple to play and all the intrigue is just in the composition
Like, Syd wrote some really cool songs, but he's no better as a guitarist than a random guitar teacher who's actually practiced scales a bunch
As it should be
Frank Beard has not played on a ZZ Top album in decades. Quite possibly just the first two. I am a musician in Memphis, their adoptive home. Session cats like Greg Morrow played on a ton of their albums (uncredited) and in the 80's it was drum machines. La Grange has one of the more famous drum fills in Rock and Roll. Look at Frank on Leno during that section of the song at 2:29. He plays it like he's never heard the song before. https://youtu.be/b6wdaFl1H3U?si=ac9T-6KqWdi7CYx-&t=149
I can judge objectively, I was raised on Deep Purple
Plink Fyroid
But wait, Waterworld is a fantastic movie and Kevin Costner had terrible supporting actors (except Jack Black obviously)
But hey, Napoleon Dynamites girlfriend was in that movie, so its got that going for it!
Oh shit cool, I had no idea that was the same actress! She was also in a weird Alice in Wonderland live action movie I had to watch in high school
Yep! Now that you know this, you will never be able to unsee her during one of your Waterworld marathon viewing sessions :-)
Now you will wait for Kevin Costner to tell her that she could be drinking whole milk, if she wanted to.
You are comparing a terrible lead player to a mediocre role player.
I will not stand for Nick hate in any of its forms.
i love the drums in the wall but I gotta say as a drummer, true
go watch saucerful of secrets live and get back to me, the man is a machine.
Seen it. We were all machines in our younger days. The fact he struggled with the Lapse of Reason songs is all anyone needs to know. I mean, on dogs of war he does not even start playing till 3 minutes in! 'Money' off of DSOTM is remarkably harder to play than anything on MLOR
Dick post.
Look at the name of the reddit group you are in. Reading the room is half the battle.
No matter how much you ask, i will not post any nudes of my dick.
Nick was there to fix Rogers typos give him some credit
https://preview.redd.it/ajo1x4tpjr7g1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c69b8db48da323a7a668f430ebce488f03f2eb07
Yeah but he's the hottest man alive so who cares
Nick is goat period.
But he has incredible taste in cars. Like a Ferrari 250 gto. He let Geoff Brabham drive it in a vintage race and told him to drive the hell out of it - dent it even! Also has a Maserati 250f.
By the wall time, he was just part of the Band, and was not fireable,. I believe that he was a good decent drummer in the beggining, but did not improve himself as the band grew.
Then when roger makes himself the enemy, and pain in the ass, he just need to not side with roger to keep his job, no matter how underperforming he could have been.