Nick Mason has toured with Pink Floyd from the beginning, through the leadership eras of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour. He is, in fact, the only stalwart element holding Pink Floyd’s many permutations together.
Unsurprisingly, then, he was more than ready to tour behind Pink Floyd’s latest release, The Endless River, even in the wake of fellow co-founder Richard Wright’s untimely passing. Alas, David Gilmour nixed that idea early on and, in time, Mason has come to understand why — even if he’s still not entirely content to cool his heels.
“It would be nice if we could do it,” Nick Mason tells Sound Opinions, “but I absolutely accept it’s difficult from so many points of view. Apart from David not wishing to go out on the road again, and wanting to get on with being David Gilmour for a while, I think there are other issues, as well.”
After all, Richard Wright’s absence wouldn’t just mean something nostalgic was missing, but something very real in the way that so much of their music was constructed. Wright played a key role in several of Pink Floyd’s most memorable moments, from “Astronomy Domine” and “Echoes” to “Us and Them” and “Marooned.” And he provided a posthumous spark for The Endless River, which was built around jam sessions from the sessions for 1994’s The Division Bell.
“The fact that Rick’s no longer with us would mean we couldn’t actually play it in the way that it was sort of intended and made — as in, with Rick improvising,” Mason adds. “There may be another keyboard player out there who has those same skills, but I think it’s unlikely he’d have the same melodic approach.”
