The secret's out - the Pink Floyd few people know

March the 10th. Almost a fortnight before lockdown in the UK formally began. It was to be the last time this year (to date) that I would sit in front of a cinema screen, having taken myself off to Richmond-upon-Thames for a socially distanced advanced screening of Nick Mason's - Saucerful Of Secrets Live At The Roundhouse. Nick Mason’s what?

The ‘Saucers’ are a supergroup of sorts, comprised disparately of former members of Pink Floyd, Spandau Ballet and Ian Dury’s Blockheads, to revive the early music of the Floyd themselves, the period when they anchored London’s psychedelic underground at student dives like the UFO club. It's the era when  Pink Floyd were infused by the sometimes childlike whimsy of the late Syd Barrett. Like Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, this was either a somewhat different Floyd or a very different Floyd, depending on your point of view - long before Dark Side Of The Moon or The Wall, long before the band went gargantuan, long before the inevitable dysfunction and acrimony that serves the Floyd narrative of later years - but revived, though not reimagined, in its new guise, thoroughly deserving of fresh attention.

Nick Mason

The idea came, not from Nick Mason - Pink Floyd’s constant drummer throughout its entire history - but from Lee Harris, the former Blockheads guitarist. He mentioned it to Guy Pratt - latterly Pink Floyd and David Gilmour’s touring bassist - who mentioned it to Mason himself. “Lee had this idea,” Pratt recently explained to Rolling Stone. "Nick said, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting.’” Things moved quickly. The band, says Pratt, just came together: “We didn’t even have to think about it. It’s like everyone was sitting in the ether waiting to do this.”

Before long, Mason, Harris and Pratt had been joined by Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp - a longtime fan of early Floyd - along with keyboard player Dom Beken, and within six weeks they were playing their first pub gig. Not before long they were touring, travelling (and sleeping) on a tour bus and toasting their own bagels in hotel lobby breakfast bars, a far cry from the rarified, private jet-carried life most of the Saucers would have been used to in their past lives. That it felt like a brand new band - even with Mason turning 74 at the time - was not lost on them, but it was a love of playing the material, some of which, the first time they’d been heard live for 50 years or more, that drove them.

This comes across strongly in the Roundhouse show, which is released today on Blu-ray Disc, DVD, double vinyl LP and CD. “Syd had a strange way of writing, which made it sound like a ‘normal’ pop song, and then it would lurch into something else," Mason told Billboard. "[That] makes it such a great vehicle for us.” All the Saucers have talked of their performances as having a punk sensibility, albeit in a more venerated form. “The trouble with the later [Pink Floyd] albums," says Mason, "is that we ended up with a tendency of trying to play them [live] as perfectly as they were recorded. But Syd’s writing is interesting, because it covers really quite a wide sort of genres, so this material is so much easier to wander off and do one’s own version of, say, the slightly bucolic, almost folk song-type rural idyll of Scarecrow, or the very free-form Astronomy Domine, or Interstellar Overdrive.”

Mason, one suspects, couldn’t wait to get out and play this rich catalogue of material, which largely comes from the Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets albums, the only records Barrett played on before leaving amid increasing struggles with LSD and, tragically, the eventual breakdown of his mental health. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of exploring the old catalogue,” Mason told Billboard, saying that he was always wary of “the tyranny of the ‘Big Four’” - The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall. “After the [Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains] Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, I was reminded how special and undervalued the early period of Pink Floyd is," Mason says. "Then Lee Harris came along with the suggestion of putting a band together. It had been 25 years since I’d been out with a band playing live, but it made me realise I wanted to play this music live again, so the timing was everything.”

Guy Pratt

“Confining the setlist to pre–Dark Side songs makes so much sense,” Pratt says in the same Rolling Stone piece. “Those songs are incredible and you never hear them. To me, it’s a new band. And a lot of them have never been played before, so it feels really fresh. It’s really punk-y and Krautrock-y. It’s got all sorts of different energies in it.”

Gary Kemp concurs: “The best review was our first review,” he recalled to Rolling Stone. “Neil McCormick [Daily Telegraph rock critic] called it ‘Punk Floyd,’ which I loved, because there is that energy Floyd had before they became posh. When we got the band together, it wasn’t like, ‘Well, let’s try and emulate those records.’ Also, we’re not trying to be a tribute band. Nick is the genuine article, so we agreed, ‘Let’s make this band as fresh as we possibly can.’”

Of all of Mason’s recruits, perhaps Kemp is the most surprising addition, especially as he takes on the Saucers’ lead vocal duties, a role never undertaken in his pop star days. Live At The Roundhouse also reveals him to be a far more gifted guitarist than his Spandau past let on (not to mention playing Ronnie Kray…). It shouldn’t be forgotten, though, that he was their  principle songwriter. “I’ve known Gary for a few years before, but I had no idea how passionate he was about it – and how well he knew the songs and knew the music,” Mason explained to Ultimate Classic Rock. “I think he’s been one of the great surprises and assets to this whole enterprise. Because everyone knows that he’s a great songwriter who has written a couple of really mega hits, and Spandau Ballet was seen as the New Romantics – hardly Pink Floyd territory – but he just seemed to slide straight into it.”

Gary Kemp

Kemp himself told Rolling Stone that his route into early Floyd came via David Bowie and even the Sex Pistols. “Syd [Barrett] was definitely an inspiration for both of those artists, and they were both hugely important to me. Also, as someone who comes from London, I kind of get where Syd’s head was at. Plus, there’s the unique style of storytelling that Syd had - never in the same voice twice. That as an actor myself helped me approach the songs in character.”

Returning to songs he hadn’t played on, in most cases, for almost five decades presented some challenges for Mason. “I remembered the basics,” he says, “but what I underestimated were the complexities that Syd had written into them. I’ve always feared becoming my own tribute band. The bands who do that, I’ve never wished to stop them. But for me, rock n' roll has always been about one’s own interpretation of the music, and Syd’s music is perfect for that.”

It’s something Mason muses on in an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, and a song dating back to 1967, Vegetable Man. Originally recorded as a follow-up to the semi-hit single See Emily Play, Mason heard it afresh as part of Pink Floyd’s The Early Years: 1965-1972 box set “It’s sort of an unfinished work,” says Mason. “In a way, it’s a nice little cameo of what Syd did. One of the strange things [about Syd’s work] is the variety of music styles. Because some people, I think, point at Vegetable Man as a sort of early punk thing in a way, which it is. It’s got that driving four-to-the-floor sort of beat. But also then there’d be the rural, almost fairy story – Gnome, Scarecrow-type of songs. Or Bike even. And then there’d be some wilder [songs like] Interstellar Overdrive, with improvised sections and, for rock 'n' roll, really unusual things where the rhythm breaks down and you’re left with a sort of soundscape for maybe five or 10 minutes.”

While Mason has found new joy in reviving the Floyd’s oldest music, there is also an underlying sadness for the man who played such an integral part to defining it, more so than Roger Waters or Richard Wright, the other original members, or Gilmour who joined as Syd Barrett was becoming ever more erratic and eventually replaced him. “I think there’s a lot of mixed emotions with the whole Syd thing,” Mason told Ultimate Classic Rock. “Because in some ways, he was so smart in so many ways. I think there’s a bit of sadness now looking back on it – and a little bit of guilt. Not really guilt, but we handled Syd very badly. We had no idea – and still don’t really know – what the real problem was, whether it was LSD or whether it was something in his character anyway. Or whether, in fact, he was probably clearer than we ever perceived and he just didn’t actually want to be in a band, necessarily. While we thought if he didn’t want to be in a band, it was a sign of madness – because we were all at that point, absolutely committed to doing it. But I think he maybe just thought, ‘Well, I’ve done that. I don’t really want to do anymore of it.’ But instead of just going ... we should have probably let him go much earlier or separated from him earlier. But as I say, we had no idea at the time.”

Picture: Facebook/Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets are, then, a strange outfit to characterise. They are, in some ways, the ultimate tribute act, but nor are they a revival band, either. Live At The Roundhouse is a joy to watch because there is a profound energy that comes through songs I’d largely never heard before. That is mainly due to my exposure to Pink Floyd having been almost exclusively the 1970s-era albums, and the continuation of that legacy through David Gilmour and Roger Waters’ separate, alienated, tours and albums that have drawn on the same songs, sounds and even themes of the “Big Four”. Mason and his band are right in positioning the Saucers as almost a brand new act, even playing brand new songs. It’s a timely reminder that sometimes it’s worth revisiting music that has developed an unfair stigma over time. Some of the early prog rock albums, for example, should be listened to objectively, and you’ll hear song structures and landscapes that appear on much more recent, acclaimed material by Blur or Radiohead. Some, of course, is less easy to listen to.

And that’s the fun of Live At The Roundhouse. Far from being a snapshot of another time, the 22-song set - which includes as many obscurities as better known Pink Floyd tracks like Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, Arnold Layne, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun and One Of These Days - should serve as an introduction. Even, a resetting of prejudices about a band that once flew the flag for commercial juggernauts (through no fault of their own - they just made a few albums that sold in mind-boggling numbers). It just would be nice for the Saucers to be allowed out on the road to tour these songs again, but that’s a blog post for another day.