Nick Mason’s favourite Pink Floyd album of all time: “The most complete”
Most of us will have enjoyed sitting down over a few beverages and picking out our favourite album at some point. When the task is then shrunk to picking not only the best album but also the greatest LP of a truly great band like Pink Floyd, the conversation can become a little more heated.
Despite the fact that for most music lovers, it is a shared conversation repeated time and time again, it isn’t easy to pick one’s favourite album. Art isn’t categorised as such. However, when pushed, almost all of us can lean on one record as our most cherished. The difficulty of choosing that one LP can be increased tenfold when you ask a musician to pick their most beloved album from their own canon; you can crank that up a few notches when the artist is as esteemed as Pink Floyd.
The band have had so many incredible records over the years that selecting just one as a favourite is something Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Richard Wright have avoided for the majority of their careers. However, as the question is ever-present in almost every interview, one man, the band’s drummer, Nick Mason, has given his opinion on the best album Pink Floyd ever made, also dishing out a few tips on how to make them better.
“I think The Wall was a hell of a piece of work,” Mason told the Drummer’s Journal back in 2014, “But it’s probably too long.” The record is certainly thought of fondly by fans who have revelled in the conceptual masterpiece since its release. The record is certainly a bit lengthy, but it still delivers heavyweight punches, even if by the 12th round you do feel a bit woozy. But there is another champion for Mason.
Mason even has a few ways to improve some of Pink Floyd’s best: “What might have been nice is to have Dark Side a little longer and The Wall a little shorter”. This kind of answer makes fans reel with excitement. Not only is Mason talking about two of the world’s best-selling albums (a combined 38 times platinum), but casually offering ways to improve upon them.
Advice and tips on making classic albums a little better are all well and good, but what record would Mason call his all-time favourite from Pink Floyd? The drummer leans into popular opinion and crowns The Dark Side of the Moon as his most treasured record from the group: “I’d choose Dark Side — it’s the most complete album,” Mason says. “There’re lots of others I like, but Dark Side has a lovely mix of everyone contributing to it. It’s got some great songs, and [the now-departed] Roger [Waters]’ lyrics are extraordinary. The fact he was only 23 still amazes me.” Waters was actually nearer 30 when he sat down to write the record with the rest of The Floyd.
It is the “mix of everyone” that seems to resonate most of all with Mason. The drummer doesn’t shy away from the band’s iconic feuds but suggests that the group always lived to perform for their audience even with all the arguments and in-fighting. “There were odd moments where I became conscious that things might implode,” he says. While they would eventually do just that and see the band cease to operate as a quartet, they would leave behind a heap of great music and more than a few candidates for greatest LP of all time.
