Nick Mason’s favourite Pink Floyd song: “It’s fun to play”
While there are few certainties in rock ‘n’ roll, one unquestionable fact is that Pink Floyd will never reunite. Amid decades of feuding between bandmates, the death of Rick Wright, and the recent sale of their back catalogue for $400million, it would take a miracle for them to return in any capacity.
However, the art Pink Floyd created together during their time as an active musical outfit is impossible to undo. Roger Waters and David Gilmour may now be mortal enemies who wouldn’t even be able to stand in the same room as each other, but their legacies are still impossible to separate because of Pink Floyd.
As a band, they changed the course of musical history by advancing the album as a format to new heights. They tirelessly worked on records such as The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall to the extent that it caused personal problems in the camp. Nevertheless, the eventual reward was worth the pain, anguish and sleepless nights.
Due to the immense back catalogue the band amassed during their spell-binding career, there are almost too many highlights to admire. From a fan’s perspective, it’s an ardent task to name just one favourite Pink Floyd song. The prog-rock kings have had such a long and varied career that most fans could have a new choice every day, if not every hour.
With that in mind, the choice is even more complicated when you played a pivotal hand in making them like Pink Floyd’s drummer, Nick Mason. Whenever band members list their top songs by their own group, it’s endlessly fascinating as they often deviate from fan favourites and select numbers of immense sentimental value.
Furthermore, like in Mason’s case, it reflects their view on how music should be played. His choice, as one might expect, wasn’t any truly heavy-hitting single, albeit Pink Floyd didn’t have many. Instead, Mason opted for something out of Floyd’s leftfield, where the band felt most comfortable and energised.
Mason acted as the rhythmic foundation from which the rest of Pink Floyd could create their famous soundscapes. Alongside Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, David Gilmour, and Richard Wright, Mason presided over an unquenchable array of eclectic records, which allowed the band to flirt with almost every genre in the universe. It was a gift that gave the band extra potency.
One genre-traversing influence was jazz on the song Mason calls his favourite. The drummer was speaking with GQ when he was posed the age-old question, ‘What’s your favourite Pink Floyd song?’ Mason replied, “I usually cite ‘Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ as my favourite Pink Floyd song.”
Opting to steer clear of any radio-ready favourites like ‘Money’ or ‘Wish You Were Here,’ the drummer offered a little more background as to why he selected the psychedelic deep cut from 1968’s Saucer of Secrets. “It’s fun to play and has interesting dynamics,” explained Mason, hinting at the track’s jazz origins.
In fact, the now-iconic use of mallets on the solo in this Roger Waters-penned creation was cunningly lifted from jazz. “I know exactly where it came from in terms of the drum part, which was Chico Hamilton playing in a film called Jazz On A Summer’s Day,” Mason remembers. “He does a drum solo played with mallets. It’s beautiful, and so different to any other drum solo.”
Apart from a few notable moments, jazz was typically a genre the band tended to avoid and wasn’t particularly interested in pursuing. Mason also explained the reason for this, stating, “Rick [Wright] was, and I went through a period of being interested in jazz. But then I realised you need to have far too much technique, so I moved on. When I watch very technical drummers, I still find myself thinking, ‘I wish I could do that.’ And I probably could if I put my mind to it, and stopped messing around with cars.”
That free-form thinking and creativity did help push the band in new directions, though, and Mason’s favourite song clearly aligns with that theory. More interestingly, it’s also an era of Pink Floyd that Mason feels loyalty towards. Now, he dedicates his career to performing songs from that early chapter of the band’s lifespan. The drummer is the one taking responsibility for keeping songs such as ‘Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ alive, and unsurprisingly, it’s a stalwart of their live shows.
