The Pink Floyd album Nick Mason never connected with: “It doesn’t sound like us”
Most artists aren’t concerned with showboating whenever they go into the studio to record. It’s always about doing justice to the song in front of you, and no matter how many times someone has approached their craft, it’s just as important to take an outside view of whatever project you’re working on to see whether or not a track really needs a showstopping vocal performance or the guitar solo to end all guitar solos. While Nick Mason would admit to being proud of any Pink Floyd album he worked on, he always kept A Momentary Lapse of Reason at arm’s length whenever looking back on his part.
Going through the group’s different iterations, though, the fact that the album managed to come out in the first place was already a miracle. The lawsuits the band were embroiled in over the band name had already spun out of control, and outside of Roger Waters being on a power trip saying that he owned the right to use the name, there was no way that the rest of them would go quietly.
Once David Gilmour walked away with the rights to continue under the progressive rock banner, A Momentary Lapse of Reason became the first album with him and Mason at the helm. Richard Wright would still be integrated as a session musician, but he wouldn’t get his real chance to perform as a fully-fledged member of the group again until The Division Bell.
But looking back on the way the way that they recorded the album, Mason probably has slightly less to do with the actual production than Wright does. The entire mix is dripping with 1980s cheesiness, but adding the drum machine led to Mason relinquishing his drumming duties to studio musicians like Jim Keltner.
That’s not to say any of these percussionists are bad by any metric. All of them are quite good, but for the most part, it makes the entire project feel like a David Gilmour solo outing rather than anything associated with Pink Floyd, especially when delving into radio-rock fodder like ‘Dogs of War’.
When looking back on the record for his book Inside Out, Mason thought that he would always feel disconnected from the group when working on this album, saying, “It is a very careful album with very few risks taken. These things together make me feel ever so slightly removed from Momentary Lapse to the point where it doesn’t always sound like us. However, ‘Learning to Fly’ does for some reason.”
Although the album does feel like a product of its time, the live album Delicate Sound of Thunder decidedly does not. Everything about the live experience was blown up to the max, and aside from going through the usual material, hearing Mason pounding away in the background while working on ’On the Turning Away’ is what makes the group actually feel like Pink Floyd again.
But given its history, A Momentary Lapse of Reason didn’t necessarily need to satisfy every Pink Floyd fan. It was just a way for the group to make an album to show that they survived, and as a document of their craft, they were still more than capable of making music without Waters at the helm.
