The Pink Floyd album Nick Mason refused to perform on
There’s an unwritten expectation that every band member should contribute to their records. While touring for extended periods can be gruelling, spending time in the studio is generally considered a reasonable request, even if it means working on songs that may not be personally enjoyable. Despite enduring significant challenges while recording The Final Cut, Pink Floyd’s experience with ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’ was even more daunting, leading Nick Mason to opt out of participation in the project.
At the same time, Mason had already been known as one of the best drummers in his field years before the band had even started making their first post-Roger Waters album. Looking back on the footage from their live performances in Pompeii, Mason is absolutely on fire throughout every frame, so much so that most of the footage of the song ‘One Of These Days’ only features him leathering the snot out of his drums.
When the band started working on albums like The Wall, everyone’s abilities started to get called into question by Waters. Outside of forcing the band to play the songs that he heard in his head, no non-Waters member was safe from his criticism, with Richard Wright eventually being fired from the band after Waters didn’t like what he was coming up with.
Though Mason would walk away from the album with his job, he did have to give up recording the song ‘Mother’ halfway through the sessions. Halfway through the session, the band’s commitment to their deadline meant that Mason would take a back seat, leaving Toto drummer Jeff Pocaro to lay down the uneven groove instead.
If The Wall was a difficult labour of love to make, though, then The Final Cut was downright torture. After the massive touring cycle for the project, Waters figured that they would use the rest of their time in the studio working on the various songs that didn’t make The Wall, sounding like a glorified B-sides collection rather than a proper album.
While Waters’s eventual departure from the band should have been a breath of fresh air, Mason would not turn up for most of the recording sessions. Since he had spent years working with cars rather than behind the kit, Mason refused to work on the project because he thought he wasn’t as equipped to play at his personal standards.
Looking back on that time, Mason regretted not lending his skills to any of the percussion, writing in his book Inside Out, “In hindsight, I really should have had the self-belief to play all the drum parts. As a result, 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 that it doesn’t always sound like us”.
That’s not to say that Mason is completely absent from the sessions. While drum veterans like Jim Keltner and Carmine Appice stepped in to play drums on a handful of tracks, Mason would contribute more with sound effects, as well as playing the odd electronic drum part while letting everyone else do the heavy lifting. Even though Mason was still willing to contribute however he could, A Momentary Lapse of Reason practically feels like a David Gilmour solo album with Mason tacked on.
