Superb, very well written, nice detail. ( )

A fun—if slightly lightweight—look at the history of Pink from the vantage point of the man who sat behind the drum kit for the full ride. Mason has an easy, self-deprecating style which is long on personality, but a little short on details.

Still, all in all, an interesting glimpse into the band from one of the five that lived it. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3641739.html

As my regular reader knows, celebrity autobiography is one of the sub-genres I dip into relatively frequently, mostly Doctor Who personalities but not only them. I had read Peter Townshend’s book in 2018, so was looking forward to this as I am more familiar with Pink Floyd than with The Who.

It's a pretty comprehensive account by Pink Floyd's drummer, the only member to have stayed with the band in all its iterations, coming across as honest and fair-minded. The saddest story is of course the decline of Syd Barrett, the band's original genius, culminating with him turning up, unrecognised at first, to the recording of Wish You Were Here, a song which was actually about him. But I also had not heard that Stéphane Grappelli also happened to be in the studio at the time, and recorded a violin track, which in the end was not used. You can hear it here from 3:12. I think it would actually have been an improvement, but of course reasonable people can disagree about that. I guess we are so familiar with the released version that the variation sounds innovative, and I can understand that at the time the band wanted it to sound like Pink Floyd rather than Grappelli's backing group.

The well-recorded tensions between Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and the rest, are laid out with sympathy for both sides (though naturally more for the side Mason himself happened to be on). The account of the creative process for the band's best-known music is detailed without being tedious. I see some reviewers complaining that Mason names many members of the support team for the band, and has a bit to say about each of them, but I actually found that a positive - the success of the band is due to more than just the people who write and play the music, and it is nice that Mason acknowledges this.

It would have been interesting to read a bit more about how the band and its members handled the transition from poverty and squabbling over the van, to being suddenly very rich. Mason talks a fair bit about the technicalities of money management, and also reflects several times that Pink Floyd collectively were firmly left of centre politically; but I miss a connecting thread.

However, it's laugh-out-loud funny in quite a number of places, often but not always self-deprecating. One gets the sense that Mason has been telling a lot of these stories for years, and honed them well. Originally published in 2004, it was updated in 2011, including an account of the 2005 Live 8 performance, and again for the 2017 exhibition. I really enjoyed it. ( )

"Dark Side of the Moon" was, at one time, owned by one in seven households making it perhaps one of the biggest selling entertainment enigmas of all time (outside of Bowie). Most casual listeners probably assumed this inscrutability was all a shtick, if a very cultivated one, nevertheless for the dedicated fan, many questions lingered over the years. I'd always thought, or maybe had a premonition, that Nick Mason would eventually provide the answers. Some of them come as a surprise. They didn't really consider rock music seriously as a career until they were almost at the cusp of success (they were already well on their way to success, Roger and Nick already on track to become young architects, Syd an accomplished writer, visual artist and, no, his mental illness was not solely due to acid). Devoted followers of their albums prior to "Darkside" wondering if the exploratory and egalitarian nature of those years weren't those of a band still in its formative stages would be proven right. The fact that they were still considering an avant-garde direction after "Darkside" does come as a surprise. I'd always thought it was a sardonic joke (from what I read here, not really in their character). Another surprise is that they acknowledged and were aware of the punk-rock movement. Astoundingly Captain Sensible wanted Syd to produce the first Damned album over Nick! ( )

Libro un po' paraculo, molto sfuggente sui momenti critici della band e pieno di informazioni su episodi minori.
È evidentemente frutto di notevoli bilanciamenti tra le varie parti in causa. ( )