Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd

Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd – by Nick Mason

When one looks at the turbulent history of the band Pink Floyd, it might be surprising to read that, throughout its tenure, the band has only had a total of five members.  To add to the irony, only one of those members was actually present on every album throughout the life of the band.  That one member was the author of this book, drummer Nick Mason.

Now, I’m speculating here, but my guess is the reason that Mason was in the band during its entirety, was that he was the most normal, stable, amiable human being within the group.  Add in such factors as he’s not particularly known for being a stellar songwriter nor musician, and one can actually imagine many spats within the group with everyone yelling and cursing, except Nick Mason.  Again, I have no idea if this is true, but one gets such a feeling when reading this book.

To be blunt (and a bit unkind) Mason really isn’t that great of a writer either. He does provide a bio of the band that is pretty straightforward, but this book is a far cry from being sensuous or sexy. In fact, you would swear that the comings and goings of Pink Floyd were rather lifeless and cumbersome as opposed to anything resembling sensation.  Again, I believe a lot of this has to do with Mason’s demeanor, but I also think he purposely wrote this book with the intention of slinging as little mud as possible (I was shocked to read near the end that he sent the manuscript to the other members of the band for their approval before he sent it to the publisher.)

I really didn’t think the narrative became interesting until around 1973, which is when the band really exploded with “Dark Side of the Moon”. However even then, the story of the band really didn’t seem very juicy nor exciting.  A lot of this could be due to the fact that as the band progressed, Roger Waters and David Gilmour were shown to be the most talented in their respective ways, so again, Mason comes across as more as an observer as opposed to being a relevant member of the band.

To compound the irony, I found this book to be the most interesting around the same time when the band, itself, became the least interesting.  This would have been around 1987, after Roger Waters’ acrimonious departure, and the “band” (consisting of only Mason and David Gilmour) decided to carry on.  The reason, for me, that I enjoyed the book around this time is that Mason seemed to divulge a lot more of the things that *I* find interesting when reading about a band.  Things such as the recording of the album, the songwriting, the planning of the tour, events that happened during the tour, and so on.  Strangely, I didn’t seem to read much of this at all prior to 1987.  I would have thought, for example, that the staging of the famous “The Wall” shows in 1979 and 1980 could have contained enough anecdotes to fill up a complete book by itself, yet the stories during the heyday were more sparse than I would have preferred.

I thought it was a good book as far as basic information goes, but I was really hoping for a lot more.  Serious fans of the band (such as myself) know a lot of what is covered here, and have found other sources that seemed more lively and colorful.