Quotes from Nick Mason

David, on the other hand, may not be so initially alarming, but once decided on a course of action is hard to sway. When his immovable object met Roger's irresistible force, difficulties were guaranteed to follow.

At this time touring for most bands was still seen primarily as a way of promoting records to boost album sales, with the odd chance to get some income from the larger venues.

think it might be true to say that we were close to calling it a day. Steve O'Rourke always maintained that each member of the band came to him separately at some point to vent his irritation, going as far as threatening to leave.

The fact that for the initial years of the war Roger's father had been a conscientious objector added more poignancy.

Although the spitting incident was unnerving at the time, it did serve to set Roger's creative wheels spinning, and he developed the outline for a show based around the concept of an audience both physically and mentally separated from their idols. Whether the confrontation in Montreal

As our good friend Ron Geesin was fond of announcing, 'The next dance will be a fight.

Peter found that the best polarised stress patterns were produced by using condoms. This led to the occasion when the van and our road crew were pulled over by the police one night. The officers of the law were intrigued to find one of the crew, John Marsh, cutting up a pile of condoms on the front seat of the van. 'Don't worry about him,' said Peter calmly. 'That's our roadie – he's mad.

Listening back to 'Arnold Layne' now, and other songs from the same phase, I notice that I do not find myself cringing. I am definitely not embarrassed by our juvenilia. It all sounds pretty professional, even though it would have been recorded relatively quickly. With a limited number of tracks, you had to make decisions early on about which instrument would go on which track and then you mixed down. But the music genuinely doesn't seem to have suffered.

No more hired guns; just David, Rick and myself, with the engineer at the desk, a two-track left running – and as much time as we needed. Although bitter experience had taught us to be prepared for disappointment, and though there was no pressure to come up with anything concrete at these sessions, the very fact of booking the studio was an indication of our commitment.

I still find the most affecting moment on the whole record is where the last notes fade out and Rick introduces a wistful rubato line, on high notes, from 'See Emily Play'.

The album feels much more home-made, very much as a band playing together in one space. I think that Rick in particular felt significantly more integrated in the process this time, compared to Momentary Lapse. It was nice to have him back.

Following the exuberant celebrations after signing with EMI it was time to get down to some serious work. Unlike many other bands, we had not paid our musical dues. In fact, we had barely put down a deposit. We had invested no serious time on the road, nor spent a year playing the clubs on the Reeperbahn.

Falkland Islands in a conflict most expertly described by Jorge Luis Borges as 'two bald men fighting over a comb';

The tour was really our first exposure to the world of rock'n' roll as we had always imagined it. Pop stars with tight trousers and loose morals accompanied by screaming girls with tight dresses and even looser morals.

Bob Klose left the band during the summer of 1965 at the insistence of both his father and his college tutors. He did surreptitiously play a few more times with us, but even though we were losing the person we considered our most proficient musician, it didn't seem like a major setback. This remarkable prescience – or sheer lack of imagination – was to become something of a habit.

could not continue with Syd in this state, coupled to which it just was not fun any more – and doubtless no fun for Syd either. We did not want to lose Syd. He was our songwriter, singer, guitarist, and – although you might not have known from our less than sympathetic treatment of him – he was our friend.

much of an anticlimax. Miming feels pretty daft at the

Ron seemed an ideal choice to create the arrangements on 'Atom Heart Mother'. He understood the technicalities of composition and arranging, and his ideas were radical enough to steer us away from the increasingly fashionable but extremely ponderous rock orchestral works of the era.

My report card comments for the 'Atom Heart Mother' track would be: good idea, could try harder. 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast' on the second side is a similar example.

Guilt was one feeling. We had all played some part in bringing Syd to his present state, either through denial, a lack of responsibility, insensitivity or downright selfishness.

Clearly, our communication skills were still troublingly nonexistent. We left the restaurant with diametrically opposed views of what had been decided.

Notable for being light on applause, whoopin', hollerin' and standing ovations, Japanese concerts generally start at six in the evening. The reason for this, we're told, is that public transport stops early, people live outside the city and it is too difficult for them to make two journeys.

On a stop over at Hong Kong airport heading home we phoned the Hipgnosis studio to brief Storm on the cover design for Meddle. The title had been hastily concocted and, maybe inspired by some Zen-like image of water gardens, we told Storm we wanted 'an ear under water'. Time differences meant that neither party was on top form for the telephone discussion, but even across the intervening miles, we could hear the sound of Storm's eyes rolling.

It was a pity that before I'd even started work on The Final Cut, Roger felt it necessary to announce aggressively that since whatever I did 'was drumming', I couldn't claim either extra royalties or credit for any of this work. This really did seem like behaviour beginning to border on the megalomaniac, particularly since I posed no threat to his plans. I decided to look on the bright side: at least it was a way of escaping from the fraught atmosphere in the studio.