Finally getting to play at the revered Liverpool Philharmonic a good eighteen months after the originally planned date (thanks to you-know-what!) former Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and his band brought a raft of rarely played tracks to the masses on what is being termed the ‘Echoes Tour’. I for one was hoping this meant an airing for the 25-minute opus and before ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was released, arguably Floyd’s finest achievement to that point – but more on that later.
In addition to Mason himself – who comes across as quietly spoken, polite and everything you DON’T think of as a stereotypical rock drummer – is long-term compatriot Guy Pratt (Roger Waters’ replacement on bass when he left Pink Floyd in the 1980s), guitarist Lee Harris, guitarist/vocalist Gary Kemp (yes, him from Spandau Ballet, and one-time Kray brother) and keyboard/synth wizard Dom Beken. The main U.S.P. for Mason’s live outings is that, despite being the only Floyd member to play on every studio album they recorded, they play only the earlier work of his former band, tracks released between the mid-1960s right up to 1972, prior to the release of the aforementioned ‘Dark Side…’. This was always a clever move – there’s a huge segment of Floyd fans who predominantly followed them in the ‘psychedelic’ era, but perhaps zoned out after Syd Barrett left and Roger Waters took more creative control, taking them into the realms of theatrical stage shows, concept albums and bitter, cynical songs about depression, rock-star excess, politics and war.
Far from playing all night sets as they may have done “back in the day”, there’s a two-hour show time these days (Nick is in his seventies now, so we have to cut him SOME slack!). Kicking off with a thumping ‘One of These Days’, this gave the band a good workout for the set to come, and was a great, full-throttle opener to the show. ‘Arnold Layne’, perhaps Floyd’s most well-known single of the 1960s, followed, before Meddle album track ‘Fearless’ got an airing, complete with its sample of the Anfield crowd singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which was fitting considering the city they were playing in.
A string of Syd Barrett era pop nuggets followed, veering from the institution-baiting (‘Candy and a Currant Bun’, as Nick explained, was originally titled ‘Let’s Roll Another One’, and DEFINITELY wasn’t about currant buns…) to the silly (can anyone explain what ‘Vegetable Man’ is about??) to the sublime (‘Lucifer Sam’, with its “that cat’s something I can’t explain…” chorus, is a massive earworm!) and formed a touching tribute to the band’s founder, without whom, Mason arguably wouldn’t be performing today.
The plaintive ‘If’ from the early 70s was next, with the first half of the song performed as a simple acoustic number, before the whole band came roaring in for the main section from the title track of ‘Atom Heart Mother’, before transitioning back into the finale of ‘If’ towards the end in a nice sequence that, although bordering on ten minutes, never outstayed its welcome.
Showing that they weren’t just capable of playing the straight pop and rock that formed a lot of Floyd’s earlier output, monoliths like ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ were played brilliantly, ebbing, flowing, pulsing and thudding along beautifully, and especially showed off Kemp’s expertise with delay, echo, reverb and distortion, manipulated via a series of pedals and dials, as Dom Beken conjured otherworldly sounds from his banks of synthesisers, adding a truly trippy dimension to proceedings. I have it on good authority that even the seats in the ladies’ loos were reverberating during this track!
After a short interval to compose ourselves, the group forged on, continuing the sixties “space-rock” theme with ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and ‘Astronomy Domine’, two classics from the debut Floyd album, that again allowed the guys to really let loose and drop practically any conventional verse-chorus-verse structure to the songs and boldly go where rock musicians had never ventured prior to Pink Floyd coming along.
The next tranche of songs were made up from Floyd’s film soundtrack repertoire – music from the films More and La Vallee (which had a corresponding soundtrack album entitled Obscured By Clouds), and were perhaps the tracks I was least familiar with. Saying that, it’s a useful opportunity to play “spot the David Gilmour guitar solo”, which Gary Kemp was a master at not only replicating, but adding his own style to as well.
A final salvo of ‘See Emily Play’, which sent a trio of ladies two rows ahead of us into rapture, exclaiming “I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY PLAYED THAT!”, and the song I was hoping for – ‘Echoes’, finished off the main set. ‘Echoes’, whilst not the full song (owing to time restraints!) was still a decent portion of it, highlighting the main sections of the track. With the crowd refusing to leave before we’d heard more, the band reappeared for the song that gave Mason’s band their name (‘A Saucerful of Secrets’), another psychedelic, feedback-fuelled, gong-crash filled series of four or so ‘movements’ that brought to mind the performance from Floyd’s famous “live” show in Pompeii (where they were filmed theatrically, but without an audience). Asked if we wanted one more, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt shared vocals on the superbly silly ‘Bike’ – another Barrett-era classic with lyrics you can’t help chuckling at – mice called Gerald, anyone?
With boundless energy, a genuine love of each other as friends and human beings, and a repertoire that sent the crowd home happy after a standing ovation, it was evident that the wait for Nick Mason and his band of merry men was well worth it. And no ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ in sight!
Review Courtesy Of Peter Muscutt
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