Hamburg. Who doesn’t sometimes dream of traveling back into music history? Watching Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire, Frank Zappa conducting the Mothers Of Invention, or Jim Morrison dropping his pants at a Doors concert.

But those times are irretrievably over and even Pink Floyd, although the band still exists in theory, hasn’t played a concert in decades. After the death of keyboardist Rick Wright (1943-2008), there can no longer be a real comeback anyway.
Nick Mason gets the time machine in the Laeiszhalle up to speed

But then there’s Pink Floyd founding member Nick Mason – and the man has been on a mission since 2018: with his band A Saucerful Of Secrets (named after the second Floyd album) he plays the early songs of the psychedelic prog rock giants, in other words, what appeared before the “Dark Side Of The Moon” (1973), which sold more than 50 million copies. On Friday evening in the almost sold-out Laeiszhalle in front of an enthusiastic audience even before the first note, where the 50+ group is clearly in the majority.

And she begins to reminisce when it starts at 8 p.m. sharp with “One Of These Days” from the album “Meddle” (1971). Bassist Guy Pratt only has to let the unmistakable first tones pluck out of the speakers and the time machine is running at full speed. Patchouli incense sticks, green tea from brown clay mugs, home-made tie-dye T-shirts and maybe a few smoking products: those were the days…

Well, they won’t come back, but the music is still there, and Nick Mason, that likeable, unassuming man in the background, is bringing it back. He last stood on this stage 51 years ago, he says between two pieces, during the “Atom Heart Mother” tour with Pink Floyd. Of course there is also something to be heard from this album: The title track, framed by the gentle psychedelic number “If”. “Arnold Layne” reveals the only problem of the evening The more instrumental classics “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”, “Astronomy Domine” and of course the epochal “Echoes” with its meandering improvisations, to which correspondingly crazy lighting effects and film sequences illuminate the stage screen and Laeiszhallen ceiling, ensure the greatest cheering. The program even includes the early 1960s singles “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”, which most of us should know from the once junked low-price compilation “Relics” (1971).

And with “Arnold Layne” the only problem of the evening becomes apparent (if you perceive it as such): Nick Mason’s A Saucerful Of Secrets is not a cover band like The Australian Pink Floyd Show, which is a copy that is true to the original down to the last nuance the classic aspires to. Singer Gary Kemp (formerly Spandau Ballet) simply sounds different than Syd Barrett once did, and anyone who has heard the numbers hundreds of times since their youth may occasionally get a feeling that something isn’t right. But that doesn’t lessen the jubilation after two and a half hours. Such a journey into one’s own musical past is above all one thing: an electrifying fountain of youth.

Review Courtesy Of Holger True

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