More about: Pink FloydRoger Waters
Pink Floyd's Nick Mason has compared the time after Roger Waters left the band in 1984 to the aftermath of Russian leader Josef Stalin’s death.
Speaking to Mojo magazine, the drummer discusses the seismic impact of having someone as forceful as Waters leave the band.
“It must have been the same when Stalin died,” says Mason. “It took quite a while [to recover], it was a three or four year period.”
Mason also reveals further details about Waters' final meeting with himself and David Gilmour in 1984 . “Roger thought we were all going to call it day, and David and I thought Roger was going to call it a day and we were going to carry on,” Mason explains. “[But] the thing is, these slightly unbalanced people make great musicians. If we hadn’t had the mad Syd and the mad Roger, we might have been doing 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep'.”
Watch the trailer for The Endless River below
The Endless River, the band's first album in 20 years will be released on 7 November. Speaking to Gigwise earlier this week at the Q Awards, where the band took home the Q Classic Album prize for Dark Side Of The Moon, Mason revealed that the LP very much picks up where the Division Bell left off.
"The first thing to make really clear is that a lot of the new album is actually something that was originally started 20 years ago, so a lot of it is where we were 20 years ago," Mason told Gigwise.
"The idea was that we were going to make Division Bell into a double album, half of it songs and half of it ambient - this is based on some of that ambient material with a lot of other things added in. In some ways it's old Pink Floyd, rather than new Pink Floyd. It's not groundbreaking, but it different, I suppose."
Asked if the organic and old-school nature of the album would make it easier to play live, Mason revealed doubts - adding that it seems unlikely that they'll tour the record.
"It would be fun to play live, but it doesn't actually lend itself to a proper tour," he said. "It's something that you could play in UFO Club in 1967, it certainly isn't a stadium sort of event, and without Rick it's probably impossible. It's impossible to play, because the nature of it is that a lot of it is designed there and then - if one played it again, you wouldn't want to repeat what was one the record. It's not something where you learn it and play it.
When probed on if there were any hopes or ambitions to tour the album at all, Mason added: "I don't think so."
Below: The Strangest Facts About Pink Floyd
More about: Pink FloydRoger Waters