Pink Floyd Drummer Nick Mason Called the Band’s Earliest Groundbreaking Concerts ‘A Hell of a Lot of Rubbish’

Pink Floyd had one of the most interesting career arcs of any classic rock band. They started life as late 1960s psychedelic masters championed by Paul McCartney before morphing into a prog rock powerhouse in the 1970s. They became world beaters, but drummer Nick Mason said Pink Floyd’s first concerts were a load of rubbish between a few good ideas. Still, the band’s embryonic days gave them the cred to carry on through a key lineup change before they morphed into a classic rock staple.

Nick Mason said Pink Floyd played ‘a hell of a lot of rubbish’ at their earliest concerts

Pink Floyd started out similar to The Beatles. They played live in front of smallish crowds before finding domestic and then international fame. The biggest difference was that Pink Floyd rose to prominence in swinging London long after the Fab Four broke out of Liverpool to become world famous.

The short-lived UFO Club (which opened in December 1966 and shut down in August 1967) was a counterculture hotspot. Pink Floyd was the house band. Gatherings lasted all night, and attendees occasionally (but probably very frequently) ingested LSD. The chemically altered concert-goers took to Pink Floyd’s experimental and improvisational music. The concerts helped cement the Pink Floyd’s reputation as a primo psychedelic band, but Mason recalls their performances as being haphazard and sloppy (according to Saucerful of Secrets author Nicholas Schaffner):

“It’s funny when you’re improvising and you’re not particularly technically able. It’s one thing if you’re Charlie Parker. It’s another thing if you’re us. The ratio of good stuff to bad [was] not that great.

“In the very early Pink Floyd days, in the clubs like UFO, there were people definitely prepared to go on the basis — perhaps because of the state they were in — that we were being great eighty percent of the time rather than twenty percent. But there was a hell of a lot of rubbish being played in order to get a few good ideas out.”

Nick mason

Mason saw rubbish while the fans raved about Floyd’s early concerts. But like The Beatles playing in Hamburg, Germany, and the Cavern Club, those unrefined shows were essential to transforming the band. 

Pink Floyd distilled what was a sprawling live jam into “Interstellar Overdrive,” a nearly 10-minute opus at the heart of their 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Within a year of opening the UFO, the band played its first (brief) tour of the United States. They embarked on their first world tour in early 1968.

Mason said Pink Floyd’s early concerts contained 80% rubbish and just 20% good ideas. But the band sharpened their at-first dull skills and began transforming themselves into a powerhouse of a band. They needed that ability to learn and grow to ensure future success.

Pink Floyd reinvented themselves a second time after getting over their sloppy early shows

Pink Floyd played a lot of rubbish at their early concerts, according to Mason, but they soon established themselves as a refined band. They had to reinvent themselves again soon after.

Syd Barrett, their founder and primary songwriter, virtually checked out of the band in late 1967. He experienced a mental breakdown that left him disinterested in playing with the group and nearly incapable of writing tunes. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page praised Barrett’s creative spark and was sad to see it go out. Pink Floyd moved on without Barrett starting in 1968.

David Gilmour took over on guitar, Pink Floyd wrote songs collaboratively for several years, and the band found international fame in the 1970s with Roger Waters writing most of the material. The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Wall became classic albums. Dark Side spent years on the Billboard chart, and the latter sold better than any Beatles or Zeppelin record.

Pink Floyd’s first concerts were full of rubbish, according to Mason, but the band pulled through to find early success. You could argue that they needed that experience to reinvent themselves as one of the greatest classic rock bands ever.

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