“EMI learned an awful lot from doing The Beatles Anthology and they did a presentation – which is not something they’ve done in the past with us – on the way it could work, and I think we thought ‘actually, yeah, this could actually be good’ – it did seem to move it on from yet another ‘best of’ – there was a sort of purpose to it, and judging by the response it has worked, because we were wary of being seen to be just repackaging everything again. By the time we’d finished with this and found enough stuff to make it interesting, I am pretty happy with it.”
That’s not to say this whole process hasn’t thrown up a few regrets for the trio – a chance to say “ah, if only we’d...” And doesn’t just mean the abandoned Household Objects experiment.
Mason admits that, unlike what “archivist” Bill Wyman did for The Rolling Stones, neither he, Waters or Gilmour have ever been much good at keeping memorabilia from their 40-plus years career.
In Mason’s case it’s little more than the odd tour T-shirt – but even that’s better than the other two, apparently.
In retrospect he admits they should have kept hold of more “souvenirs”: “We should have done, but we should have done a number of other things,” he says.
“The saddest thing is we never filmed the early Dark Side shows – they’d be a bit antiquated now, but to some extent there were so many things there that would have been quite interesting to look at now.
“But hey, you can’t do everything...”
* The Immersion and Experience editions of Wish You Were Here are out now on EMI A Foot In The Door – The Best of Pink Floyd was also released this week www.pinkfloyd.com
(Rock) star in a reasonably priced car...?
Aside from his work behind the drums for Pink Floyd, Nick Mason’s other passion in life is cars – notably ‘Rosso Corsa’ (race red) Ferraris.
Through his own Ten Tenths company he owns and races several classic cars, including a prized Ferrari 250GTO (valued at over £15 million) and a Ferrari Enzo (one of only 400 made) – which he famously lent to BBC’s Top Gear.
But while his car has been on the popular motoring show, Mason himself has yet to take the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car challenge, despite being invited several times:
“They have asked me, and I have said that at some point I will now,” Mason reveals.
“I used to say I really wasn’t interested because it could only work against me, because everybody knows I do quite a lot of racing and I thought I don’t want to be on the grid with people coming up to me going ‘oh I saw you were beaten by a celeb chef and a comic’, but I am heading towards retirement on the motor racing front, so I am more prepared to make a fool of myself.”
