Pink Floyd Drummer Compares Roger Waters to Stalin Over Bullying Claims
Former Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason sarcastically compared his ex-bandmate Roger Waters to Joseph Stalin in a recent interview with The Coda Collection.
Stalin was the tyrannical communist leader who governed the Soviet Union into the mid-20th century.
Mason slyly drew the parallel to journalist Jim DeRogatis this week when the writer mentioned a WTF With Marc Maron interview with Waters in which the bassist-vocalist suggested he was bullied in the band, saying, "David [Gilmour, guitarist] and Rick [Wright, keyboardist] mainly were always trying to drag me down. … They were always trying to knock me off.”
What does Mason think of that?
"I'm slightly flabbergasted by it," the 77-year-old drummer chuckled when asked for his opinion on the statement, as summarized by Prog. "But I think that's a slightly over-emotional way of putting that there was some sort of division within the band."
He continued, "Roger was always looking beyond the music, in a way. I think it was artificial, but I think possibly there was the side that wanted to do inflatables and films, as well as music, and those who just wanted to do music. I don't think they were mean to him, particularly. It's hard to imagine being mean to Roger!"
As he finished the thought, the drummer offered the jab, "Stalin was bullied."
The remark can be heard among the full video interview online, in the second part titled "From a Van to Pompeii and Beyond."
In another portion, the drummer talked about his plan to tour his Saucerful of Secrets band in 2022.
"We're going to start rehearsing the end of next week with the idea of hopefully being in America the beginning of next year and U.K. and Europe after that," Mason said.
"There's a surprising amount of material [to play]," he added. "The cut-off is up to, but not including [1973's The] Dark Side [of the Moon]. … And so with film tracks and early records and all the rest of it and singles, there's still quite a way to go. … It's interesting as well, I think, that there is a difference between the USA and Europe, for sure. In that the Americans, I think because we were more successful in Europe early on, and less so in the USA so people are less familiar with the early records in America. And so you get people saying, 'I've never heard this song. What is it?' and so on. Whereas in Europe, you're more likely to have people going, 'Oh yeah, I remember that.'"
Mason and Waters last performed together in Pink Floyd during the band's reunion in 2012–2014. Earlier this year, Waters claimed Gilmour was blocking a reissue of Floyd's 1977 album Animals.
See more from Mason at thecodacollection.co. According to the website, The Coda Collection "brings to life stories of iconic music moments through our curated library of exclusive, rarely-seen films available on Prime Video Channels and original multimedia content created by renowned experts."