Product Description

One of the most fascinating rock bands ever, Pink Floyd was formed in 1965. After a year in the London 'underground' experimenting with revolutionary techniques like lights which matched their music, they released their first single in 1966. Their breakthrough album, THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, was released in 1973 and stayed in the charts until 1982, the longest a record has ever been continuously in the charts, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 1975 they released WISH YOU WERE HERE which reached iconic status, then in 1979 THE WALL went to number 1 in almost every country in the world. The movie version of THE WALL starring Bob Geldof was released in 1982, becoming a cult favorite. In the 1980s a rift developed between the band members which culminated in law suits. Only recently have there been reconciliations which have allowed founder member Nick Mason to write his personal take on the band's history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48875 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 360 pages

Review
'As charmingly English as Pimms and heatstroke on a balmy summer's day, few Pink Floyd fans will want to miss out on this.' Q magazine Pink Floyd special edition 'highly-readable, delightfully illustrated book' Sunday Times 'the author's engaging wit... it's always readable' -- Dominic Maxwell TIME OUT '... the compelling Pink Floyd soap opera, capably chronicled in drummer Nick Mason's recently published coffee-table memoir Inside Out. In prose that is both self-deprecating and insightful, he grapples with subjects that have often been off-limits...' -- John Harris THE GUARDIAN '...one of the greatest stories in the pantheon or rock. The production values of the book reflect those of the Floyd themselves: solid, lavish, heavy, beautifully bound and illustrated... Everything about the design of the book ... has been executed with the utmost care... Even the picture captions have been sculpted into precise, informative and often amusing nuggets of information... [Mason] has a measured uncluttered style which he leavens with a dry, original wit.' -- David Sinclair THE GUARDIAN 'INSIDE OUT is a winner... glossy and colourful' NEW STATESMAN

Review
'As charmingly English as Pimms and heatstroke on a balmy summer's day, few Pink Floyd fans will want to miss out on this.' (Q magazine Pink Floyd special edition )

'highly-readable, delightfully illustrated book' (Sunday Times )

'the author's engaging wit.... it's always readable' (Dominic Maxwell TIME OUT )

'... the compelling Pink Floyd soap opera, capably chronicled in drummer Nick Mason's recently published coffee-table memoir Inside Out. In prose that is both self-deprecating and insightful, he grapples with subjects that have often been off-limits...' (John Harris THE GUARDIAN )

'...one of the greatest stories in the pantheon or rock. The production values of the book reflect those of the Floyd themselves: solid, lavish, heavy, beautifully bound and illustrated... Everything about the design of the book ... has been executed with the utmost care... Even the picture captions have been sculpted into precise, informative and often amusing nuggets of information... [Mason] has a measured uncluttered style which he leavens with a dry, original wit.' (David Sinclair THE GUARDIAN )

'INSIDE OUT is a winner... glossy and colourful' (NEW STATESMAN )

NEW STATESMAN
'INSIDE OUT is a winner... glossy and colourful'

Customer Reviews

It's been a great gig ...
Nick Mason has been with Pink Floyd from the beginning - through all the band's incarnations and troubles. He makes a genial host in his biography of the band, yet he proves too easygoing and unconfrontational to give us much analysis of the internal politics (and problems with Syd) that have periodically torn the relationships between the four/five-some apart. Added to that, Syd apart, the Floyd appear to have been about the only band that didn't turn up, tune in and drop out in the late 60s and 70s, continuing their studies and gigging hard until it became impossible to maintain both when their musical success started to take off.

My real exposure to Pink Floyd started off with Dark Side - I had the posters on my wall and the stickers on my school binder. It was lovely to imagine them tinkering around to produce all the sound effects, and funny to hear that they rejected Paul McCartney's recorded comments for the background. The four albums starting with Dark Side, running through to the Wall were hugely influential to me - I discovered the charms of Meddle later. There is a theatricality about these four - from a band determined to create coherent albums and give the audience a good show. Of course by the time of Wall, the show was everything - I was so jealous of my brother who went to see it at Earls Court.

What does come through is that Mason although not a flashy drummer was, like Ringo, incredibly important to the music, and also in the studio and outside kept the peace. Being a non-songwriter, it helps that Mason has another obsession in motorsport, but this is mostly mentioned in passing, letting Pink Floyd rightfully star.

Given the sad passing of Syd and now Rick, we may never hear their side of the story and how they were forced out. The Live8 reunion was a fitting coda to the Pink Floyd story and is added as an afterword in the latest edition. So this remains an entertaining and light read of the history of one of the greatest rock bands in the world.

Well done, Nick!
Being a huge Floyd fan for almost 30 years, to start reading Nick Mason's "Inside Out" was a long-awaited joy. I must confess I'm 100% a Gilmour fan, so, the inside Waters-Mason vs. Gilmour-Wright problems were easily solved from my point of view. Anyway, being the sole survivor throughout Floyd's 40 years history, Nick Mason had/has a wide approach for all facts surrounding them. Easy to read, not too Waters-ish (to my amazed eyes...), highly interesting. A must-have for any truly Floyd fan.

The Writer whose prose makes you Yawn
Do I take the easy way out and make a few swathing comments about drummers or is it worth a dose of proper review? OK, Both. With a fleet of Ferraris, a Helicopter and a regular Royalty cheque, it seems unlikely that this book is a vehicle to feed the family Mason. So, what's the point?
I'd like to be positive and confirm that as Mason has the inside track on Floyd, there are some nuggets of information that make the discounted second hand paperback that I bought worth the few quid I threw at it. And that's about it. It is a dull and tedious tome which teeters on the grey middle ground between the really interesting stuff and the litigious. If I wanted to be cruel, I'd suggest a filleting of the book for the nuggets and their placing in a small notebook the size of a policemans' pocketbook.
It's a shame. I looked forward to this book and so wanted to like it. But it bored me more than the circuit diagram of a VCS3.