"So all aboard for the American tour, and maybe you'll make it to the top. But mind how you go, and I can tell you 'cause I know, you may find it hard to get off."
Roger Waters
Free Four
"It's easy now to look back on the past and try and sort of give it some shape and form, but at the time you're in a total state of confusion, muddling about because you're trying to be in this band, and be successful, make it work, and things aren't working out and you really don't understand why. You can't believe someone's deliberately trying to screw it up, yet the other half of you's saying, 'this man's crazy, he's trying to destroy me'... destroy ME, I mean, it gets very personal. You get very worked up in a state of extreme rage.
Obviously, there were some incredible moments of clarity where you realize things are NOT right, like the wonderful American Tour, which will live forever. Syd detuning his guitar all the way through one number, striking a string and detuning the guitar, which is...very modern (laughs) but, um... very difficult for a band to follow or play with, and uh, other, I mean, other occasions when he'd more or less just cease playing and stand there leaving us to muddle along as best we could. At times like that you think, what we need is someone else, or at least some help."
Nick Mason
"Syd went mad on that first American tour in the autumn of 1967. He didn't know where he was most of the time. I remember he detuned his guitar onstage in Venice, LA, and he just stood there rattling the strings which was a bit weird, even for us."
Nick Mason
Jay Whitten: bperet@yahoo.com
