It would have been almost pointless to take over the mixing desk at Abbey Road, but there was absolutely nothing to stop one of us engineering a guitar solo. It was a very different way of working to what we’d done before.
You mentioned that technically, this was the roughest one, perhaps. In some ways, it’s not a bad thing, but in another way, it justifies the remix and the remastering. So there was a very different approach in a way, to the high-fidelity aspect of it. The equipment was good but it was not as good. All of our previous recording had been done at Abbey Road, AIR or somewhere where really, the very, very highest standards. But the first thing about it was the fact that this was our own studio that had been built on a budget. The sociology of it, was made at the same time that punk was kicking off. On the technical side of all the albums we’ve made, this was perhaps the roughest one, for all sorts of reasons. What sort of revelations did going back to Animals bring out for you personally? Mason is also digging through the band's early archives as the next round of touring with his Saucerful of Secrets project commences later this month. The mild-mannered drummer was similarly casual in tone as he spent time discussing memories of the period, which saw Pink Floyd recording in a whole new way. "The good thing about that is, I have no recollection now what they were arguing about," Pink Floyd's Nick Mason tells UCR with a chuckle.