We should've spent longer on the Dark Side of the Moon

0NE of rock's undeniably classic albums, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon has been lauded as a masterpiece since its 1973 release.

- John Earls

From its iconic sleeve of a refracted pyramid onwards, it was immediately seen as a landmark album and has sold an incredible 45 million copies.

Yet there's one aspect around Dark Side Of The Moon that Pink Floyd's drummer would change: Nick Mason wishes the band had toured it for longer.

Wanting to keep their creative chemistry flowing, the four-piece went back into the studio just eight months after its release,to focus on 1975's follow-up album, Wish You Were Here. Having released the acclaimed concert film Live At Pompeii the year before Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd also failed to make a movie of the concerts celebrating their 1973 classic.

Even to this day, it frustrates Mason, who tells the Daily Express: "We should have toured Dark Side for longer. What we should also have done was to film that tour. Given what we did with the Pompeii show, it would've been great to film Dark Side in the same way. We almost rushed that album, because we wasted a lot of time getting Wish You Were Here into shape."

Today, Dark Side remains their most famous recording, and Mason is a calm, clearheaded authority about Pink Floyd's place in rock lore. With their famously turbulent history, the drummer is the only person who played in the band from their first psychedelic adventurers in the mid-1960s until they stopped touring in 1994 after their final, grandiose album, The Division Bell.

Pink Floyd were one of the first bands to play stadiums, but Mason admits: "At a stadium, you'd always have a group of people at the back who were either on drugs or playing Frisbee. We loved playing anywhere exotic and some of the big shows in America were really exciting for us.

"We'd always had a great French fanbase, so the French influence in Montreal made shows there something special."

Those enormous shows are a contrast to the drummer's current Floyd-related band, Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets.