Despite being far and away the most successful album of their entire career, the original Pink Floyd members have often expressed regret about the time surrounding the creation of The Dark Side of the Moon, including drummer Nick Mason. The 1973 record is the only album in U.S. history to maintain a spot on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart for over 18 years.
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Considering how much time Dark Side has spent as one of the most popular and enduring albums in rock history, it’s ironic that Mason’s biggest regret about the album was time.
Nick Mason Reveals Biggest Regret About The Album
Across their decades-long career and prolific discography, The Dark Side of the Moon stands out among Pink Floyd’s works as one of the most iconic and immune to the fading effects of time. Its massive commercial success made the band’s eighth studio album the best-selling record of the 1970s and certainly the best-selling record of their catalogue. But almost as quickly as the psychedelic rock band dropped their magnum opus, they were on to making the follow-up record, Wish You Were Here.
For drummer Nick Mason, that will always be his biggest regret. “If one could play the whole thing back all over again, we probably should have taken longer,” he told Rolling Stone in a March 2025 interview. “We should have spent more time playing Dark Side live and not worried about going back into the studio to make Wish You Were Here. We actually spent quite a long time in the studio, having not a great time, when we could have just actually drawn things out a bit longer, done more live work, and filmed it. I’m sorry we didn’t film the Dark Side tour.”
Mason continued, “I think we didn’t realize what a good idea it was to film things. Maybe it’s because the movie didn’t make money for us, but it’s a great shame that we didn’t spend a bit longer and do the equivalent with Dark Side of the Moon,” referencing their famous Pompeii concert that featured cuts from A Saucerful of Secrets and Meddle.
Not Everyone Felt The Same Way About ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason might have wished the band spent more time milking their 1973 record, The Dark Side of the Moon, but not everyone felt the same way. In a testament to the creative and personality differences that ultimately contributed to the band’s dissolution, frontman David Gilmour once said he preferred Wish You Were Here to Dark Side. Gilmour said the former record was “the most satisfying album.” He added, “I’d rather listen to that than Dark Side of the Moon. We achieved a better balance of music and lyrics on Wish You Were Here. Dark Side went a bit too far the other way.”
For other band members, Dark Side of the Moon spelled the beginning of the end for Pink Floyd. “I haven’t really got time for regrets,” Waters said during a fan Q&A session before adding, “You know, I might say…really, after Dark Side of the Moon went to number one in America, that was sort of the end, really, of Pink Floyd. But it was too scary to leave because the umbrella and the trademark was worth so much money.”
Waters said that while he doesn’t regret the albums he made after Dark Side of the Moon, he acknowledged, “It’s just what happens in life sometimes, you know? Sometimes, you stay in a marriage longer than you should have done. Sometimes, you stay in a band longer than you should have. But maybe you get something out of those extra years. So, I’d have no regrets.”
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images
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