Inside Out by Nick Mason Page A

but most were chosen as vehicles, like ‘Interstellar Overdrive’, to act as a framework
     for constantly changing ideas. Everyone remembers Syd for his songwriting, but he probably deserves equal credit for his radical
     concept of improvised rock music.
    We had some extra lights and a bubble machine, as well as the domestic slide projectors, which had to be installed right in
     the middle of the stalls to get any sort of light throw. This required some technical and legal improvisation, since at the
     time lighting and sound mixing was controlled from the side of the stage. It was some years before it became standard practice
     to have the sound and lighting desks in the middle of the auditorium.
    IT
reported that the event was ‘really good thinking … a genuine twentieth-century chamber music concert. The cleanness of presentation
     of the hall itself was perfect for the very loose mixed media.’ It’s just a shame we couldn’t capitalise on this reception
     and avoid the next year of drudgery fulfilling endless routine gigs.
    The Azimuth Co-ordinator, which had its first outing at ‘Games For May’, was a device operated by Rick, which we had commissioned
     from Bernard Speight, a technical engineer at Abbey Road. There were two channels, each with a joystick, one for his Farfisa
     organ, the other for sound effects. If a joystick was upright the sound was centred, but moving it diagonally would dispatch
     the sound to the speaker in the equivalent corner of the hall. Rick could send his keyboard sounds swirling round the auditorium,
     or make footsteps – supplied from a Revox tape recorder – apparently march across from one side to the other. Nobody remembers
     who came up with the name of the device, but the Oxford English Dictionary defines an azimuth as ‘the arc of the heavens extending
     from the zenith to the horizon, which cuts it at right angles’. It seemed rather well put, I thought.
    We were also banned from ever performing again at the QueenElizabeth Hall, not because of over-excited fans ripping up the seats but because one of the road crew, dressed as a full
     admiral of the fleet, tossed flower petals into the aisles. The hall authorities deemed this a potential safety hazard for
     the less sure-footed of the audience…
    This was typical of the disrespect, and often downright hostility, that existed between rock bands and venue management. On
     matters of safety and lighting, they would impose innumerable petty rules, some justified, many purely to indicate their disapproval.
     One that particularly annoyed us was when venues would demand higher levels of auditorium lighting for rock bands than for
     other forms of entertainment, especially damaging for us, as the impact of our light show would be severely diminished. An
     air rifle was occasionally employed to make sure the house lighting was modified to our liking. It was in fact de rigueur
     to be banned from all major venues, and as Andrew King says, you always told everyone you were banned even if you hadn’t been.
     I think like virtually every other group we were banned from the Albert Hall ‘for life’ for a short while…
    ‘Arnold Layne’ had also received a ban, from the pirate radio stations Radio London and Radio Caroline, as well as the BBC,
     which really did make it difficult to promote since there was only a handful of radio stations broadcasting at the time. The
     ban was due to vague references in the lyrics that could be construed, if you tried really hard, as a celebration of ‘sexual
     perversion’. Of course, not long afterwards, the BBC completely – and with a charming naivety – failed to notice anything
     sexual in the lyrics of Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’. It seems absurd now – and wonderfully old-fashioned given the
     ultra-explicit nature of lyrics in the twenty-first century – but at the time there was still great sensitivity to censorship.
     The Lord Chamberlain had retained power