Pink Floyd Drummer Nick Mason Compares Roger Waters To Stalin In Recent Interview

In a new interview, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason makes an interesting comparison to former bandleader Roger Waters and Joseph Stalin.

Mason said that the bassist/songwriter's departure from the group in 1984 was similar to the aftermath of Stalin's death. "It must have been the same when Stalin died," Mason told Mojo. "It took quite a while [to recover], it was a three or four year period." The longtime beatkeeper went on to describe the meeting where Waters announced that he would be leaving the band. "Roger thought we were all going to call it day, and David and I thought Roger was going to call it a day and we were going to carry on," he said. "[But] the thing is, these slightly unbalanced people make great musicians. If we hadn't had the mad Syd and the mad Roger, we might have been doing Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep."

Pink Floyd is getting ready for the release of what seems to be their final album. The Endless River, comprised of leftovers from 1994's The Division Bell, will be released on Nov. 10. The album is currently the most preordered album of 2014, according to Amazon. It's on course to take the title of most preordered album of all time.

While the record will feature contributions by Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright, who passed away in 2008, there will be no sign of Waters on the album. "David [Gilmour] and Nick constitute the group Pink Floyd," Waters wrote in a Facebook message last month. "I on the other hand, am not part of Pink Floyd. I left Pink Floyd in 1985, that's 29 years ago."

The group has already dropped a few tracks from the mostly instrumental album.

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Pink Floyd, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, The Endless River