We had the chance to sit down with the Professor himself, Lee Harris, the man with the idea behind Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets. We spoke about the Saucers approach to the songs, touched on the legacy of Pink Floyd and what it’s like touring with Nick Mason plus more! It’s been such an enormous honor, Lee is a true gentleman and his love for the music runs deep and proves he is the heart of the Saucers. We hope you enjoy!

Photo by Frank Donnelly

As many of you know Lee came up with the idea for the ‘Saucerful Of Secrets’ project back in 2016 whilst going to see his friend Guy Pratt playing with David Gilmour in Nîmes. His idea became a reality in 2018, now 5 years and 175 gigs later the band are still going strong and have just announced a European tour this summer.

AFG: Lee, many thanks for giving us your time. What are you most looking forward to getting back out on the road and playing?

LH: Honestly it’s every song and every show. We have always been careful to choose songs that we all like. That way none of us are thinking “Oh no THAT one’s coming up next!”. The downside is there may be something that you have to concede because others aren’t so keen hence my suggestions of, say, Pillow Of Winds and The Narrow Way falling by the wayside.

AFG: The band celebrated its 5th anniversary last May, how do you feel the band has evolved in the last 5 years?

LH: Mainly on the bus! There’s now lots of oat milk and coconut milk yogurt and a disappointing lack of mini chocolate bars since we first started but I really shouldn’t be eating those anyway.

AFG: One thing that makes the Saucers unique is the camaraderie of the five of you on stage together. There’s loads of smiles and everyone looks happy to be there, off stage can you describe a typical day in the touring life of the Saucers? Do you always get on like best friends?

LH: I suppose this has sort of become our shtick and it starts with Guy as he is the common bond. When we started it was easier for us all to establish friendships as there was a mutual friend amongst us. He and I have known each other very well for about 18 years. Dominic has worked with Guy for what must be near to 25 years at this point. Gary and Guy go back to the mid 80’s and obviously the majority of people reading this know about Nick and Guy who will soon be celebrating 500 shows together as a rhythm section. I really mustn’t forget Barrie Knight, who has been part of the PF camp since 1988 and is in charge of security, who is very much like a touring member of the band albeit one who doesn’t play… although he does have a great singing voice!

Typical day? Dominic has mentioned this elsewhere and it’s spot on. If we haven’t already planned to go somewhere together we have a knack of going out separately, running into each other and joining up anyway. Usually at a museum, a point of architectural interest or just in a shop. 

Photo by Will Ireland

AFG: Nick looks to be having lots of fun on tour, the few bits in the show where Nick charms the audience with his humor gets a great reception, is there a moment that sticks out in your memory as one of the funniest and or most charming?

LH: One that particularly stands out is when we played Warsaw on the last night of the 2019 Summer tour and he brought his moustache out of retirement.

AFG: 2022/2023’s The Echoes Tour saw the return of a beloved Floyd classic that had not been played since 2006 by David Gilmour. Was Echoes always one of the songs in consideration for the band to eventually play gIven it is such a magnum opus in the early PF catalogue?

LH: If we didn’t play it then it was always going to be the elephant in the room. It’s a song that Nick has a co-writing credit on and both Rick and David are on record as saying that the whole band worked on it encouraging each other and that it was, in Rick’s words, “a really collective piece of music”. If you think of our show as if it’s a book then it tells the story of how a very special group of musicians and their music changed over those formative years. To leave Echoes out would be like leaving the last chapter of the book out. 

AFG: Was there ever an idea to tour any album in full? 

LH: No. I once thought that it might be fun to do Meddle but then realised we already do the tracks from it that are most conducive to our live show anyway. I don’t think it always works when bands present old albums in full. It might be fine when listening at home but in front of an audience the sequencing order and / or its balance of instrumental passages to lyrics may not lend itself to a gig. 

AFG: As a band you sound like a continuation of early Pink Floyd, what is the main ingredient for staying true to that sound as opposed to being a bunch of session musicians or hired hands playing PF music?

LH: I know Guy has done sessions, and very famous ones at that, but he gets called in because people like what he did in the bands he’s played with. I think he’s called himself a serial band member… or something like that. Nick and Gary have both only ever been in one band and since playing in The Orb Dominic is actually the guy who calls session players in to work for him in his studio. Me? After many years of playing in bands in London I spent way more than a decade working with only one  – The Blockheads. 

So we aren’t session men to begin with and we all have a shared love for this music. Nick doesn’t want to be in his own tribute band so putting our own stamp on things is positively encouraged and we change the way we play things every night. Every show is unique. A band that is put together solely to play like pit musicians in a theatre aren’t going to do that. Certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t good musicians but their remit from whomever is in charge is to reproduce.

Ours is to reinterpret. 

AFG: Can you explain the challenge of navigating how to get the various sounds right for the material? Is there a lot of research involved or just working things out at home and trying what works best? 

LH: I tend to treat the original recordings like they are demo’s and respectfully change things here and there to make it a little more ‘me’. I think that’s what all the Saucers do. There are parts of songs that I and, I think, audiences expect to hear and there are other bits where I think you can do your own thing which may be adding something or actually just not playing at all. One has to trust one’s intuition on that.

To give a detailed answer I am afraid things are going to get nerdy… so here goes. An important part of the guitar continuity is that Gary and I use Telecaster’s for Syd tunes and Stratocaster’s for David’s. As far as research I’m quite a stickler for getting the sounds I do choose to reproduce as close as possible and I’ve been able to use a handful of the original guitar tracks for reference. That way I can hear things like gain and echo settings far more clearly.

Photo by Will Ireland

Some songs you do spend more time on than others. Take Echoes as an example. I love the bluesy guitar David utilised to top and tail his 2006 versions so that is the approach I use rather than the glissando (violin/slide) sound he did in concert in the 70’s – I already utilise that elsewhere anyway. 

I came up with a part for the beginning in the lead up to rehearsals in 2022. The ending I improvised over the 60 European shows that year until I composited it from listening to various soundboard mixes of ours. I now tend to keep the end solo the same so that there’s something to fall back on and Dominic improvises around that. As it finishes there will be a few different inflections from night to night and the odd pinched harmonic – when I can manage to wring one out of the bloody string! 

In the Space Jam sequence on the original there’s a great little funky hook that David plays on distorted guitar that is very far back in the mix. I throw it in here and there and Guy seems to like it so much that he has started doing it too. I really like the sound of the phaser David used in the 70’s so I use one in the ‘chugging’ part during Nick’s drum passage. In that section Gary and I have our delays set with 1 milliseconds difference to the other and FOH pan us hard left and right so it, hopefully, sounds big to the audience. 

Conversely with something like Vegetable Man I had a copy of Syd’s guitar track from the original recording sent to me so I could decipher what was going on with his wah wah part. It isn’t that audible on the recorded track but you’d miss it if it wasn’t there so I keep the main gist of what he did and add other bits around it.

Gary and I have each other to bounce off of be it improvising on the night or discussing our guitar sounds in rehearsals or during a tour. If he’s in doubt he might ask my opinion of a particular sound he’s using and he might tell me if he thinks a different type of overdrive would work for what I’m doing. I really love playing with him and have always enjoyed playing with another guitarist. It goes back to my 12 years working with The Blockheads. Playing either with or standing in for Johnny Turnbull and Chaz Jankel, who I think are an extremely underrated guitar duo, was a priceless education. 

Ultimately you have to remember whatever you do it’s all about the song.

AFG: You recently asked ThorpyFX to make you a pedal to emulate Syd Barrett’s Selmer Treble and Bass 50, can you explain that whole process and how that came about?

LH: I wanted to celebrate Syd’s sound on those early tracks. It’s the most recognisable of his guitar playing that was committed to tape but I couldn’t quite get it with what I had. I had seen a youtube video by a guitarist called Jed Tyler from the band Juliez Andrewz which employed a Selmer T and B amp and instantly knew that was the sound and I either had to get one or clone it somehow.

I greatly respected Thorpy as a pedal maker and asked if it was something that he thought could be made into a stompbox. He found the request interesting and along with his collaborator Dan Coggins went to work on making it a reality. We tested it a couple of times and A/B’d it with Dan’s Selmer. The only difference was the pedal had less unwanted noise than the amp. It really is absolutely spot on and a fantastic piece of kit. By no means is it a ‘one Syd pony’. It’s been engineered to have more gain than the amp so it’s more versatile and is useful for far more than my needs in this project.

AFG: You have played with all the surviving members of Pink Floyd, two on one occasion and you also have played some historic venues tied to the Pink Floyd name, you are part of the band legacy now. In your own words can you describe why you feel Pink Floyd still connect with people across multiple generations?

LH: Just to be clear I certainly don’t think of myself as part of the band legacy but thank you for the sentiment. Perhaps not an original thing to say but for me the connection is down to the quality of the music and the lyrics. I know the band do get lumped in as Prog but, perhaps because I’m not really into the majority of the bands that are, I’ve never agreed with that. I think it’s very difficult to pigeonhole them into a genre. It is simply Pink Floyd music. It is unique to them. In its own space. And actually that’s a watchword with that band. There is so much space in the music that it makes listening to it so easy.

Photo by David Levine

For those of us old enough to remember what it was like to only know an album as a 12 inch record and not a tiny jpeg the artwork played such an important part too. It’s amazing what videos your mind could make up in your head when you looked at Storm’s images and listened to the music. All that made it even more personal.

One thing that became obvious to me, that wasn’t before the Saucers, was just how varied the output of the band was in the early years. Our set has everything from atonal psychedelia through pop music, hard rock, ambient instrumentals, funky rhythms and Saucerful itself which, when it gets to Celestial Voices, is practically a classical hymn but as I just said, all of it just sounds like Pink Floyd. Ultimately if you like music there’s going to be something in there for you that moves you and there obviously is for many millions of people all over the world. 

Thank you for all your wonderful answers Lee, we wish you and the band the very best back out on the road! To keep up with Lee on social media, be sure to follow him on Facebook and Instagram. Tickets for the UK ‘Set The Controls Tour’ in June are on sale now. Additional European dates just announced yesterday are on sale this upcoming Friday morning. All dates with purchase links below.

• JUNE 11TH – VICTORIA HALL, STOKE-ON-TRENT, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 12TH – BARBICAN, YORK, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 13TH – ROYAL CONCERT HALL, NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND – TICKETS 
• JUNE 15TH – NEW THEATRE OXFORD, OXFORD, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 17TH – BRISTOL BEACON, BRISTOL, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 18TH – BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY HALL, BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 19TH – O2 APOLLO MANCHESTER, MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 21ST – SEC ARMADILLO, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 22ND – THE GLASSHOUSE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR MUSIC, GATESHEAD, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 24TH – WALES MILLENNIUM CENTRE, CARDIFF, WALES – TICKETS
• JUNE 25TH – LIGHTHOUSE, POOLE, DORSET, ENGLAND – TICKETS
• JUNE 26TH – BRIGHTON DOME, BRIGHTON, ENGLAND – TICKETS 
• JUNE 28TH – REGENT THEATRE, IPSWICH, ENGLAND – TICKETS 
• JUNE 29TH – ROYAL ALBERT HALL, KENSINGTON, LONDON, ENGLAND – TICKETS 
  On sale Friday, 23rd February at 10am CET (9am UK time)
• JULY 2ND – TIVOLIVREDENBURG-RONDA, UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS – TICKETS
• JULY 3RD – KURSAAL, OSTEND, BELGIUM – TICKETS
• JULY 4TH – L’OLYMPIA, PARIS, FRANCE – TICKETS
• JULY 5TH – DEN ATELIER, LUXEMBOURG – TICKETS
• JULY 7TH – HAUS AUENSEE, LEIPZIG, GERMANY – TICKETS
• JULY 8TH – LIEDERHALLE, STUTTGART, GERMANY – TICKETS
• JULY 9TH – TOLLWOOD FESTIVAL, MUNICH, GERMANY – TICKETS
• JULY 10TH – AVDITORIJ PORTOROŽ, PORTOROŽ, SLOVENIA – TICKETS
• JULY 16TH – KASEMATTEN, GRAZ, AUSTRIA – TICKETS
• JULY 27TH – RONCALLIPLATZ, COLOGNE, GERMANY – TICKETS
• JULY 30TH – TEMPODROM, BERLIN, GERMANY – TICKETS
• JULY 31ST – STADTPARK, HAMBURG, GERMANY – TICKETS
• AUGUST 1ST – JAHRHUNDERTHALLE, FRANKFURT, GERMANY – TICKETS