Nick Mason admitted Pink Floyd had been “petulant” in their dealings with movie director Stanley Kubrick when he asked about using their Atom Heart Mother suite in his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange.

Most accounts of the incident revolve around a version in which Kubrick called Roger Waters and said he’d like to use Floyd’s music, but he couldn’t specify what he planned to do, and wanted to retain the right to use the suite however he liked. That wasn’t good enough for Waters, who’s said to have told him, “Right, you can’t use it.”

In a new interview with Uncut, Mason was asked to recall his own version of events. “Probably because he wouldn’t let us do anything for 2001,” he said. “It sounds a bit petulant! I don’t remember whether he did ask for something from Atom Heart Mother. We’d have loved to have got involved with 2001 – we thought it was exactly the sort of thing we should be doing the soundtrack for.”

Mason was also asked whether he’d conferred with Waters and David Gilmour before launching his band Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, which reinterprets Floyd’s early output. “No, I didn’t ask them to join in, because that would be Pink Floyd,” he said. “But I did tell them what I was proposing to do, as good manners, and I have to say both of them were supportive – which I found slightly disturbing! ‘Yeah, go ahead, make a fool of yourself … ’ I know David has looked at a lot of it online.”

The drummer noted that what he "didn’t really want to do was go out as another version of Pink Floyd and play the best of Dark Side and so on. All this other material was there, lying dormant, and could be interpreted in a slightly different way.”

Mason also tackled the inevitable question about a reunion. “You’re asking the wrong person," he said. "I saw a quote where someone said, ‘On my tombstone it’ll say: I’m still not sure it’s quite over … '”