Personally, I think Nick Mason is a great drummer and a good friend of mine.
Oh wait, were talking about the Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.
I think Nick Mason is great and big influence.
I disagree he played simply due to lack of skill, or lack of ideas to come up busier parts. There are some pre-Dark Side videos of him floating around youtube where Mason is much more in a Ginger Baker or Mitch Mitchel mode of filling up space. OK, so maybe he doesn't have Giner's technique per se, but Mason could play a lot of notes if he wanted to.
What makes Mason's playing on the legendary Floyd tracks amazing his Mason's ability to play the spaces between the notes.
His feel, his choice to leave space, his choices of what NOT to do when he could have done more is just epic.
I also disagree Mason lacked skill in that many Pink Floyd songs were in odd time, or have odd bits, and Mason not only played them, but made them sound great. "Money" is largely in 7/4, and yet Mason made it sound like a song you can dance to.
His incredible lack of ego is also something to be admired. Look how many drummers quit a band because they didn't get on such and such song or record. Nick's take? If Jeff re-cut Mother, if Andy newark of Jim Keltner makes more sense, then do it.
Jim Keltner said in his Drumhead cover issue that when he was recording drums for "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" that Mason was there, in the next room reading magazines, not the least bit phased about it (some other articles suggest it was actually Mason's idea to have other drummers record drums on that album).