Roger Waters has released the first snippet of music from his upcoming rework of Pink Floyd‘s seminal album ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, which marked its 50th anniversary on March 1.
- READ MORE: Why new Ukraine benefit song ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ could be Pink Floyd’s perfect final act
Waters has shared a 52-second clip on YouTube, showing him listening to the first verse of a reworked ‘Us and Them’ in the studio. Waters accompanied the clip with a lengthy statement in its description, acknowledging, “it’s not a replacement for the original which, obviously, is irreplaceable”.
Watch the clip below.
He continued: “But it is a way for the seventy nine year old man to look back across the intervening fifty years into the eyes of the twenty nine year old and say, to quote a poem of mine about my Father, “We did our best, we kept his trust, our Dad would have been proud of us”. And also it is a way for me to honor a recording that Nick and Rick and Dave and I have every right to be very proud of.”
Elsewhere in the statement, Waters said the rework would be a good chance to “re-address the political and emotional message of the whole album” and that the record is “now in the process of finishing the final mix”.
The clip marks the first music from Waters’ ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ re-recording project, which he said he was embarking on because “not enough people recognised what it’s about, what it was I was saying then”.
Anticipating backlash to the project, possibly from his ex-bandmates in Pink Floyd, with whom he’s had a rocky relationship since his departure in 1985, Waters said to The Telegraph: “I wrote ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’. Let’s get rid of all this ‘we’ crap! Of course we were a band, there were four of us, we all contributed, but it’s my project and I wrote it. So… blah!”
In January, Pink Floyd announced a 50th anniversary reissue of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, which is due for release on March 24. The reissue will include a live recording of the band’s 1974 Wembley Stadium concert.
Last week, it was announced that Waters’ May 28 concert in Frankfurt, Germany had been cancelled due to his views on Israel, with Frankfurt’s city council calling Waters “one of the world’s most widely-known antisemites”.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in October last year, Waters described Israel as “a supremacist, settler colonialist project that operates a system of apartheid” for its occupation of Palestinian territories.
Waters has yet to officially comment on the Frankfurt cancellation, though he did re-share a TikTok video of US-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud who defended the musician as an “anti-racist”.
Thanks Ramzy! You tell’em my brother.🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🕊️
Love
R. https://t.co/sSXjLhzpax— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 26, 2023
