With Pink Floyd‘s The Dark Side of Moon approaching its 50th anniversary, Roger Waters secretly re-recorded the album without the involvement or knowledge of any of his former bandmates.
“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,” Waters said in an interview with The Telegraph. “So… blah!”
Tristram Fane Saunders, who interviewed Waters for The Telegraph, was given a preview of the album and says “parts are very good indeed.” One notable change is the addition of Waters’ spoken-word poetry over the album’s instrumentals. Below, you can hear Waters’ newly recorded version of “Comfortably Numb,” which he shared late last year.
The plan is for Waters’ new version of The Dark Side of the Moon to be released in May alongside the staging of a big concert. However, Waters acknowledged that the band’s other surviving members could attempt to block its release. “I have no idea,” Waters said when asked about potential copyright issues.
Waters’ relationship with former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour is particularly tense at the moment. On Monday, Gilmour and his wife Polly Samson blasted Waters on social media. “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” Samson tweeted. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Gilmore quoted his wife’s tweet, adding, “Every word demonstrably true.”
Meanwhile, in his interview with The Telegraph, Waters downplayed Gilmour’s contributions to the band. He summed up his his attitude to Gilmour by saying, “You play the guitar and sing and do as you’re bloody well told.”
Waters continued: “Gilmour and Rick [Wright, the keyboardist]? They can’t write songs, they’ve nothing to say. They are not artists! They have no ideas, not a single one between them. They never have had, and that drives them crazy.”
If Pink Floyd’s recent reissue of Animals is any indication — there was a four-year battle over the liner notes — then it’s likely Gilmour will have something to say about Waters’ Dark Side. Pink Floyd also recently announced their own 50th anniversary Dark Side of the Moon box set, which is set for release in March.
Earlier today, Waters appeared before the UN Security Council on February 8th and delivered a bizarre speech on behalf of Russia.
