Roger Waters said he has been re-recording the 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon “[because] not enough people recognised what it’s about, what it was I was saying then,” according to an interview with The Telegraph journalist Tristram Fane Saunders.
In the profile, Waters said he’s been working on the new version for months, and that he’s been doing it from scratch—without the help or knowledge of Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick Mason.
Besides Waters, the only collaborators on the new album are reportedly Waters’ longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Gus Seyffert, a “Baptist minister” who plays a Hammond organ, and Seyffert’s girlfriend, the singer Bedouine. Waters is said to play a bass solo on “Us and Them,” and reportedly adds his own vocals over the original album’s instrumentals, including a “prose poem over ‘On The Run.’”
Saunders, who claims he is only one of “handful” of people who have listened to the solo album “from start-to-finish,” described parts of the re-recording as “very good.” In particular, Saunders touts “Time” as “terrific with his old man’s timbre” and the “Money” as a “country-tinged” cut reminiscent of “late Johnny Cash.”
The Pink Floyd founder is reportedly planning a big release, which might be complicated seeing as Gilmour and Mason still own the band’s name. Gilmour, who has been in a decades-long feud with Waters, has been critical of his former bandmate. On Monday, he reposted a tweet by his wife Polly Samson — who wrote several of the band’s tracks — that denounced Waters’ support of Russia.
“Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” wrote Samson on Twitter. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Gilmour retweeted the post, and in a show of support, wrote, “Every word demonstrably true.”
Representatives for Roger Waters did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
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Over the past six months, Waters has also used his platform as a sounding board for controversial political takes. On Wednesday, Waters spoke at the United Nations Security Council meeting and condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “illegal,” but also said it was “not unprovoked.”
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His remarks on the war in Ukraine were more subdued than some of the others Waters has made in the past, including in an interview with Rolling Stone. Last year, Waters claimed his name is on a “kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government.” In that same conversation, the singer shifted the blame from the ongoing war from Russia to NATO, suggesting that the organization essentially left Putin with no other choice but to invade Ukraine.
When contemplating the potential repercussions of the re-recording from his former bandmates, whom he called “Faux Floyd,” Waters seemed dismissive. “I wrote The Dark Side of the Moon. Let’s get rid of all this ‘we’ c–p!,” he told The Telegraph. “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!”
