Roger Waters on why he’s reimagined Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon – and reopened old wounds
SOMEHOW, at 80, Roger Waters has managed to become the most controversial rock star on the planet.
And that’s NOT because he has recreated The Dark Side Of The Moon fifty years after the seemingly untouchable fourth bestselling album of all time first appeared.
Although, as his “Redux” version reaches the finale of Brain Damage and Eclipse, he can be heard intoning, “Why don’t we re-record Dark Side?” Cue uncontrolled laughter followed by, “He’s gone mad”.
Instead of putting his feet up, comfortably numb to the maelstrom of the wider world, Pink Floyd’s chief creative force continues to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”.
Like Macca, Dylan and Jagger, he’s entering his ninth decade with no sign of retirement in sight.
The only difference between them and him is that Waters has adopted the role of an arch-provocateur who ruffles feathers wherever he goes with his highly-charged political statements.
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Right now, there’s a concerted effort to “cancel” the man who wrote all the lyrics and most of the music for Dark Side, Wish You Here and The Wall.
He’s been repeatedly called anti-Semitic (an accusation he calls a “vicious lie”), largely because of his fervent stand against the state of Israel.
In May, German police launched an investigation into Waters for wearing an inflammatory Nazi-style uniform on stage in Berlin but he countered by saying it was “quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice and bigotry in all its forms”.
He added: “My parents fought the Nazis in World War Two, with my father paying the ultimate price.”
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His dad Eric Fletcher Waters died at the Battle of Anzio in 1944 when Roger was five months old, prompting a bitter lifelong sense of loss and informing the anti-war stance so evident in his music.
Waters has also come under fire in recent times for doubling down on his view that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not entirely “unprovoked” by the West.
Incredibly, Polly Samson, wife of his old bandmate David Gilmour, has been at the forefront of the barrage of criticism.
She launched a stinging rebuke on X/Twitter, describing Waters as, among other things, “a Putin apologist” and a “megalomaniac”.
This was supported by Floyd’s guitarist and primary vocalist, Gilmour, with the comment, “Every word demonstrably true”.
Here, writ large, was confirmation that a decades-long feud, which goes back to when Waters stormed out of the prog rock pioneers in 1985, had reached new heights.
But that hasn’t stopped him revisiting his and Floyd’s defining album, crafting what he calls The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux.
By any stretch, this is not an ego gone mad project but a worthwhile artistic statement, very much a companion rather than a replacement.
It’s an older, wiser look at the album’s themes — mortality, descent into madness, avarice, futility of war — by a person with another half a century of life experience.
Gone are Gilmour’s fluid guitar solos, Richard Wright’s imperious keyboards and Nick Mason’s pioneering use of percussion and sound effects.
No heartbeats bookending the album, no cacophony of clocks on Time, no clatter of change on Money, no maniacal laughter when Waters sings “the lunatic is in my head” on Brain Damage.
‘It is not a spoiler of the original at all’
The tone is reflective, the music more muted, and punctuated by frequent spoken-word ruminations delivered in a low rumble that would make Tom Waits proud.
We begin with a recital from the Pink Floyd album which preceded 1973’s Dark Side but maybe helped inspire it, the, er, obscure film soundtrack Obscured By Clouds.
The lyrics come from Free Four, which sounds like a jaunty ditty but actually contains profound and prescient expression.
In place of Mason’s sound collage Speak To Me and before he launches into Breathe, Waters intones: “The memories of a man in his old age/Are the deeds of a man in his prime.”
In announcing his Redux album, Waters picked up on this theme: “The original Dark Side Of The Moon feels in some ways like the lament of an elder being on the human condition.
“But Dave, Rick, Nick and I were so young when we made it, and when you look at the world around us, clearly the message hasn’t stuck.
“That’s why I started to consider what the wisdom of an 80-year-old could bring to a reimagined version.”
Another passage from Free Four makes a compelling case for Waters, who HAS enjoyed the luck to reach 80, to pursue his reimagining.
Life is a short warm moment
And death is a long cold rest
You get your chance to try
In the twinkling of an eye
80 years with luck or even less
Earlier this year, to mark Dark Side’s 50th anniversary, I spoke to genial Nick Mason, 79, Floyd’s man in the middle who remains gracious to both Waters and Gilmour.
He was one of the first to hear the Redux version.
“It’s just terrific,” he enthused.
“People call it a spoiler of the original but it isn’t at all.
“It is extraordinary that Roger wrote lyrics which were as relevant to an older person as they were to us in our twenties.”
Mason maintained that Waters’ new “development of the lyrics makes perfect sense” to him all these years later.
“I immediately connected with it and thought, ‘This is really a great add-on to what we did 50 years ago’.”
The drummer didn’t buy into the school of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. “I love the idea of a piece of work being re-engineered,” he continued.
“This accounts for my slight disapproval of tribute bands. They spend so much time trying to absolutely recreate what was there before whereas I believe there should be room for reinterpretation.”
In light of his spat with Gilmour and because the Redux version is missing his former bandmate’s elegant guitar flourishes and clear, expressive vocals, Waters has been accused of attempting to trash the original.
It’s a claim that has enraged him and prompted effusive praise for the musician seen as his adversary.
Waters took particular aim at an article in the New Statesman, saying: “It’s the usual s**t-stirring, ill-informed nonsense.”
The piece referred to a quote in Spain’s El Pais newspaper which suggested that the recording process involved removing Gilmour’s “horrible guitar solos”.
In denying that it “sure as s**t” didn’t come from him, Waters said: “I was there, I love Dave’s guitar solos on Dark Side Of The Moon, both of them, and on Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall and The Final Cut.
‘Best guitar solos in rock and roll’
“In my, albeit biased view, Dave’s solos on those albums constitute a collection of some of the very best guitar solos in the history of rock and roll.”
In his online introduction to Dark Side Redux, Waters said there was no intention to “supersede” or “replace” the original and he praised the contributions of his three former comrades in arms.
Mason gave me this insight: “Roger sees Dark Side as perhaps the point at which he was beginning to march off to do his own thing.
“But I think he would concede that it was a group project. I’m fairly certain that he’s never tried to maintain that it was all his idea.”
In pinpointing the difference between then and now, Waters said: “The new recording is more reflective, more indicative of what the concept was.
“I hope we can gain more from it than we did back in 1973 because it’s been part of all of our lives for 50 years — yet we are still not breathing in the air.”
Co-produced by Waters and Gus Seyffert and featuring a gifted assembly of musicians, the Redux has made its creator “immensely proud”.
One of the most striking revisions is for the song that most overtly dwells on mortality, The Great Gig In The Sky.
Clare Torry’s towering wails are replaced by an emotional Waters monologue about a dear friend, Don Paul, who has died from cancer.
He talks of receiving some of Don’s bale hooks and twine to remember him by and how these items take pride of place among shelves on his landing, “treasured, forever catching the rays of the dying sun”.
Significant, too, are the reboots of the fraught study in anxiety, On The Run, and the kaleidoscopic Any Colour You Like, first presented as instrumentals but now given deeper meaning with accompanying monologues.
On the first verse of a brooding Us And Them, Waters reinforces his enduring anti-war credentials with calm authority —- “us” of course refers to cannon fodder squaddies and “them” to generals drawing “lines on the map”.
In a filmed answer to a fan question, Waters recalled Dark Side sessions old and new, beginning with a momentous event in (probably) 1972.
“I played the first mix, which was on a quarter-inch tape, to my wife at the time, Judy Trim,” he said.
“She burst into tears and I thought, ‘B*****r me, we’ve cracked it’, because it was very moving and it still is.
“After completing the Redux, what was the feeling? I sat and listened to it and I found myself thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is REALLY moving.’”
Another fan tried to find out what makes Waters tick, simply asking him how he summons the courage to tell the truth.
“That is a very important question,” he replied.
“I get it from my mother, who impressed upon me as a teenager that you should read, read, read everything you can.”
He explained how Mary Waters encouraged him to be well-informed whether it was around “big political questions” or “big personal questions”.
“When you’ve done that, my mother said to me, you’ve done all the heavy lifting.
“The hard work is over and the next bit’s easy.”
Then Waters asked her, “What’s the next bit, Mum?” And she replied: “You do the right thing.”
He concluded: “Well those words echo through the years.
“My mother’s been dead for about 20 years, but I’ve never forgotten them.”
I guess plenty of people think Waters has been doing the wrong thing of late but this uncompromising character has never been the type to change tack.
The final words are with Nick Mason.
We were marvelling at how Waters had shown such insight into life’s big issues on The Dark Side Of The Moon at the relatively tender age of 29.
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I said: “I can’t imagine how Roger did it, really.”
And Mason replied: “Well, you can try asking him . . . if you’re brave enough.”
