Roger Waters has rerecorded ‘The Dark Side of the Moon,’ releasing it this spring
Roger Waters has been in the news a lot this week, from feuding with David Gilmour and wife, Polly Samson, on social media, to addressing a U.N. Security Council today on the behest of Russia. But the biggest news to fans is that he's been working on a total rerecording Pink Floyd's classic The Dark Side of the Moon.
“I wrote The Dark Side of the Moon. Let’s get rid of all this ‘we’ crap," Waters tells UK newspaper 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!” (According to album credits, Waters is credited with sole authorship on three of its 10 songs, including "Money," and a co-write on two others.) The new version was due to be out in March but according to The Telegraph it's been pushed back to May. Writer Tristram Fane Saunders got to hear it:
It turns out to be a curate’s egg; parts are very good indeed. Time, that young man’s lament for mortality, sounds terrific with his old man’s timbre. Breathe is wonderfully reimagined as a slow, acoustic groove. A country-tinged Money could be a late Johnny Cash cut, with Waters growling charismatically at the very bottom of his register.
One of the most jarring differences, Saunders says, is that the instrumentals now have "Waters talking all over them." In the case of "On the Run," it now features Waters reciting a poem based on a dream he had. “It was a revelation, almost Patmosian whatever that means… a fight with evil, in this case an apparently all-powerful hooded and cloaked figure… it brooked no rebuttal.”
Waters says he's rerecorded The Wall "Because not enough people recognised what it’s about, what it was I was saying then." Players on the album besides Waters include Gus Seyffert, Bedouine (Azniv Korkejian), and "a Baptist minister on Hammond organ." Stay tuned for official details.
As for his speech to the U.N. Security Council, most of it was anti-war in nature but he did get around to specifics, like the war in Ukraine. He condemned Russia's invasion, calling it "illegal," but added it was “not unprovoked.” He also said, “So I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms. There, that’s out of the way.” This was a bit of a change of tune, given that Waters has been very critical of Ukraine, to the point where he told Rolling Stone last year that he thought his name was on a “kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government.”
According to Reuters, a few members of the U.N. Security council were not pleased with Waters speaking, with one anonymous member quipping, “What’s next? Mr. Bean?” Waters actually mentioned this in his talk today, saying “it’s a penny-to-a-pound that the anonymous diplomat is an Englishman.”
You can watch Waters' full remarks to the UN here.