Roger Waters Says He’s Re-Recorded Dark Side of the Moon … Without Pink Floyd
Roger Waters is having quite a week.
After hinting he was considering legal action for derogatory social media comments from his former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour‘s wife, Polly Samson, and addressing the United Nations Security Council at the request of Russia, Waters dropped another bombshell: he’s re-recorded Pink Floyd’s legendary 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon without any involvement from or knowledge of the members of the band.
More from Spin:
Pink Floyd Dips Into the Archives for 50th Anniversary Dark Side of the Moon Set
Roger Waters Unveils Studio Version of Revamped ‘Comfortably Numb’
“The new concept is meant to reflect on the meaning of the work, to bring out the heart and soul of the album, musically and spiritually,” he said in an interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung. “I’m the only one singing my songs on these new recordings, and there are no rock and roll guitar solos.”
In a separate interview with the U.K.’s Telegraph, he didn’t mince words about Gilmour and late Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, saying “they can’t write songs” and that “they have no ideas — not a single one between them. They never have had, and that drives them crazy.”
“I wrote The Dark Side of the Moon. Let’s get rid of all this ‘we’ crap,” Waters added. “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.”
His comments still beg the question: why mess with Dark Side, which is one of the most beloved and commercially successful albums of all time? According to Waters, it’s “because not enough people recognized what it’s about, what it was I was saying then.”
Waters played the Telegraph snippets of the new recordings, with “Money” described as “country-tinged” and like something Johnny Cash would have recorded in his late-career Rick Rubin era, while “Breathe” has been “wonderfully re-imagined as a slow, acoustic groove,” and “Time” is said to sound “terrific with his old man’s timbre.” Waters has also added spoken word passages to some of the Dark Side instrumentals.
The re-recorded Dark Side is allegedly due for release in May, but no further details have been announced, not least of which is whether Waters will face any copyright blowback from Gilmour and/or surviving original drummer Nick Mason. Waters previously re-recorded Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” last year and utilized the new, Gilmour-free arrangement on his This Is Not a Drill tour, which continues March 17 in Lisbon.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
The post Roger Waters Unveils Studio Version of Revamped ‘Comfortably Numb’ appeared first on SPIN.
