Never mind the controversy – Roger Waters’ Dark Side of the Moon re-recording is extraordinary
When Roger Waters announced that he was re-recording Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon as a solo album, it sounded like the most egotistical idea a rock star had ever had. It was if Paul McCartney wanted to remake Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band without pesky interjections by John, George and Ringo, or if Lindsey Buckingham decided the way to improve Rumours would be to erase the rest of Fleetwood Mac and sing and play all the parts himself.
To be fair to Waters, a man who rarely shies from controversy, he clearly knows how this project might be taken. As he goes into the album’s penultimate epic, Brain Damage, you hear him mutter, “Why don’t we re-record Dark Side?” before emitting a gurgling chuckle of spontaneous laughter anticipating the reaction. “He’s gorn mad!”
Nevertheless, I am astonished, delighted and even slightly perplexed to report that the 80-year-old curmudgeon has genuinely pulled off something quite extraordinary. I am not for a moment suggesting Waters’s solo version of Pink Floyd’s 1973 prog rock masterpiece (still the fourth biggest selling album of all time) is an improvement on the original, but it isn’t trying to be. What Waters and co-producer Gus Seyffert have conjured up is a beautiful and compelling grace note that certainly offers something of value to anyone who has been beguiled by Dark Side’s resonant musical, philosophical and emotional charms.
“The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime,” are the first words we hear spoken, with Waters setting out his stall by adapting instrumental intro Speak To Me to support lyrics from an even earlier Floyd song (Free Four from 1972’s Obscured By Clouds). With his gravel voice carrying the cracked weight of every one of his years on earth, Waters effectively uses the template of his greatest work to reflect upon its lyrical concerns from the other end of time’s telescope.
With its opening and closing heartbeats, there is an implicit arc built into the original that carries listeners on a journey from birth to death, grappling with some of the big questions of existence. Waters wrings this philosophical aspect to the full, reciting snatches of poetic new lyrics evoking nightmarish visions of the battle between good and evil, war and peace, ‘Us and Them’, that offer different angles with which to view the source material, whilst familiar melodies and grooves flow like a reassuring river beneath.
The tone throughout is sombre, deep and rich, with tempos slowed down (adding five minutes to the original’s 42.50 running time), keys lowered and arrangements adapted for sonorous cellos, vibrant strings and soft-toned acoustic guitars, with some really great organ, keyboard and piano playing holding the centre, whilst lap steel guitar, theremin and a lone female voice contribute spooky high notes.
What you don’t get is any sense of a band playing together at full power. At times it can seem almost rude the way Waters drones on in places where you expect to hear David Gilmour’s lead guitar soaring towards the ether. The Floyd original features long instrumental passages to allow imagination to do its own work, but the remake leaves far less to the listener’s interpretation. Waters has things to say about a life in which the odds are stacked against the poor, the humble and the peaceful, and he seems urgently concerned that the 45 million copies of the original album already in the world did not make his points clearly enough.
A lifelong pacifist (albeit with a somewhat contrarily aggressive way of delivering his message), his outspokenness often gets him in to trouble, and he is currently once again embroiled in accusations of antisemitism that he has forcefully and articulately denied. Pink Floyd fans should not let it distract from the work on offer: an elegiac twist on a beloved classic made with love, offering genuine musical pleasure and a clearly argued lyrical case for following idealism in the face of life’s ultimate futility.
Even in this markedly more downbeat version, the twin towers of Brain Damage and Eclipse still offer perhaps the most epic conclusion to any album in rock history, and it’s hard not to concur with Waters as he mutters, with final satisfaction, “It’s not all dark, is it?”
This is an album that underlines the greatness of Dark Side, rather than challenges it. I was sceptical at first, but Waters’s thoughtful and loving remake has turned out to be a powerful and moving way for an older artist to engage with their youthful self. It is almost surprising that more veteran artists haven’t done the same. Over to you, Macca.
The Dark Side of the Moon Redux is out tomorrow via Cooking Vinyl