‘It’s not a replacement for the original’: Roger Waters shares clip of remastered ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’

Roger Waters has shared the first snippet of his remastered version of Pink Floyd’s legendary album The Dark Side Of The Moon.

The Pink Floyd musician announced the news in February that he would be releasing a new version of the record by himself.

According to a new interview at the time, Waters went ahead without telling his former bandmates, including David Gilmour, and has not sought their permission.

Discussing the re-record in February, the 79-year-old told The Telegraph: “I wrote The Dark Side of the Moon. Let’s get rid of all this ‘we’ crap. 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.”

Waters has now shared the first clip of the rework via a YouTube video on Wednesday (1 March).

In a description for the clip of track “Us and Them” – which is just under a minute – the frontman caveated the soundbite with the acknowledgement: “It’s not a replacement for the original which, obviously, is irreplaceable”.

“But it is a way for the seventy nine year old man to look back across the intervening fifty years into the eyes of the twenty nine year old and say, to quote a poem of mine about my Father, ‘We did our best, we kept his trust, our Dad would have been proud of us’,” he continued.

“And also it is a way for me to honour a recording that Nick and Rick and Dave and I have every right to be very proud of.”

The idea for the rework apparently came to Waters when he sat down to record stripped down songs for the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side Of The Moon, which will be released on 24 March.

“It occurred to me that Dark Side of the Moon could well be a suitable candidate for a similar re-working, partly as a tribute to the original work, but also to re-address the political and emotional message of the whole album,” he said on the clip.

“I discussed it with Gus and Sean, and when we’d stopped giggling and shouting ‘You must be f***ing mad’ at one another we decided to take it on.

“We are now in the process of finishing the final mix. It’s turned out really great and I’m excited for everyone to hear it,” he added.

Waters’ new version of The Dark Side of the Moon , which features songs “Time” and “The Great Gig in the Sky”, is currently scheduled to be released in May.