In the wake of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon album, Roger Waters has decided to reclaim the monumental work he helped create while a member of Pink Floyd. He therefore returned to the studio to give new life to the pieces written in 1973, which can be heard on The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, launched on Friday. Is this relevant? The question is valid.
From the outset, Roger Waters declared in an interview that The Dark Side of the Moon was his creation. “Leave me alone with this bullshit,” the bassist told the Telegraph last winter, when he revealed he had re-recorded the songs. “Of course there was a group of us, there were four of us and we all contributed – but it was my project and I wrote it. »
Roger Waters actually wrote the lyrics for all the pieces, but Nick Mason, Richard Wright and David Gilmour were all involved in the composition of several pieces. This is without taking into account the very particular sound signature of Pink Floyd, impossible without the contribution of the four members – we can add to the cocktail the clairvoyant work of Alan Parsons, sound engineer of the album.
Roger Waters simplified the musical arrangements by adding narrated passages in the instrumental pieces, some more trivial, others certainly more emotional. “It is from Dark Side of the Moon that Roger Waters will reveal himself as a creator,” recalls Mr. Trottier. Through this rereading, he has the desire to remove what is less his own, such as David Gilmour’s guitar solos. »
Gone are the guitarist’s solos and bottleneck accents, which defined Pink Floyd’s sound from the early 1970s.
Gérald Côté, ethnomusicologist from Laval University, does not mince his words when it comes to qualifying Roger Waters’ exercise.
“It’s sad… In his version of Money, you have the impression of listening to music without soul, it’s painfully limp,” he says. Waters is an absolutely brilliant songwriter, but this is not up to par. One cannot separate Pink Floyd’s musical depth from its principal architect; to separate the two is to impoverish Pink Floyd. This is why I have difficulty believing that this is not an expression of the conflict that has lasted for 30 years. »
Indeed, it’s hard not to make a connection with the feud that led to Roger Waters’ departure in 1984 and which still persists to this day. As proof, David Gilmour shared on Thursday the publication of the documentary The Dark Side of Roger Waters, a production by BBC journalist John Ware which tends to demonstrate the anti-Semitic behavior of Roger Waters.
Last February, it was Gilmour’s wife, writer Polly Samson, who accused the bassist of being anti-Semitic, in addition to being an “apologist for [Vladimir] Putin and a lying, thief, hypocrite, megalomaniac misogynist, a tax evader and a sickly envious person.” It was just a few days after Waters announced to a Berlin daily that he was going to review The Dark Side of the Moon, an interview in which he fueled controversy over his ambiguous position. in relation to the Russian leader.
Far from wanting to show contrition, Waters immediately attacked his former colleagues:
Yet The Dark Side of the Moon was the band’s work, much more so in fact than Pink Floyd’s subsequent albums. “The original record is a collective work and all that is erased with Waters’ rereading,” maintains Danick Trottier. He still demonstrates how big his ego is. But he also has a very classic conception of music, according to which a work is perfectible over time; it’s something we’ve always seen in classical music. Often, there can be several versions of the same work. »
“In this sense, Waters makes Redux a very personal work, almost testamentary,” continues the researcher. The latest projects of music greats always have a very personal touch; if we take our rereading from this angle, we can better appreciate the project. »
Danick Trottier admits, however, that offering a new version of an old album can appear to be a path of compromise that may seem easy. Some could certainly see this as an opportunistic approach. “The album is 50 years old, all of this is part of the celebrations,” says Gérald Côté. It’s certainly a great opportunity to create the event and benefit from it. »
