Roger Waters to debut his solo version of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ at London Palladium
Roger Waters has announced a new show at the London Palladium, where he is set to debut his re-recordings of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’.
Set to take place on October 8, the live show will mark the first time that the former Pink Floyd co-founder will perform his re-recorded version of the band’s iconic album live.
Earlier this month, Waters confirmed that the project will be released as one of his solo albums, and is set for release on October 6 – pre-orders are available here. The reimagined album coincides with the original’s 50th anniversary but was not worked on by any other member of the prog-rock band.
At the upcoming London show Waters will not appear with any of his former bandmates, but will instead be joined on stage by bassist Gus Seyffert, drummer Joey Waronker and guitarist Jonathan Wilson – all of which contributed to the re-imagined album.
Other musicians joining him for the gig include Johnny Shepherd on the organ, Via Mardot on the theremin, Gabe Noel on strings, Jon Carin on the keyboard and Robert Walter on the piano. Backing vocals will be contributed by Azniv Korkejian.
Waters’ long-time Creative Director Sean Evans has designed the one-off show, and announcing news of the upcoming Palladium concert, Waters said he hopes to add more live dates in the future. “We’re going to do it live at the London Palladium, in October,” he began. “We look forward to that…hopefully performing it live on other occasions in the future”.
Tickets for Roger Waters’ upcoming London Palladium show go on sale this Friday (July 28) and will be available here.
The forthcoming album was produced by the former Pink Floyd bassist, and sees him put a new spin on the classic album. Lead single ‘Money’, for instance, has been re-envisioned from the more upbeat version seen in the original recording, into a new acoustic track.
Discussing his reasons behind re-recording the 50-year-old release, the musician stated: “The original ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ feels in some ways like the lament of an elder being on the human condition.”
He continued: “But Dave [Gilmour], Rick [Wright], Nick [Mason], and I were so young when we made it, and when you look at the world around us, clearly the message hasn’t stuck. That’s why I started to consider what the wisdom of an 80-year-old could bring to a reimagined version.”
“When I first mentioned the idea of re-recording ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ to Gus and Sean we all thought I was mad, but the more we considered it, the more we thought, ‘Isn’t that the whole point?’,” he continued. “I’m immensely proud of what we have created, a work that can sit proudly alongside the original, hand-in-hand across a half-century of time.”
Back in March, Waters first shared a snippet of the re-recordings on YouTube – a 52-second clip which played the first verse of a reworked ‘Us and Them’ in the studio. He also went on to describe the project more in the description, adding that “it’s not a replacement for the original which, obviously, is irreplaceable”.
Later that month, former Pink Floyd bandmate Nick Mason revealed that he had already been shown various snippets of the upcoming album, and hailed it as “absolutely brilliant”.
“I heard the rumour that Roger was working on his own version of it,” he said at a playback of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, at London’s Dolby Atmos Immersive Studio. “There was this suggestion that this was going to be a spoiler and Roger was going to go head-to-head with the original version and so on.”
He continued: “He actually sent me a copy of what he was working on and I write to him and said, ‘Annoyingly, it’s absolutely brilliant!’ It was and is. It’s not anything that would be a spoiler for the original at all, it’s an interesting add-on to the thing.”
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Liberty Dunworth
NME
