Nick Mason says Roger Waters' rerecording of The Dark Side Of The Moon is "absolutely brilliant"

Nick Mason at a red carpet event and Roger Waters onstage

(Image credit: Nick Mason: Carlos R. Alvarez | Roger Waters: Kevin Winter)

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has revealed that he's heard some of Roger Waters' controversial rerecording of The Dark Side Of The Moon, and reports that "annoyingly, it’s absolutely brilliant!"

Waters broke news of the rerecording last month, telling The Telegraph, "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!" Then, earlier this month, he unveiled the first audio excerpt from the new version, releasing a clip that showed him listening to the new recording of Us And Them.

More recently, Mason attended a playback at London’s Dolby Atmos Immersive Studio – held to celebrate the release of the 50th anniversary edition of The Dark Side Of The Moon – and the NME reports that he was asked about Waters' rerecording during a Q&A session.

“I heard the rumour that Roger was working on his own version of it,” said Mason. “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 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."

Earlier this month, Mason added his name to a petition calling for the ban on Roger Waters performing in Frankfurt, Germany, to be overturned. Waters' scheduled show at the Festhalle concert hall was pulled by city officials, who cited "the persistent anti-Israel behaviour" of the former Pink Floyd frontman.

Artists

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.