Roger Waters explains his creative process and how he wrote Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon

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The writing process for The Dark Side of the Moon has been explained by Roger Waters, who shared one “important” part of the album’s making.

Pink Floyd‘s classic album, which would define the band and change the progressive rock genre, has been hailed as one of the best albums of all time, and Waters has since broken down how he tackled the writing process. The Dark Side of the Moon was written predominantly by Waters, who was aided instrumentally by Richard Wright, Nick Mason, and David Gilmour. Waters has since said the “blank canvas” at the start of creating the 1973 classic is no different to composing an orchestral number or writing a symphony.

The veteran frontman shared the process of writing the album and his thoughts on other mediums of art in an interview conducted in June 2003. He told Uncut Magazine: “You get up in the morning and you go into the studio and there’s a blank canvas. You get the palette out, mix the paints, and start painting, and at a certain point, you say, ‘It’s finished now.’ 

“How all the elements come together in that process of record-making… It’s the same as any other creative process, whether painting or a classical composer writing a symphony…

“There’s a bit of the brain that makes connections that seem obvious once they’ve been made, but didn’t seem obvious before. That’s what writing is. That’s why it’s important, why you like to read good novels.”

Waters went on to relate the creative process for The Dark Side of the Moon to a poem he wrote about the act of writing. He says the best albums, like the pieces he made with Pink Floyd, depend on the desire to turn to the last page. The importance of that, he believes, is paramount.

He added: “There’s a poem that I wrote a number of years ago that’s about writing. It’s about the moment when you’re reading a good book, getting close to the end, and you start putting it down cos you don’t want to finish it.

“In that poem, I wrote, ‘There’s a magic in some books… A man will eke the reading out, guard it like a canteen in the desert heat, but sometimes needs must drink and then the final drop falls sweet, the last page turns, the end.’ That’s how I feel about writing. It’s that important.”

Waters has since suggested The Dark Side of the Moon, which he re-recorded as a solo artist in 2023, should have been the last album Pink Floyd worked on.

The bassist shared: “But of course, The Dark Side Of The Moon finished Pink Floyd off once and for all. To be that successful is the aim of every group. And once you’ve cracked it, it’s all over. In hindsight, I think Pink Floyd was finished as long ago as that.”

The band would go on to have further success with releases like Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and Animals. Waters would leave the group in 1985, leaving Gilmour to front Pink Floyd until its dissolution in 1994.