Pink Floyd classic which featured on The Dark Side of the Moon had originally been written for cult movie

A song which featured on The Dark Side of the Moon had been intended for a cult movie which Pink Floyd had been asked to score.

Roger Waters had intended the song for use in Zabriskie Point but the Michelangelo Antonioni film never found use for the track. Instead, it was featured on The Dark Side of the Moon, with keyboardist Richard Wright confirming the song had initially been intended for the early 1970s film. Speaking to Uncut Magazine at the time, Wright confirmed Antonioni had loved the song at first though soured on it over time. Waters was left with a “melancholy chord” and little use for it, until Waters turned it into one of The Dark Side of the Moon’s most recognisable songs.

Wright said: “The arrangement for the verses came from a piece I’d done for Zabriskie Point [director Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult movie of 1970]. It was called The Violence Sequence, and it was written for the scene where the students were being beaten up by the police on campus. 

“I started off trying all this violent music. Then, one evening, I started playing this melancholy chord sequence. It was interesting to put something really quite sweet behind the violence. It makes it more real. Antonioni loved it, then he didn’t like it and it wasn’t used. So when we came to write Us And Them, I still had this piece in my head. 

“Then we needed a middle-eight. I came up with the chords for that. It’s very flowing and sweet if you look at the verse, then there’s the contrast, this big, harder chorus. With the lyrics about the war and the general sitting back – it worked so well.”

Us and Them would become a defining song for Pink Floyd and features on their 1973 release. Wright has said it became one of his “favourite tracks” and says it is the peak of his and Waters’ writing collaborations.

He added: “Funnily enough, it’s one of my favourite tracks. It’s a great example of the music and the lyrics combining to create emotion. It’s probably the best song Roger and I have written together.”

Waters would go on to say he regretted offering songwriting credits to his Pink Floyd bandmates for The Dark Side of the Moon. He told Uncut Magazine: “This album is my baby. In terms of what the records were about, they were my ideas and I wrote them. Dave, particularly, but Rick as well, had major, important contributions.

“I’ve regretted it rather a lot since, but I’m over that now. I went through many years when I really regretted having given away half the writing credits, particularly [Nick Mason’s solo credit for] Speak To Me. I gave it to him. Nobody else had anything to do with it at all.”