“Us and Them” by Pink Floyd

"Us and Them" is the longest stretch of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd's 1973 album, running 7 minutes and 49 seconds of slow, gorgeous drift. Richard Wright wrote the music and Roger Waters the words, but the tune goes back to 1969, when Wright worked it up on piano for Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point as "The Violent Sequence". The director turned it down for not sounding enough like "Careful with That Axe, Eugene". His loss.

Wright opens it with swelling Hammond organ, David Gilmour sings with Wright harmonizing, and Dick Parry's tenor sax curls through like smoke. Lesley Duncan, Barry St. John, Liza Strike and Doris Troy lift the choruses, while snatches of speech from Roger "The Hat" Manifold, Henry McCullough and Puddy Watts float in between. Alan Parsons engineered.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.