From 'The Violence Sequence' to 'Us and Them': How a Lost Film Score Became Pink Floyd’s Peace Anthem

“Us and Them” started life as “The Violence Sequence,” an instrumental piece Roger Waters wrote in 1969 for Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point. Antonioni rejected it—too sad, he said—so the band shelved it. Four years later, Waters added lyrics about war, class, and the numb divide between people. The title came from something his wife’s uncle used to say: “Us and them. And after all, we’re only ordinary men.”

The famous closing line—“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”—wasn’t part of the original draft. Waters added it after reading a Tibetan Buddhist text or, by some accounts, after a conversation with his mother about balance and karma. No single incident sparked it; it’s a distillation of the album’s whole “dark side” thesis: life is conflict, but the only thing that evens the score is love.