The long road of 'Us and Them': from 'Zabriskie Point' rejection to Dark Side of the Moon

The melody that became “Us and Them” originally existed as a piano piece called “The Violence Sequence,” which Pink Floyd wrote in 1969 for Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point. Antonioni rejected it as too beautiful and melancholic for his desired riot scene, so the band shelved it for years. Rick Wright’s slow, jazz-tinged chord progression and Roger Waters’ lyrics about war, class, and disconnection finally found a home on Dark Side of the Moon after Waters realized the song’s quiet, haunting atmosphere perfectly fit the album’s themes of conflict and mental breakdown.

The two saxophone solos by Dick Parry—one near the middle and one toward the end—turn the song from a dirge into something almost painfully gorgeous. Parry, a childhood friend of David Gilmour, played a baritone sax that he’d just bought, and his soft, breathy tone makes the melody sound like it’s being exhaled, not played. Gilmour told him to play “like a lonely old woman,” and you can feel that image in every note—mournful without being melodramatic, each phrase hanging in the air as though it’s deciding whether to disappear. Those solos are why the song feels less like anger and more like resignation, a quiet ache that stays with you long after the final verse.