The Pink Floyd Song Rejected by Antonioni That Became 'Us and Them'

Michelangelo Antonioni asked Pink Floyd to contribute to his 1970 film Zabriskie Point. The band wrote a slow, melancholic piece tentatively called “The Violent Sequence,” built around a simple piano line by Richard Wright. Antonioni rejected it, reportedly saying the music was “too sad” for the film’s riot scene.

The band didn’t trash the piece. They reworked it, adding David Gilmour’s vocal melody and lyrics by Roger Waters about the futility of war and the divisions between people. It became “Us and Them,” one of the centerpiece tracks on The Dark Side of the Moon — and arguably the song that best captures the album’s themes of conflict and alienation. The original rejection turned out to be a gift.