Let’s get something out of the way first: Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, which turns 50 years old this month, is the best album ever made. None of its closest peers (Abbey Road, Led Zeppelin IV, Rumours) have anything like its unique blend of thematic cohesion and sonic diversity. Dark Side’s concept (the stresses and strains which turn ordinary men and women insane, such as money, time, work, mortality and war) communicates to every human on the planet, regardless of background, ethnicity or political standpoint. ‘If you feel like you are going insane,’ the album tells us, ‘don’t worry, we all do. In fact, madness is the only sane response to an insane world.’

The empathy of this message could account for Dark Side being the third bestselling album of all time. But neither Michael Jackson’s Thriller nor AC/DC’s Back In Black (the only two which have sold more copies) can boast such weird features as a barrage of alarm clocks suddenly going off, a woman screaming and moaning for four minutes, or random voices muttering philosophical bon mots in the background.

The fact that it has sold 45 million physical copies (plus its streaming footprint) means the amount of people who have actually heard it surely numbers among the billions. Billions of people have gone on exactly the same 42 minute and 35 second-long journey since 1973 (one best enjoyed with lights and phone off, and headphones on) and felt utterly moved by the end of it. In our atomised, multimedia and divided age, there is something deeply reassuring and human about the whole planet rallying around the same uplifting cultural touchstone. It also invented techno, but that’s another story.

Unfortunately, while critics and the public have reached consensus about the album’s enormous legacy, Pink Floyd themselves remain bitterly divided over it. Bass player and lyricist Roger Waters, who quit the band acrimoniously in 1985, recently told The Telegraph that ‘I wrote The Dark Side Of The Moon. Let’s get rid of all this “we” crap!’

As though to prove it, Waters has announced that he’s re-recorded the album without the rest of Pink Floyd, featuring bass solos and spoken-word passages in place of the incendiary flourishes of David Gilmour’s guitar, late keyboardist Richard Wright’s generous splashes of colour, and Nick Mason’s tense drum fills. I’m sceptical. But I’m also in favour of anything which distracts stoners from going on about how it’s the perfect soundtrack to The Wizard Of Oz.

Alan Bissett is a ‘playwright, novelist, performer, bletherer’ who can be found on his official site.