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Roger Waters has long criticized Radiohead for the band’s apparent stance on Israel. Back in 2017 the outspoken Pink Floyd co-founder, along with artists including Thurston Moore and Tunde Adebimpe, signed an open letter asking Radiohead to reconsider playing a scheduled gig in Tel Aviv due to Israel’s violent occupation of Palestine. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke then doubled-down on the decision, writing an op-ed for Rolling Stone explaining why he disagrees with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, and criticizing the open letter for being “confrontational.” According to Waters, he and Yorke then had an email exchange about it all, but never came to an agreement. With the Israel-Palestine conflict having now become a full-blown genocide on the Palestinian people, Waters angrily reflected on that whole squabble in a new interview with Empire Files’ Abby Martin.
“I wrote [Yorke] a sort of email that went, ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was being confrontational,’” Waters recalled. “He wrote back, and he said, ‘Normally, people on one side of an argument at least have the decency or the grace or the something to have a conversation.’ So then I wrote him back, and I said, ‘Thom, the people in BDS have been trying to have a conversation with you for months! And so have I!’” “How’d it end?” Martin asked. “That the guy’s a complete prick!” Waters offered.
Martin then brought up Yorke’s October concert in Melbourne, during which he walked offstage after a pro-Palestine protester began heckling him. Waters went on: “I think he’s damaged. He’s very damaged. He’s obviously very, very deeply insecure. He obviously thinks he’s very bright but he’s not. So he can’t actually have a conversation.”
When Martin asked about the “bizarre” statement Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood shared over the summer about his collaboration with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, Waters said, “It’s complete bullshit.” He added, “There is no argument to be made. There is the oppressed and the oppressor. The oppressed are the indigenous people of Palestine, the oppressor are the settler-colonial visitors from North America and North Europe… There is nothing difficult to understand. It is not a conflict. It is a genocide, Thom and Jonny!”
See the interview below.
@empirefilesRoger Waters of Pink Floyd calls out Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead for their support of Israel and rejection of BDS
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