David Gilmour has shared a documentary detailing alleged antisemitism from his former Pink Floyd bandmate Roger Waters, adding another chapter to the decades-long feud between the musicians.
Gilmour retweeted a post about the documentary, entitled The Dark Side of Roger Waters, from the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which produced the report. In the video, BBC journalist John Ware interviews Norbert Statchel, Waters’ former saxophonist, and Bob Ezrin, the music producer who helped helm Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Both men, who are Jewish, recalled experiences in which Rogers said things that were antisemitic.
Statchel retold an instance in which Rogers imitated a stereotypically poor Polish woman as a reference to his Jewish ancestors, and another in which the bassist expressed outrage at a restaurant serving “Jew food.” Erzin recalled Waters describing Bryan Morrison, Pink Floyd’s manager at the time, as a “fucking Jew.” The report also unearths a 2010 email in which Waters suggests using Jewish imagery and slurs as part of his stage design for an upcoming show.
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Gilmour didn’t add a comment when he reposted the video, but he’s spoken out against Waters’ antisemitic remarks before. In February, the guitarist’s wife, Polly Samson, denounced Waters as “antisemitic to [his] rotten core,” as well as “a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching,misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac.” Gilmour shared that tweet as well, calling Samson’s claims “demonstrably true.”
For his part, Waters has dismissed the documentary as “a flimsy, unapologetic piece of propaganda that indiscriminately mixes things I’m alleged to have said or done at different times and in different contexts, in an effort to portray me as an antisemite, without any foundation in fact.”
Earlier this year, Waters performed in a costume featuring a leather jacket, gloves, an armband, and a rifle that appeared to resemble that of a Nazi SS soldier, prompting German police to launch an investigation into “suspected incitement.” Soon after, the city of Frankfurt canceled a scheduled concert by the performer at Festhalle, a venue that used to be a Jewish detention camp, citing the city’s partial ownership of the venue. The concert was rescheduled for a later date and was promptly crashed by a protestor.
