Pink Floyd Feud Erupts Again
David Gilmour and Roger Waters are once again feuding.
Polly Samson, Gilmour's novelist wife who has written lyrics for Pink Floyd, recently posted a Tweet in which she called Waters "antisemitic" and a "Putin apologist," as well as a "lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac." Gilmour shared his wife's post on Twitter, adding, "Every word demonstrably true." Waters responded with a tweet that said he was "aware of the incendiary comments" made by Samson and Gilmour, which he "refutes entirely."
Even though Gilmour and Waters have consistently not seen eye to eye over the past few decades, this new dispute stems from comments Waters made in a recent interview about a 2022 charity single released by Pink Floyd.
Gilmour and Nick Mason, with bassist Guy Pratt and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney, released "Hey Hey Rise Up" with the Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk last year. The song was written in support of the country as it battled against the Russian invasion and marked the band's first new original music in 30 years.
Waters, who was not involved in the project, criticized "Hey Hey Rise Up" in a new interview with the Berliner Zeitung. "I have seen the video and I am not surprised, but I find it really, really sad," he said. "It’s so alien to me, this action is so lacking in humanity. It encourages the continuation of the war. Pink Floyd is a name I used to be associated with. That was a huge time in my life, a very big deal. To associate that name now with something like this ... proxy war makes me sad. I mean, they haven't made the point of demanding, 'Stop the war, stop the slaughter, bring our leaders together to talk!' It's just this contentless waving of the blue and yellow flag."
The singer and bassist has criticized several world leaders in recent years. Last year, he wrote an open letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin encouraging him to ceasefire in the war against Ukraine. Waters also wrote an open letter to the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, in which he accused "extreme nationalists" of "[setting] your country on the path to this disastrous war."
Waters noted in the Berliner interview that his strong political principles were one of the reasons he left Pink Floyd in 1985. "I will not raise a flag in this conflict," he said. "Not a Ukrainian flag, not a Russian flag, not a U.S. flag." He's also been accused of being antisemitic, drawing criticism for expressing anti-Israel sentiments in recent years.