In a year when famously battling brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher defied the odds and announced they were burying the hatchet and reuniting after a decade-and-a-half of incessant public sniping, Pink Floyd‘s David Gilmour made it crystal clear that he is never, ever getting back together with the band’s former bassist/singer Roger Waters.
Asked by a fan in a Guardian reader interview if he’d ever perform again on stage with Waters, Gilmour said “absolutely not.” Then, in a pointed attack seemingly aimed at some of Waters’ more controversial comments in recent years about the war in Ukraine and his seeming support of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and authoritarian Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, Gilmour took fire at the Floyd co-founder.
“I tend to steer clear of people who actively support genocidal and autocratic dictators like Putin and Maduro [president of Venezuela],” Gilmour said. “Nothing would make me share a stage with someone who thinks such treatment of women and the LGBT community is OK.”
Waters has frequently stirred controversy with his political views about Israel and the war in Ukraine. His comments about the government of Israel led to his record company, BMG, dropping the Floyd co-founder and solo performer earlier this year after Berlin police opened an investigation into the imagery in a May 2023 Waters show in that city. Officials said the probe was launched over “suspicion of incitement to public hatred” related to costumes that appeared to replicate Nazi uniforms and claims that Waters’ show desecrated the memory of Holocaust victim Anne Frank.
Water denied the claims, writing on X, “My recent performance in Berlin has attracted bad faith attacks from those who want to smear and silence me because they disagree with my political views and moral principles. The elements of my performance that have been questioned are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms. Attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated.”
During the show, Waters wore a costume resembling the Nazi SS soldier uniform — a long black coat with a red armband — while pointing a fake rifle at the crowd, with the singer saying later that the “depiction of an unhinged fascist demagogue” has been featured in his past live performances since the release of the 1980 Pink Floyd film The Wall. In May 2023, a number of Jewish groups and politicians rallied against Waters’ concert in Frankfurt, Germany, accusing the singer of antisemitism after unsuccessfully pushing to have the show cancelled. It took place in the city’s Festhalle, where more than 3,000 Jews were rounded up, beaten and abused by Nazis before being sent to concentration camps in 1938.
Waters, who has frequently drawn the ire of the pro-Israel community for his vehement support of the BDS movement, which calls for boycotts and sanctions against the state of Israel, again rejected the claims of antisemitism.
A month later, the Biden administration’s State Department weighed in on what it called Waters’ “long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and the German show it said “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.”
Gilmour and Waters have been at odds since the bassist split with the group in 1984, trading barbs in the press as Waters continues to tour and perform Floyd music alongside his solo material, while the Gilmour-led Floyd ceased touring in 1994.
Pink Floyd’s musical assets — not including their publishing — were recently bought by Sony for around $400 million.
