Roger Waters Says ‘I Have Made Every Effort To Engage’ With Radiohead On BDS
(JTA) — Roger Waters said he personally reached out to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke requesting that the band cancel its upcoming show in Israel.
Waters — the Pink Floyd guitarist who is a leading proponent of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — was responding to an interview Yorke gave to Rolling Stone last week. In the interview, Yorke objected to an open letter, co-written by Waters, urging the band to cancel the July show.
“The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that’s black or white,” Yorke said. “I have a problem with that. It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public.”
But Waters says that isn’t what happened. In a statement to Rolling Stone, published Monday, Rogers says he sent three emails to Yorke before publishing the open letter.
In his interview, Yorke said Radiohead will perform because: “There’s an awful lot of people who don’t agree with the BDS movement, including us. I don’t agree with the cultural ban at all.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO