Roger Waters reportedly told his audience to “fuck off” at a gig last weekend (October 8), prompting some fans to leave soon after.
The show took place at the London Palladium and at the start, Waters reportedly informed fans that it would be split into different parts. Many had turned up expecting Waters to play his new version of The Dark Side of the Moon from the opening.
Fans were surprised when instead, the early stages of the show saw Waters reading from his unpublished memoir, Dark Side Of The Moon: Memoirs Of A Lanky Prick.
A report in Men’s Journal noted that Waters “arrived 15 minutes late for his scheduled performance” and “instead of launching into the hits, [he] began reading off of his laptop passages from his yet-to-be-published memoir.”
As the audience grew disgruntled with the start of the show, Rogers reportedly told the audience to “fuck off”. After that, some frustrated fans started to leave according to reports.
Fans on Reddit were split on the performance. Once said (via Loudwire): “So people got what they paid for, a performance of the ‘Redux’, and some bonus insight into the mind of the guy putting on the show as well as a few other songs, one of which being a new song performed in its entirety for the first time. Sounds like a good time to me, but to each their own,” one fan wrote.”
Whereas another wrote: “I don’t think it was announced beforehand that 50 percent of the show would be Roger reading from a laptop. I think it was perfectly reasonable to assume that it would be a full concert…But I think the audience had every right to be unhappy with the first half of the show. I know I would be.”
On X, formerly Twitter, another fan added: “went to watch Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon remake gig last night at London Palladium with Roger Waters and I simply have no words to describe it and not in a positive way. What an egocentric narcissist he is and to think I paid good money to watch him. Lesson learnt.”
NME has reached out to representatives of Waters for comment.
In other news, Waters has recently released a statement criticising a new documentary about him. The documentary, The Dark Side of Roger Waters, explores allegations of antisemitism against the Pink Floyd co-founder and was released last week by UK-based advocacy group Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Waters mentions that the filmmakers approached him for comment earlier this month but he declined. He responded to it later, however, in a lengthy post on his website.
“In summary, the film is 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 anti-Semite, without any foundation in fact,” he wrote.
In June the US State Department criticised Waters over a show in Berlin, describing it as “deeply offensive to Jewish people”.
The month prior, Waters appeared on stage at his show wearing a black trench coat with a swastika-like emblem during a segment that revolved around a character from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, who imagines himself as a fictional fascist dictator during a hallucination.
The musician claimed that the segment was a statement against fascism, injustice and bigotry and called criticism of it “disingenuous and politically motivated”.
Waters has faced significant backlash following the show in Berlin. During a show on May 31 in Birmingham he went on a rant about how “pissed off” he was at “the antisemitism bullshit” surrounding him over the last month and claimed that critics are trying to cancel him “like they cancelled Jeremy Corbyn and Julian Assange”.
Waters has repeatedly denied all accusations of antisemitism.