I’ll confess to always having liked Pink Floyd. For anyone who attended, as I did, an English public school, you pretty much have to. And so, amongst my record collection, which spans painfully hip genres like underground techno, dub reggae and first-wave punk, a few Floyd albums can be found discreetly nestling.
At the same time, there was a part of me that found singer Roger Waters appallingly self-indulgent. Next time you listen to “Comfortably Numb,” ignore the Gilmour guitar solo and check out the lyrics. Yech.
In recent years, Waters’s upper class leftism has become increasingly strident. Now, along with other artier-than-thou types like Oliver Stone, Waters has embraced antisemitism.
Here’s a video of a recent Waters gig in Toronto. Notice how, at about 1′30″ into the ballad “Goodbye Blue Sky,” you see bombers dropping Stars of David, rapidly followed by dollar signs, followed in turn by various corporate symbols (Shell, Mercedes and so forth,) all ending in a stream of religious symbols - crosses, crescents and stars.
I need not spell out what message that sends. I will say that it is shameful. Perhaps John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon - a man who gloriously told the Israel boycotters to “f**k off” before playing Tel Aviv - was right after all.
