Roger Waters #

Introduction #

Roger Waters is a British musician, singer, songwriter and bassist who co-founded Pink Floyd and served as the band’s principal lyricist and conceptual leader from the late 1960s until his departure in 1985. One of the most influential figures in the history of rock, he is best known for the band’s epochal 1973 album “The Dark Side of the Moon” and the concept works “Wish You Were Here,” “Animals,” “The Wall” and “The Final Cut.” In recent years his music has become inseparable from his politics, and in January 2024 the German music-rights company BMG severed its long-running publishing agreement with him over a series of inflammatory comments about Israel, Ukraine and the United States that critics said had crossed from anti-Zionism into antisemitism. The split was notable in its own right: it is relatively common for an artist to be dropped from a recording contract, but far less so for a major publishing deal, making Waters’ case one of the more prominent examples of a music industry relationship being broken over a public controversy.

Background Information #

Born in Kensington, London, in 1943, Waters became the bassist of Pink Floyd and, after the departure of the band’s original frontman Syd Barrett in 1968, took on the role of principal lyricist, co-lead vocalist and conceptual leader until he left in 1985. Pink Floyd’s success during his tenure made the group one of the most acclaimed and commercially successful acts of the era, and the Waters-era albums are widely regarded as landmarks of progressive and art rock. He continued an active solo and touring career for decades afterward, and in 2022 he was still headlining the “This Is Not a Drill” tour, a global run of politically charged shows. Per Wikipedia, his recorded catalog and the Pink Floyd legacy remained among the most valuable in the music business.

By the 2020s Waters had become a polarizing public figure, frequently voicing outspoken political opinions on stage and in interviews. His positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Russia-Ukraine war and American politics drew both supporters and heavy criticism, and the boundary between legitimate political dissent and antisemitism became a recurring point of contention in coverage of his career.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

The controversy that led to his professional removal was the accumulation of Waters’ public remarks about Israel, Ukraine and the United States, which critics increasingly described as antisemitic. He spoke to the United Nations Security Council at Russia’s invitation, claiming that its 2022 invasion of Ukraine was “not unprovoked,” a statement that drew wide condemnation. In Berlin he wore a costume that German police investigated as “Nazi-style,” and in April 2023 he won a legal battle in Frankfurt that allowed him to perform there after magistrates had accused him of being “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world” and instructed the venue to cancel the concert. A 2023 investigation by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) interviewed former co-workers who alleged he had made repeated derogatory references to Jewish people, and it published emails in which he had proposed antisemitic slogans and symbols.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

The commercial fallout followed the public backlash. In January 2024, reports from Variety and The Guardian confirmed that BMG was preparing to separate entirely from Waters. The German-based company had signed a publishing agreement with the 80-year-old musician in 2016 and had been scheduled to release a newly recorded version of “The Dark Side of the Moon” the previous year, but it scrapped that release after hiring new CEO Thomas Coesfeld, who took up the post on 1 July 2023. The re-recorded album ultimately came out through the UK-based label Cooking Vinyl. The split was described as the latest fallout from Waters’ “increasingly divisive rhetoric,” which some had criticized as antisemitic in recent months. It was also reported that his statements had infuriated his former bandmates and had driven off several suitors interested in acquiring the Pink Floyd recorded-music catalog, which was said to be on the market for half a billion dollars.

Current Status #

Waters has remained defiant throughout the controversy, disputing any allegations of antisemitism and continuing to voice his political views on tour. He spoke of being “fired” by BMG in a video interview with Glenn Greenwald in the fall of 2023, characterizing the split as the result of pressure from pro-Israeli interests toward BMG’s parent company Bertelsmann and the suppression of his political beliefs. At a concert in Birmingham, UK, he launched into a rant in which he decried his treatment in Germany and said numerous media outlets had been trying to destroy him for his support of human rights in Palestine, declaring, “They’re trying to cancel me like they cancelled Jeremy Corbyn and Julian Assange. I will not be cancelled.” As of the sources reviewed, he continued to tour and to defend his positions publicly.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The BMG split is the clearest professional consequence of the controversy: the termination of a major publishing relationship that had run for eight years, and the loss of a planned release of a re-recorded classic album. More broadly, Waters’ case is cited alongside other high-profile musicians whose statements put them at odds with the companies managing their catalogs, and it illustrates how, in the modern music business, a catalog’s value and its owner’s public persona have become entangled to the point where one can drag the other down. For Waters personally, the episode has done little to alter his public posture — he has continued to frame his treatment as censorship and political suppression rather than a reckoning with the substance of the criticism — but it did end one of the last major mainstream corporate relationships in his career.