Roger Waters on Thom Yorke: “That guy is a complete asshole!”

Roger Waters he attacked again Thom Yorke And Johnny Greenwood of the Radiohead for their position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The ex Pink Floyd for many years now he has supported the Palestinian cause and in 2017 he harshly criticized the decision of Radiohead to perform in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Now, in an interview on The Empire Files podcast, Waters revealed that he had an email exchange with Thom Yorke “I wrote him an email that said, ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was being argumentative.’

He responded by saying, ‘Normally, people who are on one side or the other of an argument at least have the decency or grace or something to hold a conversation.’ So I wrote back to him and said, ‘Thom, the BDS people have been trying to have a conversation with you for months! So do I!’” When asked how the correspondence ended, .Roger Waters he responded very harshly, “That guy is a complete asshole!”

The interview then moved on to other issues, including an incident in which Yorke clashed with a pro-Palestinian protester and left the stage during a show in Melbourne in October. “I think he’s disturbed. Very disturbed. Obviously he’s very, very deeply insecure. He obviously thinks he’s very intelligent but he’s not. So he can’t actually hold a conversation.”

He also spoke about the other member of the Radiohead Jonny Greenwood who worked on a musical project with the Israeli musician Dudu Tax. “This is total bullshit. There is nothing to discuss. There are the oppressed and the oppressor. The oppressed are the indigenous people of Palestine, the oppressors are the colonial visitors from North America and Northern Europe… Not there is nothing difficult to understand. It’s not a conflict and Jonny is a genocide!”.

Johnny Greenwood He thus defended his decision from the criticisms rained down on him: “I have been collaborating with Dudu and publishing music with him since 2008 and I have been working on it privately since long before that. I think that an artistic project that unites Arab and Jewish musicians is useful. It is important that I remind everyone that Jewish cultural roots in countries like Iraq and Yemen go back thousands of years. In any case, no art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us. How is this possible? nothing seems a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists because they were born Jews in Israel doesn’t seem like a way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this seemingly never-ending conflict. So: that’s why I’m making music with this band. You can be free to disagree or ignore what we do, but I hope that now you understand what the real motivation is and can react to the music without suspicion or hatred.”