For a long time, I debated whether or not I should buy a ticket to a Roger Waters concert. It wasn't the exorbitant price (€164) that gave me pause, nor was it the veteran musician's waning musical enthusiasm (evident in his last album, riddled with banality). The conflict I felt in regard to this concert was far deeper and more existential than that.
The tour, which began in December, has been dubbed the "Us + Them" tour, named after the 1973 Pink Floyd hit "Us and Them." To me, the name perfectly describes the reality surrounding Roger Waters. Over the last 10 years, he has positioned himself at the forefront of the vicious attacks on Israel's right to exist. He is the number one enemy of our foreign policy. So why should I go to his concert if I am obviously not welcome?
But curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see whether Waters the artist was a different man than Waters the BDS activist. I wanted to see whether his act was faithful to art or to a narrow political stance. I wanted to solve the riddle of the musician who performed in an Israeli chickpea field in Neve Shalom in the summer of 2006, and hasn't stopped maligning Israel since. That is how I found myself in Cologne, Germany, last Monday, watching Waters and his band take the stage at a local arena.
Despite the prohibitive ticket cost, the 20,000 seats in the venue filled up long before the start of the show. The average age in the audience hovered around 50 – a crowd of white, conservative, local concertgoers, loyal to the artist. Here and there, young faces could be seen, coming to listen to the timeless Pink Floyd classics that were about to be heard.
Waters' set list comprised mainly Pink Floyd songs, interspersed with songs from his less successful solo career. The show itself was divided into two parts, with the 75-year-old frontman taking a much-needed rest in between. Waters moved across the stage heavily and did not sing very much. The excellent band around him did most of the work. It was evident from the first note that music was not the reason Waters was on stage.
So why was he there? Simply, to deliver the political messages, rife with hatred and incitement, that he had prepared. Most of them, incidentally, were badly formulated, somewhere between those of an overzealous but ignorant high-schooler and a shameless online comment.
Visually, the concert was outdated and detached from today's standards. Whether it was the overuse of laser lights, which have long gone out of style, or the 1980s videos flashing on the screen, the set reflected the fact that Waters is past his prime and that his performance was mainly nostalgic.
In the first part of the show, Waters and the band cranked out one Pink Floyd hit after another. "Wish You Were Here" and "The Great Gig in the Sky" were enough to satisfy the sleepy audience. Waters, dressed in black and hunched, waved his hands a lot and paced the stage.
When he performed "The Last Refugee," a song featured on his latest solo album, I was reminded of a post that had appeared on the concert tour's Facebook page, written by a Syrian refugee living in Cologne.
"You sing a lot of songs about refugees and you talk about their plight," the post said. "But you don't offer reduced price tickets to refugees. We tried to contact the tour organizers, but we received no response."
The last two songs in the first set were the two parts of perhaps the most well-known Pink Floyd song, "Another Brick in the Wall." Local schoolchildren acted out a revised version of the schoolchildren in the famous video, and took the stage in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, like the victims of the Islamic State terrorist group, to stand alongside Waters. Just as the children were about to be "decapitated," they removed their hoods, to the famous lyrics of "we don't need no education."
The children, most of them about 10 years old, continued to march in their orange jumpsuits. It was the first of many provocations in the show, but perhaps the least stupid one. At the end of the song, Waters thanked the children and explained that they had barely had time to rehearse.
"Be proud of your children," he yelled into the microphone, and the German crowd applauded.
Then he took a break.
During the intermission, instructions shot from the screen. The word "resist" appeared a number of times. At first, the audience, who had only come to see a rock show, was told to resist anti-Semitism in general. Then we were told to resist Israeli anti-Semitism.
My blood slowly began to boil. The next message sent my nerves into overdrive: "Yes, Israel discriminates against Palestinians on the basis of religion and ethnicity."
Waters then set his sights on the United States and another of his archenemies, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Absurdly, Waters ignores Facebook's enormous contribution in spreading his anti-Israel message around the world. For him, opposition is automatic, not rational. He is a knee-jerk responder.
The concertgoers around me were not fazed by the messages. Some said they had only come for the music, but others appeared to have absorbed Waters' incitement, even if just a little.
Waters was a year old when his father was killed while serving in the British army in World War II. His father's death appears to have left quite a few scars and anxiety, bordering on paranoia. In the past, Waters has dismissed allegations of anti-Semitism with the argument that his father fought to defend the Jews – a narrow and self-serving view of reality.
Judging by his show, the current reawakening of evil in Germany and the re-emergence of racism and nationalist sentiments don't seem to bother Waters. He showered the German audience with praise and compliments. When talking about Israel's misdeeds, he failed to mention the 20,000 Cologne Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.
But why complain? The profit from the concert was coming from the Germans, and Waters knows how to behave accordingly. The same was true when he performed in front of an Israeli audience 12 years ago, and enjoyed the profits generated by Israeli ticket sales and the perks provided by the Israeli concert promoter. The same promoter whom Waters now calls a supporter of apartheid.
Anyone who supports or stands by Israel becomes a target for Waters. It was only a matter of time before U.S. President Donald Trump was incorporated into his show. A giant pig flew over the crowd and compromising images of the American president in all sorts of embarrassing positions appeared on stage. In the most offensive picture featured a cartoon of Trump giving the Nazi salute. The screens said "TRUMP IS A Schwein" in a strange combination of English and German, using the German word for pig, and the audience's automatic response was to cheer.
Mimicking Pink Floyd performances, which featured images of world leaders, the Waters show included the images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside Trump, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an effort to incite. The German audience booed the world leaders, or perhaps it was Waters they were booing.
The second part of the show also included a few songs (yes, there were songs there somewhere). Waters played "Brain Damage" and "Money," but the atmosphere of resistance was artificial, forced. A bourgeois provocation dripping with hate.
In a step that broke his own record of ridiculousness, Waters tied himself in chains and hung in the middle of the stage, just before the encore. It was a sad and grotesque thing to see – an aging musician screaming and grunting while tied up in chains. I almost forgot that this man was a revered artist worth nearly 300 million dollars. It was very hard to believe him when he declared that he feels chained in a terrible world.
But just as I thought that I had witnessed the biggest rock farce in history, a bigger farce began with the encore. Before he began playing "Comfortably Numb," which he co-wrote with Pink Floyd member David Gilmour, Waters screened a few clips from a bombarded Gaza Strip. Wrapping up the hour and 45 minute long lesson he had given us, Waters began his closing argument: "I want to tell you about something absurd that happened," he said. "As you know, my tour was sponsored by a number of German radio stations, but here, in Cologne, the local radio station refused to sponsor the show. You want to know why? Because of a women named Malca Goldstein-Wolf. She sent a letter to the local radio station and to other German bodies claiming that I'm an anti-Semite and a Jew hater."
The audience began to laugh uneasily. "Me? A Jew hater? I'm an anti-Semite? Look at my entire career and you'll see that there is nothing about me to suggest that I hate Jews. On the contrary. I say that we were all born equal and that all living things are equal. Why should the Israeli animal be worth more than the Palestinian animal? Does that make me anti-Semitic? Does that make me a Jew hater? You tell me. What do you think?"
The crowd erupted into bursts of applause, but most of the people around me looked at each other sheepishly. Waters did not let up, and transitioned into mudslinging: "People like Malca Goldstein-Wolf are trying to ruin my career. But I'm a fighter. It's not an easy fight, it is constant, but I am fighting with all my strength."
Waters ended his preposterous speech with a call for civil responsibility, urging the concertgoers to pressure their leaders not to bomb civilian populations. The needle of the cliché meter was already off the charts, threatening to explode. But before the crowd dispersed, thousands of confetti flakes dropped from the sky, with the word "RESIST" written on them. On the screens, Mark Zuckerberg's face emerged. Waters selected Zuckerberg as his last target for incitement, muttering something about Zuckerberg controlling the world (wait, Zuckerberg is Jewish, isn't he?) and complaining about how Facebook blocks many of Waters' hate-filled posts.
Beyond the musical disappointment – the music was sterile like a pharmacy or an operating room. It lacked the grit that characterized Waters' original lineup – it was amazing to discover how shallow and superficial Waters' political message was, and how much of it is born of ignorance and prejudice. He calls on everyone to resist everyone else but doesn't explain why.
It is hard to understand how artists around the world are still able to take Waters seriously. It is even harder to understand how there are still Israelis who choose to support and disseminate his message. It is one thing to talk about the occupation – allegations of discrimination and racism can be discussed – but the agenda in Waters' show was fueled by pure anti-Semitism, so there is nothing to discuss. It was a flood of fast, emotional hatred, the kind that would have resonated in 1930s Germany.
Coming out of the concert, observing the reactions of the aging German crowd, it was apparent that Waters still retains his status as a musical authority. But I doubt the show changed anyone's political views.
But still, there is damage to be done, and, as always, Waters' victims are the Israeli concert promoters. The summer of 2018 in Israel is expected to be disappointing in terms of international acts, certainly compared to the level we have become accustomed to in the years following Operation Protective Edge (in 2014). Famous artists around the world, like Sting, who already performed in Israel more than once, and Florence and the Machine, have announced that they would not perform in Israel, under pressure from Waters and the BDS movement. According to Israeli promoters, many of these artists are using Waters as a pretext to avoid concerts that would ultimately prove unprofitable, considering the logistics involved in performing here.
Either way, Waters never tires of inciting. Two days after his Cologne concert, he performed in Munich, where he continued to pontificate about Syria, Gaza and Mark Zuckerberg.
It is important to note that at the same time as Waters' Germany concerts, a host of more successful musicians gave performances across the country to audiences peppered with Israelis. At a Foo Fighters concert in Hamburg, for example, frontman Dave Grohl spotted a fan holding an Israeli flag and quickly raised his glass with a "l'chaim" (cheers) in Hebrew. Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson performed in Berlin, at the Waldbuehne, where the Nazi party first convened, and said, "In the place where we are standing now, once stood a man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache who walked funny and wanted to take freedom away from people." The German audience strongly identified with the sentiment and roared in contempt.
Waters, therefore, is a fringe phenomenon. But he manages to exert a degree of influence on his captive audience and on certain artists. I struggled with whether or not to report on this hate concert, given the superficiality of his arguments, but ultimately, I decided to do it. I needed to expose the bluff. The main takeaway from the concert in Cologne was this: Anyone who takes this man seriously, or believes him, is no less stupid than Waters himself.
