We all love(d) Pink Floyd. They single-handedly brought down the Berlin Wall and instigated the end of Soviet rule. They crashed real airplanes and space rockets into the stage at concerts, with no-one getting hurt. And although they were bastions of ‘prog-rock’, Ummagumma perhaps took it a touch too far. A double album which had three tracks on it. Just about. As they invented ‘long music’ when everyone else was probing the four minute mark, they were already up to 15. Though I’ll always have a place in my heart for any track titled: ‘careful with that axe, Eugene’, even if the music itself was so much premature insturmental-action. And other than a few isolated tracks, (Money, Another brick in the Wall) my love affair with that band was over pretty much at See Emily Play. Which was ‘early’. Yet, amazingly, they scraped a living together even without my patronage. Probably because, love ‘em or hate ‘em, they were talented.

None more so that the band’s bassist, main writer and undisputed driving force, Roger (fuckin’) Waters.

And then the band split. Awwwww, shame. Waters was a control freak, egomaniac and serial tosser. The others couldn’t live with him. They re-formed later, due to a ‘license to print money clause’ which exists in all massive bands. The ‘pension pot tour’. And then they split again and finally and fairly acrimoniously.

That was when Waters became political. He became the spokesman for the Palestinian cause. Which is a good and worthy cause. Yet like so many warlike struggles, it is simply never a ‘black and white’ thing. But it was for our Roger. The Israelis were ‘Nazis’. And if ever there was a metaphor tragically misplaced, it was there. And ‘the Palestinians’ were the good and repressed. Even Hamas became his friends. The ones who send 120 rockets a day into Israeli schools and civilian areas. Fully justified, according to Roger. Who never took issue with President Assad using chemical bombs on his civilian population, but instigated the ‘BDS’ movement to boycott everything ‘Israel’. Then followed it up by personally calling any musicians scheduled to play in Israel to urge them to abandon their concerts. All together: “Rich Jeremy Corbyn, you’re just a rich Jeremy Corbyn; rich Jeremy Coooor-byn…”

This week he stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was ‘not entirely unprovoked’. He was justifying it. Even though, for all us ignorant, blinkered liberals, Putin’s attack was totally unprovoked. But only if you don’t view NATO as ‘an aggressive force for evil’. Like Putin does, and Roger does too.

Waters is now planning to re-record the brilliant ‘Dark side of the Moon’ album. And will not be sharing any of the royalties with any of his former band-members. Because “it was MY project!”, even though they all have shared writing rights from the original. May not end in tears, but definitely in court.

Johnny-the-would-be-tennis-star came up with ‘another prick in the wall’.

This is what Dave Gilmour (guitarist and vocalist with Pink Floyd)’s wife Polly wrote to Rog:

“Sadly [Waters] you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” she wrote. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”

I think she sums him up perfectly. And only missed the only word which really does sum him up perfectly. And is so totally appropriate and applicable that I don’t even have to write it. Because you know.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx