Roger Waters Accused of Anti-Semitism by The Wall Producer Bob Ezrin and Other Collaborators
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The post Roger Waters Accused of Anti-Semitism by The Wall Producer Bob Ezrin and Other Collaborators appeared first on Consequence.
Roger Waters has long been accused of antisemitism, in part because of his frequent condemnation of Israel and in part because he has a tendency to use … inflammatory stage design to get his politics across. A new investigation by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), however, quotes prominent Jewish musicians who claim to have experienced antisemitism from the former Pink Floyd bassist firsthand.
In a documentary entitled The Dark Side of Roger Waters, BBC journalist John Ware interviews Norbert Statchel, Waters’ former saxophonist, and Bob Ezrin, the music producer who helped helm Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Both men are Jewish. According to Statchel, after learning that the saxophonist was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent — with ancestors who were murdered in the Holocaust — Waters offered to “introduce” Statchel to his dead grandmother, then began an impression of a peasant Polish woman.
“Now you’ve met your grandmother! How do you feel now?” Waters allegedly said.
On another occasion, Statchel alleges, Waters grew angry that a Lebanese restaurant served their party only vegetarian food, pushing it away and demanding the server “Take away the Jew food.” The musician told the CAA that another Jewish member of Waters’ entourage warned him that in order to keep his job, he shouldn’t push back against Waters’ antisemitism, nor discuss Statchel or anyone else’s Jewish heritage.
Erzin’s anecdote dates back to The Wall era. The Canadian producer said he couldn’t remember the exact circumstance, but heard Waters sing a song about Pink Floyd’s then-agent Bryan Morrison that ended with the line, “‘Cause Morri is a fucking Jew.”
“It was my first inclination that there may be some antisemitism under the surface,” Erzin recalled, but he said he was too shocked to push back against Waters at the time.
The documentary also features a screenshot of a 2010 email Waters wrote to his team brainstorming stage design ideas for an upcoming concert. In the email, he suggests hanging an inflatable pig above the stage with the Star of David and epithets including “dirty k***” written on it. After members of his team questioned the move, the slur was removed from the pig.
The latter anecdote mirrors more recent Waters controversies. Earlier this year, the artist performed in a costume featuring a leather jacket, gloves, an armband, and a rifle that appeared to resemble that of a Nazi SS soldier, prompting German police to launch an investigation into “suspected incitement.” Soon after, the city of Frankfurt canceled a scheduled concert by the performer at Festhalle, a venue that used to be a Jewish detention camp, citing the city’s partial ownership of the venue. The concert was rescheduled for a later date and was promptly crashed by a protestor.
Consequence reached out to Waters’ representatives for comment, but they did not respond as of publication.
Watch the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s full Waters documentary below.
Roger Waters Accused of Anti-Semitism by The Wall Producer Bob Ezrin and Other Collaborators
Carys Anderson
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