It was the most controversial concert of the year: The city of Munich had been looking for ways to ban Roger Waters' performance in the Olympic Hall. To no avail. The musician now delivered a bizarre political show.
The pitch in which this concert will be played is clear, at least ten minutes before Roger Waters takes the stage of Munich's Olympic Hall on Sunday evening (May 21, 2023). A court in Frankfurt, where the city and the state of Hesse wanted to legally prevent the appearance of the co-founder of Pink Floyd, confirmed to him that he was not an anti-Semite, the 79-year-old says over the loudspeaker and as a recording on the video cubes. This is a fairly free interpretation of the verdict, but Waters says: "Excellent!" Cheers and arms raised in the air in the full, not sold-out hall. He is looking forward to the gig on May 28, 2023 in Frankfurt, Waters continued. Laughter, even more cheers. A few minutes later, the Briton sends a message to his critics in the same way: If you are one of those people who say: "I love Pink Floyd, but I can't stand Roger's political views", the following applies here: "Fuck off!" – fuck off!
+Munich is colorful: The Olympic Tower shines in the colors of the rainbow after the concert.
© Martin Hangen/Hangenfoto
It is the most controversial concert of the year – around 100 people of the initiative "Munich is colorful" demonstrate in front of the hall on Sunday. Waters has been a supporter of the BDS campaign for years. The abbreviation stands for "Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" – the aim is to isolate Israel economically, culturally, scientifically and politically. BDS has been classified as anti-Semitic by Germany, among others.
Pink Floyd lyricist Polly Samson called Waters "anti-Semitic to the core."
At the beginning of February 2023, Polly Samson, author, lyricist and wife of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, called the ex-colleague "anti-Semitic to your rotten core", which is still politely translated as "anti-Semitic to the core". She also criticized him as a "Putin apologist." In fact, Waters declared, for example, that Russia's president would fight fascism in Ukraine, and that the United States was one of the main aggressors. The "complicity of the West, especially the USA, in the escalation of the conflict has been scientifically researched in detail," reads the leaflet "Roger Waters is not an anti-Semite" distributed by the "Salam Shalom Working Group Israel-Palestine". Its members oppose "Munich is colorful" on the grounds. The leaflet does not provide any evidence for the thesis.
Olympiapark München GmbH distances itself from Waters' political views
In the hall, Olympiapark GmbH distances itself from Waters' political views on all those screens to which it has access, before and after the concert as well as during the intermission. This does not challenge the musician and his fans. However, how he brings together the "fuck off" that he slams at his critics with his praise of the bar as a place of communication and meeting of different people and opinions – that remains his secret. He then interprets "The Bar" in a purified version.
Vocally, the 79-year-old's age can sometimes be heard. With Shanay Johnson and Amanda Belair, however, two fantastic singers support him. But the music, a foray into the work of Pink Floyd as well as his solo work, seems to play only a minor role anyway. What's more, Waters degrades his compositions to the soundtrack for his political show. The construction of the 360-degree stage already shows this: the musicians are in the middle of the seated arena, alternating on all four sides. And yet they are hardly noticeable. Directly above them float mighty video cubes, on which a visual fireworks display is set off for three hours (one intermission).
Roger Waters' anger is directed at the United States and capitalism – among other things
The concept shows that it is precisely these images and films that matter to Waters, who, by the way, keeps the lighting and stage design of the first part of the show in the colors red, black and white (historically interested people will associate accordingly). Whether it's the – extremely brutal – animated scenes of state violence against individuals or the real photos and sequences from world politics – the message is simple and always the same: us against them. And "they" – these are the state and its organs in general, this is the international economy, capitalism ("the Rich"), this is above all the USA. Images of Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump are displayed with the note "war criminals". Biden, too, is a "war criminal" – and he has only just begun. Of course, one of the noblest tasks of art is to keep an eye on the powerful, to expose grievances and to criticize them. Here, it is particularly exciting to see who is not to be seen in Waters' reckoning – for example, Assad, Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Lukashenko or Iran's President Raisi. Putin is at least mentioned when Waters argues for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.
+Roger Waters' message to all those who criticize his views: "Fuck off!"
© Angelika Warmuth/dpa
After the break, the Briton then lets the pig fly (from the cover of the Pink Floyd album "Animals", 1977), on which the Star of David was also seen at previous concerts. Now the names of arms companies can be read on it, including that of the Israeli company Elbit, as well as the slogans "Fuck the Poor" and "Steal from the Poor – Give to the Rich". Waters, now in a floor-length black leather coat, with sunglasses and a red armband, is handed a machine gun and shoots at the balloon, muzzle flash included. He is a pacifist and on a love mission – not one of hatred, he emphasizes during the Munich performance, for which there are cheers and standing ovations at the end. "We don't need no thought control" was written by Waters for the 1979 Pink Floyd hit "Another Brick in the Wall". Must have been a different person.
