Roger Waters accused of being ‘Putin apologist’ in bitter Pink Floyd row
'Enough of your nonsense,' wrote Polly Samson, who helped write several songs after Waters’ left the band in 1985
The decades long rift between Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Roger Waters doesn’t show signs of mending anytime soon. On Monday, Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson, who helped write several songs after Waters’ left the band in 1985, took to social media to publicly criticize Waters.
“Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” wrote Samson on Twitter. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”
Gilmour liked the post, retweeting it, and in a show of support, wrote “Every word demonstrably true.”
Samson’s tweet follows Waters’ interview with German newspaper Berliner Zeitung last week. According to an English translation of the interview on Waters’ website, the 79-year-old musician proceeded to voice a series of controversial views on Ukraine, Putin, and Israel. In the interview he griped about how it was “really, really sad” that his former bandmates recorded a protest song with Ukrainian musician Andrij Chlywnjuk.
Last fall, the Pink Floyd co-founder spoke to Rolling Stone and claimed he was on “a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government.”
Following Samson’s post on Monday, Waters’ official Twitter account responded later that afternoon. “Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely,” stated the post, vaguely noting that he is “currently taking advice on the position.”
Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and mounted a legal battle to prevent Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason from using the band name without him. Ultimately, he lost, and the Gilmour-led version of the band later released A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987 and toured stadiums into the Nineties. In a 2013 BBC interview, Waters admitted regret for suing Gilmour and Mason. “I was wrong,” he conceded. “Of course I was. Who cares?