Roger Waters has been permitted to move forward with his performance in Frankfurt, Germany in May, following local city official’s attempt to ban the Pink Floyd co-founder for his alleged antisemitism.
Videos by American Songwriter
Continuing his This Is Not A Drill Tour, Waters will now keep his performance scheduled at Frankfurt’s Festhalle concert hall on May 28.
An administrative court in Frankfurt ruled that there were no sufficient grounds to justify banning Waters from performing and that his show “did not glorify or relativize the crimes of the Nazis or identify with Nazi racist ideology” that can be viewed as “work of art” and is entitled to artistic freedom of expression.
The City of Frankfurt previously cancelled his upcoming show, citing Waters as “one of the world’s most well-known antisemites” as the reason for the cancellation. In response to the cancelled show, Waters’ lawyers called the accusations “unconstitutional, without justification and based upon the false accusation that Roger Waters is antisemitic, which he is not,” while fighting to overturn the decision.
More than 36,000 people also signed a change.org petition to help overrule the decision to cancel Waters’ concert, including Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Eric Clapton, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, and actress Susan Sarandon, among many others.
Despite the initial cancellation, Rogers said he was still planning on going to Frankfurt on his tour. “Not that it matters much,” said Waters in a statement. “We’re coming anyway, because human rights matter. Because free speech matters.”
Authorities in Frankfurt attempted to ban Waters after his outspokenness and boycott of Israel, which he compared to apartheid South Africa, along with his use of a pig-shaped balloon featuring the Star of David on previous tours. In a recent interview, Waters also stood by his comparison of Israel, which he accused of committing genocide, to Nazi Germany.
Specifically, the historical significance of the Festhalle concert hall also played a role in the decision by the city council in Frankfurt when initially cancelling Waters’ show. The venue was once used for the internment of 3,000 Jewish men arrested by Nazis, who also destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and synagogues on November 9 and 10, 1938, which became known as Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass).
Referencing the Nazi attacks on Jews at Kristallnacht, Waters responded: “We remember Kristallnacht. Like Sophie Scholl, our fathers stood with those 3,000 Jewish men, and today we stand with the Palestinians. We’re coming to Frankfurt on the 28th of May.”
The Frankfurt show is part of Waters’ European leg of the This Is Not a Drill Tour, which includes five scheduled shows in Germany, including dates in Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg, in addition to two nights in Berlin.
Earlier in 2023, Waters revealed that he re-recorded Pink Floyd‘s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon without his remaining band members.
During the pandemic, Waters also began revisiting and remixing a number of Pink Floyd classics, along with some of his solo songs, and continued recording a number of other tracks. In 2022, he also released a new version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall track “Comfortably Numb” with an updated “Comfortably Numb 2022,” which he worked on during the U.S. leg of his This Is Not A Drill Tour.
Waters recently announced a forthcoming live broadcast and cinema event around his upcoming May 25 concert at the O2 Arena in Prague, Czech Republic.
Photo: Franco Origlia / Getty Images
