Organizers: Roger Waters’ problems in Poland will not affect his appearance in Prague
Update: 26/09/2022 13:32
Issued by: 26/09/2022, 13:32
Prague – The Prague concert of Roger Waters, a founding member of the British music group Pink Floyd, is trying to overcome the artist’s problems in Poland, where he faces criticism because of his stance on the situation in Ukraine. Krakow City Council will discuss a proposal this week to make Waters an undesirable person in the city. In Poland, which is one of Europe’s biggest supporters of Ukraine in its defense against Russia, Waters is scheduled to perform on April 21 and 22 next year. He has a concert in Prague’s O2 arena a month before that on May 24. “We have no news that the Prague concert will not take place,” Ondřej Pojzl from the Czech branch of the organizing company Live Nation told ČTK today.
Live Nation Polska said on Saturday that concerts scheduled to take place next April at the city’s Tauron Arena have been cancelled. She did not provide details. Unlike the Prague concert, the Polish concerts do not even appear on website for the musician’s tour called This Is Not a Drill.
A day later, Waters denied Polish media reports on Facebook that his team had canceled the concert. At the same time, he accused councilor Lukasz Wantuch of “draconian censorship of his work”. “Lukasz Wantuch seems to have no idea that all my life, even at the cost of personal losses, I have worked in the service of human rights,” the musician wrote on the social network.
In early September, Waters wrote an open letter to the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he accused “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine of leading the country “on the path to this devastating war.” He also criticized the West for supplying weapons to Ukraine and NATO, which he said provoked Russia. In his response on Sunday, Waters added that he only wanted to call on the countries involved to “try to negotiate peace and let the situation escalate to a bitter end”.
The co-founder of Pink Floyd, one of the most fundamental groups of art rock popular music, has already played in Prague once. Last time four years ago at the O2, songs from Pink Floyd’s most successful albums and from their last solo album Is This the Life We Really Want? With the help of an effective projection, the leftist-oriented artist was critical of world politics. According to the organizers of the performance, 15,000 people applauded.
The 78-year-old anti-war activist Waters, who left the band Pink Floyd in 1985, has popularly supported a political cause. For example, he called Israel an “apartheid state”, lashed out at Brexit supporters, scorned former US President Donald Trump and criticized the “ruling class” for jailing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Politico website reminds.
On the other hand, Waters’ former text from the band David Gilmour is a great supporter of Ukraine in the war with Russia. In April of this year, Pink Floyd released the single Hey Hey, Rise Up!, the proceeds of which were intended for humanitarian aid to Ukraine.