Former Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters has added more fuel to his feud with Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, deeming him a “timid little bloke.”
Waters has been a long-time dissenter of Yorke, having already had a public disagreement with them over their decision to play in Tel Aviv in 2017. At the time, Waters signed an open letter, alongside prominent public figures such as Thurston Moore, Young Fathers, Ken Loach, and Bishop Desmond Tutu, urging Radiohead not to play in Israel.
In late 2024, he called the star “damaged,” adding, “He’s very damaged. He’s obviously very, very deeply insecure. He obviously thinks he’s very bright but he’s not. So he can’t actually have a conversation.”
Now, Waters has added to his previous comments while speaking on The Katie Halper Show. When asked for his comments on Radiohead, the musician first asked the host to “not go there,” before changing his mind.
He decided to make his thoughts on Yorke known, commenting, “He’s a timid little bloke. I think he’s unpleasant company.”
He added, “I wrote him many letters you know.” When asked if the ‘Weird Fishes’ singer ever responded, Waters revealed, “Yes, he did. He did respond. It’s all going in my memoir. He got very very snarky and he was trying to be fun[ny].”
Yorke received a healthy dose of backlash from the online community after posting a rare statement through his Instagram, which explicitly called out the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and “his crew of extremists”, who are “totally out of control and need to be stopped, and the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease.” It also called for the release of hostages, and levelled that both sides of the conflict are suffering, though Palestine should be free.
Commenting on his own statement, Yorke mentioned what he deems “social media witch-hunts” that necessitate artists’ commentary upon political occurrences, despite their removal from that world. This leads to “deliberate polarization [which] does not serve our fellow human beings and perpetuates a constant ‘us and them’ mentality.”
Plenty of fellow celebrities, such as Reggie Watts, slammed Yorke’s statement for centring himself in a discourse of Palestinian suffering. Yorke’s statement also raised eyebrows as he did not comment on bandmate Jonny Greenwood, who is married to the vocally pro-IDF Israeli artist Sharona Katan, and has collaborated with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa a few times over the years.
