Roger Waters

Biography

George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English singer-songwriter, musician and political activist. In 1965, he co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd as the bassist. Following the departure of the band's main songwriter Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became Pink Floyd's principal lyricist, co-lead vocalist and conceptual leader until his departure in 1985.

Pink Floyd achieved international success with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979), and The Final Cut (1983). By the early 1980s, they had become one of the most acclaimed and commercially successful groups in popular music. Amid creative differences, Waters left in 1985 and began a legal dispute over the use of the band's name and material. They settled out of court in 1987. His solo work includes the studio albums The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987), Amused to Death (1992), and Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017). In 2005, he released Ça Ira, an opera translated from Étienne and Nadine Roda-Gils's libretto about the French Revolution.

In 1990, Waters staged one of the largest rock concerts in history, The Wall – Live in Berlin. As a member of Pink Floyd, he was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Later in 2005, he reunited with Pink Floyd for the Live 8 global awareness event, their only appearance with Waters since 1981. He has toured extensively as a solo act since 1999. He performed The Dark Side of the Moon for his world tour of 2006–2008, and The Wall Live, his tour of 2010–2013, was the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist at the time.

Waters incorporates political themes in his work, many of them considered radical. He supports socialism, has defended Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and has been ruled by a court to have made defamatory comments. Waters is a prominent supporter of Palestine in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Gazan genocide. He supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and describes Israel's treatment of Palestinians as apartheid. Elements of his live show and some of his comments, such as his likening of Israel to Nazi Germany, have drawn accusations of antisemitism, which Waters has dismissed as a conflation with anti-Zionism. Waters has been dropped, banned or sanctioned by a wide variety of entities in reaction to his comments, including Major League Baseball, BMG Rights Management, the German city of Frankfurt, multiple Argentine hotels, and the country of Poland. Waters has contributed to financing a land deal that returned 4.5 acres of private property to the Shinnecock Nation. The land includes the Shinnecock Nation's ancestral burial grounds.

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