When old heroes go off the deep end

February 9th, 2023

I had a neighbor when I was in my early teens, a guy couple of years older, with long hair and natural, effortless coolness around him. Of course, I admired him and listen to him and wanted to be cool like him (that hadn’t happened — yet). He would share with me music cassettes or LPs or VHS cassettes with music I didn’t know and didn’t hear anywhere on the radio. He had a very eclectic taste and I think my interest in music is in many ways based on what I discovered through him. One time he gave me a VHS cassette copy of “Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii” telling me to prepare to have my mind blown away. And I did have my mind blown….

I don’t think there is a band I listen to more than Pink Floyd, and I mean listen to consciously, not just as some noise in the background. I went through many stages of what I liked from their whole oeuvre. As a rebellious teen, I loved of course “The Wall” and despised “The Dark Side of the Moon” — which I thought was too commercial until I listened to it one time in my twenties and only then I appreciated the amazing beauty of it. “The Animals” was for several months on constant rotation when I was about twenty and is still for me the best of their albums — absolutely flawless from the beginning to the end. And when I was even older I realized after learning how to listen and understand lyrics that “Obscured by the Clouds” was more anti-establishment record than any punk music created in the 70s. Two of the best concerts I’ve been to were during their Division Bell Tour in 1994 — first in the Giants Stadium and the second in the Yankees stadium. I just love Pink Floyd and have (I think) very thorough and complete knowledge of their music.

Roger Waters was the main songwriter for Pink Floyd so obviously I held him in very high regard. He was never any brilliant vocalist and just a good bass player — but he was definitely one of the most iconic, even if it was just for his bass riff in “Money”. And of course, I knew about his extreme left-wing politics, especially from his lyrics which were also instrumental for me as a source of learning English and exploring that ideology. Still, that was only something of an aside thing, until it wasn’t…

It is so extremely sad to see a hero (yes, musicians can be heroes) from my youth succumb to the madness of radical ideology which took over his ability to reason and be reasonable. Anyone who repeats and shares antisemitic views is already gone from among the people who can be reasoned with. Anyone who turns his hate of the hegemony of the United States into an attempt to whitewash a murderous despot is beyond any redemption as a human being. Anyone who tries to justify a war and aggression and countless deaths of innocent people is irredeemable just as is his ideology.

I will keep listening to Pink Floyd nonetheless, actually, I just realized that I haven’t listened to “Meddle” for a while and I will play it when I get home today. I can differentiate between the same person as an artist and as a human being, but the sour taste stays in my mouth from the way an intelligent person could debase himself whoring his dignity for the purity of an ideology. An absolute is always wrong and for someone who railed against brainwashing throughout his career, Roger Waters might well want to take a deep look at himself.