(Credit: Alamy)
Sun 9 November 2025 16:15, UK
It’s not just his former Pink Floyd band that Roger Waters has been more than happy to throw the odd bitchy snipe at.
And they seriously got it in the neck, much of the mud-slinging flung squarely at Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. While recognising the cosmic solos and gift for harmonies committed to their classic album run, Waters has otherwise claimed that he and former keyboardist Richard Wright were mere drags in his artistic vision.
Burned by the bitter legal wranglings following Waters’ departure from the band in 1985, the former bassist and principal songwriter has been more than happy to excoriate Pink Floyd’s subsequent albums, in particular lambasting Gilmour as a “third-rate lyricist”.
“My father always thought you were a cunt—thanks for proving him right,” Jack Osbourne spat on X, a riposte to Waters’ critique of the late Black Sabbath frontman so soon after his death. It’s safe to say Waters has no problem making enemies.
In addition to sweeping rejections of much of the day’s pop stars, deeming himself “far, far, far more important” than the likes of The Weekend or Drake, “however many billions of streams they’ve got,” many of the rock canon have found themselves the target of Waters’ verbal jabbing due to the grubby exercise of performing in the State of Israel.
Roger Waters performing live in 2019. (Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
No band’s received such heat for this as Radiohead. Playing Tel Aviv in 2017, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement’s pleas to adhere to the cultural boycott were dashed by the art-rock stalwarts, a decision later regretted by the band in a recent Sunday Times interview. Naturally, Waters proved himself to be a vocal critic of the band, in particular frontman Thom Yorke, ever since.
Minor sparring had been flexed previously, long before any political differences. Curiously, for a band championed as pioneers of intrepid sonic innovation, it turns out Waters’ interest in Radiohead leans toward their 1990s rock era, before Yorke’s guitar horrors forced the band down the rock to Kid A upon the 21st century’s arrival.
Reportedly, Waters’ son Harry gifted him OK Computer, an album that the former Pink Floyd maestro bestowed high praise. It was the encounter with 2001’s Amnesiac, however, that cooled Waters’ appreciation for Radiohead’s creative trajectory. “That was beyond me, I have to say,” he confessed to Rolling Stone the next year. “I listened to it once in the car and went, ‘Well, OK, guys. Good, but you’ve left me.’ You know, where’s my Neil Young? Where’s my John Lennon album?”
It’s easy to forget the bewilderment met by much of the music world when Radiohead’s Kid A twofer was unleashed to a crowd pining for OK Computer’s sequel. While retrospectively lauded as one of the finest albums in popular music, fan reception was mixed, Amnesiac furthering for many the sorely missed guitar heft that propped up their 1990s output.
Perhaps Waters needs to roll his sleeves up, put down After the Gold Rush or Imagine, and give Amnesiac another spin? While slightly patchier than its predecessor and showing signs of its collated studio offcut nature, Radiohead’s fifth album effort is a dark horse in their oeuvre, possessing gems like ‘Pyramid Song’ and ‘I Might Be Wrong’, and offering plenty of hidden riches amid the hidden corners of its conceptual library bookshelves.
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