Roger Waters Faced Protests at Frankfurt Concert

Roger Waters has never really avoided controversy, but in recent years it’s begun to overshadow his music by an exponential degree. His latest controversy, which has led to German police investigating him, involves him donning Nazi-inspired attire on stage in Germany — which could be a violation of that country’s laws banning Nazi imagery.

It’s also prompted many people to protest a subsequent show by Waters and his band, this one in Frankfurt. Most of these protests took the standard form of demonstrations with signs held aloft. As Consequence reports, this wasn’t the only example of a protest addressing Waters in Frankfurt: in the midst of the concert, someone jumped on stage holding an Israeli flag.

Waters did make a significant change for his Frankfurt concert, announcing that he would not don the costume that’s at the center of this latest controversy. “[W]hen the second half starts, and the banners don’t come down, and I’m not wearing the leather coat, that is why,” he said to the audience. “It’s to show that I can’t possibly understand the feelings of the relatives of those men, or what it was like in 1938 — Frankfurt, and all over the rest of Germany.”

Roger Waters’s Latest Controversy Suggests He’s Forgotten the Lessons of an Album He Made 40 Years Ago

And this time, the police are involved

Waters’s tour dates in Germany have reached their end; according to his website, he will next play a series of concerts in the U.K., followed by a South American tour in the fall.