Roger Waters Attacks Bono for His Comments on Israel, Calls U2 Frontman 'Disgusting'

Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters is someone who has never been afraid to speak his mind, and it's a tendency that he's maintained throughout his career, even though it's led to quite a bit of turmoil. Indeed, it was revealed earlier this year that his controversial comments on Israel led him to lose his deal with BMG.

Now, Waters looks poised to lose whichever of his fans are also U2 supporters, thanks to some remarks he's made about Bono -- specifically, the U2 frontman's comments on Israel.

To fully understand Waters' remarks, one must take a step back and revisit a U2 show from October 8, 2023, one which the band's official Twitter account posted about the follow morning.

In reaction to the October 7 Hamas attack on the Supernova Music Festival in Israel, Bono took to the stage and said, "In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence,” after which the band began to ease into an acoustic version of "Pride (In the Name of Love)."

In advance of starting to sing, however, Bono added, "But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us… and those beautiful kids at that music festival," and when he got to the appropriate portion of the song, he switched up the lyrics somewhat, shifting them as follows:

“Early morning, Oct. 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky… Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride."

In an interview with Al Jazeera this past weekend, Waters took aim - albeit belatedly - at Bono for his aforementioned remarks, saying bluntly, “Anybody who knows Bono should go and pick him up by his ankles and shake him… until he stops being an enormous sh*t…”

Waters continued, “We have to start saying to these people, your opinion is so disgusting and so degrading… sticking up for the Zionist entity… what he did a couple of weeks ago in the Sphere in Las Vegas, singing about the Stars of David was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

But just as Waters is unlikely to shift his longstanding beliefs anytime soon, the same is almost certainly true for Bono as well.

In the wake of the sudden and still-unexplained death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, Bono once again took to the stage of The Sphere – this time during the intro for U2’s regularly-recurring cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” – and spoke about Navalny.

“Next week it’ll be two years since Putin invaded and tried to destroy the hard-won freedoms,” said Bono. “Next it’ll be Poland, next it’ll be Lithuania, East Germany; who knows where this man will or won’t go. To these people freedom is not just a word in a song. For these people freedom is the most important word in the world — so important that Ukrainians are fighting and dying for it. And it’s so important that Alexei Navalny chose to give his up. Apparently Putin would never, ever say his name. So I thought tonight, the people who believe in freedom must say his name. Not just remember it, but say it.”

At that point, Bono led the crowd in the chanting of Navalny’s name, after which he began singing, effectively reminding the audience that Navalny’s dream is in no way over.

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