Roger Waters delivers politically charged show at British Summer Time festival
Waters played tracks from the Pink Floyd back catalogue.
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters took aim at world leaders and championed human rights as he rocked Hyde Park in a politically-charged gig.
The 74-year-old bassist treated the thousands gathered in central London to prog-rock classics while lambasting the likes of Donald Trump.
Crowds cheered as the words “Trump is a pig” were emblazoned on stage alongside edited images of the US president, while Waters played the 1977 hit Pigs at the British Summer Time festival.
Children in Guantanamo Bay-style orange suits joined Waters during Another Brick in the Wall, while messages urging the audience to “resist” anti-Semitism, war crimes, and pollution filled the screens during the interval.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley were also named as people to fight against.
And an inflatable pig, tethered to the ground, bearing the words “Stay human, or die” soared above the park as the sun set on Friday night’s show.
Waters, who was wearing a keffiyeh made by Palestinian refugees in Jordan, told the audience: “We are all faced with a choice, all of us, and that choice is whether or not we believe in the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris in 1948.
“The declaration states that all of us, all of us here in this beautiful park, all of us in this country, but all of us, all our brothers and sisters all over the world deserve equal human and civil rights.
“And these rights, according to that 1948 declaration, are irrespective of ethnicity or religion, so they would extend to my brothers and sisters in Palestine.”
His two-and-a-half hour set featured some of Pink Floyd’s most famous songs, including Comfortably Numb and Money.
But he also sang tracks from his most recent album – Is This the Life We Really Want? – such as Smell The Roses and Picture That.
Waters, who co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965, took to the main stage after performances from American blues musician Seasick Steve and former The Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft.
