Roger Waters loses contracts – Kommersant FM
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Record company BMG will stop working with the co-founder of Pink Floyd. Bertelsmann Music will terminate its contract with Roger Waters due to his political statements, Variety reports. The company itself refrains from commenting. Back in 2016, she signed an agreement with the musician and was going to release a re-recorded version of Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon in 2023. However, the new CEO Thomas Kesfeld canceled the deal, and is now completely ending cooperation with the former leader of the rock band.
Interestingly, back in November 2023, the musician said in an interview that he was “fired” due to “pro-Israel” pressure on the company, although BMG did not agree with this version. For more information about the situation around Roger Waters, see the Kommersant FM information:
The musician has recently come under fire for his political statements. Thus, in February last year, at a meeting of the UN Security Council, Waters said that military actions in Ukraine were provoked. Then he acted as a speaker at the request of Russia, the rock singer also noted that Vladimir Putin was “leading his country to the benefit of all the people of Russia.”
And in a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the singer claimed that some Jews in the US and UK were responsible for the war in Israel. The musician spoke about the United States as the most evil country in the world.
Moreover, in the spring of 2023, after a performance in Germany, the musician was accused of praising Nazism. Berlin police even began an investigation against Roger on suspicion of inciting hatred. This was due to his stage image: during the concert he wore a uniform similar to that worn by SS officers. Then the rock singer even imitated shooting into the crowd from a dummy rifle.
However, Der Tagesspiegel explained that such a costume was a reference to the film “The Wall,” an adaptation of the Pink Floyd album of the same name, where one of the characters sees himself as a dictator. Waters himself responded that elements of his image “clearly express a protest against fascism, injustice and fanaticism in all its forms.”
What losses will break the contract cause for the musician? Zvonko Digital executive director Dmitry Konnov believes that we are talking about tens of millions of dollars:
“I think that any such reissue will easily top the album charts, taking into account vinyl and its cost, taking into account the CD, which periodically returns, cassettes. Therefore, these are still tens of millions, but not hundreds, especially if we are talking about the personal account of a specific participant. Because in the process of re-recording the album, he needs to get permission from his former ‘cellmates,’ and I think those permissions come at a cost of potential royalties.”
Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and sued his former bandmates for using the name. He wanted the band to break up, but the other members continued to release records and tour under the same name. In 2022, the group tried to sell the rights to their music, but due to the high price of $500 million, no one agreed to the deal.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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