CNN
—
Radiohead singer Thom Yorke took off his guitar and left the stage throughout his solo live performance in Melbourne, Australia, on Wednesday after being heckled by a pro-Palestinian protester.
In video footage circulating on social media, a concert-goer may be heard shouting towards the stage on the Sidney Myer Music Bowl concerning the rising demise toll in Gaza and “the Israeli genocide of Gaza.”
The protester asks Yorke, “How might you be silent” within the face of the battle.
Yorke replies by saying, “Come up right here and say that. Proper right here. Come on. Come up on the f**king stage and say what you wish to say.”
Pointing on the heckler, he continued: “Don’t stand there like a coward. Come right here and say it.”
“Come on. You wish to piss on everyone’s evening? Come on,” Yorke provides, earlier than saying, “OK, you do. So long then.”
Yorke then left the stage, earlier than later returning to carry out Radiohead’s 1997 hit “Karma Police,” in keeping with social media posts.
CNN has contacted Arts Centre Melbourne, which owns the venue, for remark.
Radiohead has beforehand come underneath scrutiny for the band’s decision to perform in Tel Aviv. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) group urged Radiohead in 2017 to boycott Israel over its conduct within the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem.
On the time, the Radiohead Followers for Palestine wrote open letters urging the British rock band to not carry out there, saying, “Palestinians routinely have their houses destroyed and their land taken away. They’re imprisoned, brutalised and killed.”
The BDS group additionally known as on the band to cancel the live performance with former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters and British movie director Ken Loach, urging Yorke to rethink his stance.
Nevertheless, the band rejected the decision, with Yorke saying, “Taking part in in a rustic just isn’t the identical as endorsing its authorities” and music is about “crossing borders, not constructing them.”