"[15] Waters met future Pink Floyd members Nick Mason and Richard Wright in London, at the Regent Street Polytechnic (later the University of Westminster) School of Architecture.

[17] By September 1963, Waters and Mason had lost interest in their studies and moved into the lower flat of Stanhope Gardens, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the Regent Street Polytechnic.

[21] When Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own group in September 1963, the remaining members asked Barrett and the guitarist Bob Klose to join.

[28] By late 1967, Barrett's deteriorating mental health and increasingly erratic behaviour[29] rendered him "unable or unwilling"[30] to continue in his capacity as Pink Floyd's songwriter and lead guitarist.

[33] He wrote most of the lyrics to the five Pink Floyd albums preceding his departure, starting with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and ending with The Final Cut (1983), while exerting progressively more creative control.

[53] Amidst creative differences, Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and began a legal battle with the band regarding their continued use of the name and material.

Waters said he had been forced to resign like Barrett had been years earlier, and decided to leave the band based on legal considerations, saying: "If I hadn't, the financial repercussions would have wiped me out completely.

Waters also used an East German symphony orchestra and choir, a Soviet marching band, and a pair of helicopters from the US 7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron.

Gert Hof mixed recorded excerpts from the opera into a continuous piece of music which was played as an accompaniment to a large light and fireworks display over Grand Harbour in Valletta.

Waters told the Associated Press that while the experience of playing with Pink Floyd again was positive, the chances of a bona fide reunion would be "slight" considering his and Gilmour's continuing musical and ideological differences.

[89] Ça Ira was released as a double CD album, featuring baritone Bryn Terfel, soprano Ying Huang and tenor Paul Groves.

Waters released it as a single, on CD and via download, and described it as "a song that captures the themes of the movie, the clash between humanity's best and worst instincts, and how a child's innocence can win the day".

[99] The set comprised a cover of the Phil Spector song "To Know Him Is to Love Him", which was played in early Pink Floyd soundchecks, followed by "Wish You Were Here", "Comfortably Numb", and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)".

[123] Shortly afterwards, Polly Samson, the wife of Gilmour and a lyricist for Pink Floyd, wrote on Twitter that Waters was antisemitic and "a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac".

"[129] In October, Waters held two concerts at the London Palladium, where he performed The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, spoke on topics such as Julian Assange and read from his unpublished memoir.

[145][146] In 2013, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Jewish human rights organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Center, accused Waters of antisemitism for including a giant pig balloon bearing a Star of David in his concerts.

[150] The American rabbi Shmuley Boteach responded to Waters in the New York Observer: "That you would have the audacity to compare Jews to monsters who murdered them shows you have no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul.

"[151][152] In 2017, the writer Ian Halperin produced a documentary, Wish You Weren't Here, accusing Waters of antisemitism and "erecting the very walls that hinder peace in the region and fuel hatred".

[156] In a February 2024 interview with Al Jazeera, Waters criticised the U2 singer Bono for dedicating a live performance of "Pride (In the Name of Love)" to those killed in the 2023 Nova music festival massacre.

[125] During the UK general election that month, Waters criticised the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, for his stance on the Israel–Hamas war and a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and performed a pro-Palestine concert in London with Cat Stevens and Lowkey.

Waters responded at a concert in London the following month, calling Wakeford a "fucking moron" and a "cripple", which Variety said "drew a sharp intake of breath" from some in attendance.

[170] In a separate statement, Ezrin said he did not object to Waters's challenging Israeli policy, but that "if your language directly or by implication promotes the eradication of the world's only Jewish state, then that is absolutely antisemitism in my book".

[170] According to the documentary, in a 2010 email to his crew, Waters described his idea for the inflatable pig to be floated above his gigs, which would have the words "dirty kyke", "follow the money" and "Scum" written on it.

[171] In response, Waters said that the "offensive words I referenced... were my brainstorming ideas on how to make the evils and horrors of fascism and extremism apparent", and "not the manifestation of any underlying bigotry as the film suggests".

[171] Waters said in an interview with Glenn Greenwald that the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel may have been a false flag operation and that "resistance to the Israeli occupation" is legally and morally justifiable.

[181] In February 2025, Waters made another speech to a UN Security Council meeting, which had been requested by Russia to mark the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Minsk II agreement.

[197] After the April 2018 Douma chemical attack carried out by the Syrian government, Waters called civil defence volunteers, the White Helmets, "a fake organisation that exists only to create propaganda for the jihadists and terrorists" trying to incite the West to "start dropping bombs on people in Syria".

[198][199][200][201] In 2018, Waters included the Brazilian far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro in a list of "neo-fascists" displayed on a screen at his concert in São Paulo, which drew mixed responses from the crowd.

[202] In a concert in Rio de Janeiro that October, he acknowledged the murdered Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco and brought her daughter, sister and widow on stage.

[207] In an interview with the communist deputy Camila Vallejo, he condemned the president Sebastian Piñera, calling him a "rat", and said the 2022 Chilean national plebiscite was "extraordinarily revolutionary".