Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke briefly walked off stage during an Australian concert after a verbal incident with a pro-Palestinian heckler.
Yorke was performing a solo show on Wednesday night at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl when a concertgoer began chiding him about the mounting death toll in Gaza.
“How many dead children will it take for you to condemn the genocide in Gaza?” the heckler said.
In a frosty reply, Yorke accused the man of ruining the gig for other fans and invited him to “hop up” on the stage.
“Don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You want to p*** on everybody’s night,” Yorke said.
Yorke briefly walked off stage as the crowd booed the heckler. Yorke returned minutes later to play his final song – Radiohead’s 1997 hit Karma Police.
Radiohead defied pro-Palestinian activists in 2017 to play a gig in Tel Aviv.
“Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government,” Yorke wrote on Twitter at the time.
“We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others. As we have in America.
“We don’t endorse [Benjamin] Netanyahu any more than [Donald] Trump, but we still play in America.”
Source: AFP