Roger Waters Says He Rejected Facebook’s Offer to Use ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ in Ad
Roger Waters told the press at a recent pro-Julian Assange event that Facebook approached him about using the 1979 Pink Floyd classic “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” in an upcoming advertisement for Instagram.
“It arrived this morning, with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money,” Waters said. “And the answer is, ‘Fuck You. No fuckin’ way.’”
“I only mention that because this is an insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything,” he continued. “I will not be a party to this bullshit, [Mark] Zuckerberg.”
“¡Vete a la chingada!”: @rogerwaters a Mark Zuckerberg. El músico contó que le ofrecieron “una gran cantidad de dinero” por permitir el uso de Another brick in the wall II para promover Instagram. Lo narró en un acto por la libertad de Julian Assange (@Wikileaks)#VideosLaJornada pic.twitter.com/gEVqaor8Eo
— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) June 12, 2021
Facebook did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
During the event, Waters read from a letter that he says came from Facebook. “We want to thank you for considering this project,” he read. “We feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and so necessary today, which speaks to how timeless the work is.”
“And yet, they want to use it to make Facebook and Instagram more powerful than it already is,” he replied, “so that it can continue to censor all of us in this room and prevent this story about Julian Assange getting out into the general public so the general public can go, ‘What? No. No More.’”
Waters ended his diatribe by bringing up FaceMash, the pre-Facebook website that Zuckerberg created at Harvard in 2003 to compare the looks of women on campus. The incident was dramatized in the 2010 film The Social Network. “How did this little prick who started out as ‘She’s pretty, we’ll give her a four out of five, she’s ugly, we’ll give her a four out of five,’ how did we give him any power?” Waters asked. “And yet here he is, one of the most powerful idiots in the world.”
Waters also recently lashed out at his former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour for allegedly blocking his access to the group’s social media accounts and vetoing liner notes for the upcoming Animals box set. He’s currently working on a memoir where he’ll finally share his side of the Pink Floyd saga.
