Radiohead’s Thom Yorke walks off stage over Gaza heckler

Thom Yorke is currently touring a show across Australasia, Singapore and Japan of his music with Radiohead, The Smile, Atoms for Peace and as a solo artist. During his second night performing at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne on 30 October, the show was temporarily halted after the singer walked off stage due to a heckler.

Fan footage from the crowd shows a heckler shouting at Yorke to “condemn the Israeli genocide of Gaza”, among a longer tirade that can’t be fully made out from the video.

Yorke responds through the mic asking the fan to “come up here and say that”. He then continued to demand the fan follows up the comments: “Hop up on the fucking stage and say what you want to say. Don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You want to piss on everybody’s night?”

As the fan responds asking Yorke about “how many dead children will it take for you to condemn the genocide in Gaza”, the disgruntled singer stormed off the stage, saying “OK, you do it, see you later then.”

Although Yorke hasn’t played a consistent set throughout this tour, it seems like the heckler didn’t disrupt the show too much as the singer returned to the stage to perform Radiohead song ‘Karma Police’ as his final encore and 22nd song of the night – the same number he’d performed at the same venue the previous evening.

While the members of Radiohead haven’t previously shied away from political matters, their general stance on Israel and Palestine has often rubbed some of their fans the wrong way.

Earlier this year, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was criticised for going ahead with plans to tour his 2023 album ‘Jarak Qaribak’, made in collaboration with Israeli musician of Kuwait origin Dudu Tassa.

“I’ve been collaborating with Dudu and releasing music with him since 2008 – and working privately long before that,” Greenwood explained at the time. “I think an artistic project that combines Arab and Jewish musicians is worthwhile. And one that reminds everyone that the Jewish cultural roots in countries like Iraq and Yemen go back for thousands of years, is also important.”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has criticised Radiohead for touring in Israel for years before the current iteration of the war in Gaza. The band were criticised in 2017 for performing in Israel by influential artists within the BDS movement including Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and filmmaker Ken Loach.

Yorke then responded that: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government.”

“We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others. As we have in America,” Yorke continued. “Music, art and academia is about crossing borders not building them, about open minds not closed ones, about shared humanity, dialogue and freedom of expression.”