Roger Waters hired street artists to wheat-paste or project images and an anti-war quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower around NYC and L.A. to promote his upcoming The Wall tour. But the street team picked the wrong wall when they pasted the message and images on the side of Solutions, an audio shop in Silverlake. The shop’s outside wall is where Autumn de Wilde shot the cover of Figure 8, and it’s been an unofficial memorial to Smith since his death in 2003.
Waters, who said he was previously unaware of Elliott Smith and his work, apologized via a phone interview with the L.A. Weekly:
It was absolutely an accident. I didn’t want to disrespect Elliott Smith’s fans, and I’ve instructed (the team) to remove the wheat paste immediately. It was a random pasting in the normal course of this, and I want to make it public that we had no intent to offend or cover up something precious.
Waters said he’s instructed the team to remove the posters. He also seemed irritated by the backlash: “It’s not like this was some pristine monument and Roger Waters is the Big Bad Wolf who covered it up.” He also said that if Elliott Smith were alive, he’d probably be sympathetic to the message from the Republican president. Of course, if Smith were alive, we wouldn’t need a memorial.
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this is the dumbest nontroversy I’ve seen yet.
+2. Anyone who’s seen that wall knows it was already completely covered in graffiti. You can barely see a few red/white/black stripes underneath it all.
They actually repaint it/clean it up fairly regularly. The old messages left by fans are wiped out too, but those come back almost without fail.
Waters didn’t need to apologize for shit.
He needs to apologize for the Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking
People write all over that wall anyways…
all in all it was just another poster on a wall.
An apology that’s followed by “it’s not like it’s some pristine monument…”, isn’t much of an apology.
what a dopey street team. it’s kind of lame that waters is completely unaware of elliott smith, but i guess that’s a generational thing. but the street team? DUH. i guess they failed the “street” part of this test.
I think the real issue here is that Roger Waters is re-touring with the Wall. This smells of profiteering. I wonder if there will be a large inflatable dead horse for this tour?
Looks like someone’s going to be haunted by the ghost of Elliott Smith. I hope he’s ready to grip his blanket in terror at 3 a.m. when he hears Waltz #1 come out of his walls.