Roger Waters Suggests Super Bowl Performers 'Take a Knee'

Pink Floyd’s founding member and former bassist Roger Waters released a statement ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday urging Maroon 5, Big Boi and Travis Scott to take a knee on stage during the event’s halftime show.

Waters has spoken out in support of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick before, who began kneeling during the National Anthem in protest of widespread racial injustice and police brutality in America in 2016.

In a statement released on Instagram, accompanied by a video of him and his band kneeling after a concert in Hartford, Connecticut in September 2017, Water said:

“My colleagues Maroon 5, Travis Scott and Big Boi are performing during the halftime show at the Super-bowl this coming Sunday, I call upon them to ‘take a knee’ on stage in full sight. I call upon them to do it in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, to do it for every child shot to death on these mean streets, to do it for every bereaved mother and father and brother and sister.”

He continued, “My mother used to say to me, ‘In any situation there is nearly always a right thing to do, just do it.’ So, there you go my brothers, you are faced with a choice, I’m not saying it will be easy, all the Presidents men, all the huffers and puffers, will be royally pissed off, but, $#@% ’em, I call upon you to do it because it’s the right thing to do and because somewhere inside you know it.”

Waters also took to Twitter as part of his statement, posting a link to a Chang.org petition aimed at convincing the performers to take a knee.

There is a petition at https://t.co/9j587BT76U aimed at persuading @maroon5, @trvisXX and @BigBoi to #TakeAKnee at halftime on Sunday @SuperBowl. @Change

This is my band taking a knee at the end of a gig in Hartford on the 24th of Sep. 2017.

Read more: https://t.co/V9NfPPRQaK pic.twitter.com/5c8M5NOpzx

— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) January 31, 2019

Perhaps in an attempt to mitigate the anticipated backlash for his participation, Scott, who performed at Ireland's Longitude Festival last year, supposedly only agreed to the Super Bowl gig after the NFL made a joint donation of $500,000 to the social justice organisation Dream Corps.

Likewise, Maroon 5 has made a joint donation with the NFL and its label of the same amount to Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America.