Former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters has apologised after graffiti artists he commissioned to promote his forthcoming tour accidentally defaced an Elliott Smith memorial wall.

Waters had asked the artists to erect wheat paste posters bearing an anti-war quote from President Eisenhower across American cities, in promotion of his tour of Pink Floyd‘s 1979 concept album ‘The Wall’.

However, one wall covered with the slogan was the front of shop Solutions Audio on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, which has become an unofficial memorial for Smith – who died in 2003 – as it was the location for the cover of his ‘Figure 8’ album (pictured).


“It was absolutely an accident,” Waters told the LA Times about the tagging of the wall. “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.”

Writing on his Facebook page about the incident, Waters also asked Smith‘s fans to “check out the wheat paste text” as “I think Elliott would have approved”.

The Eisenhower quote used by Waters reads: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed.”