Radiohead singer Thom Yorke briefly walked off stage during his Australian solo tour after an exchange with an audience member who heckled him with a protest about deaths in Gaza.
Videos posted online by concert-goers at the Melbourne show on Wednesday show a man in the crowd shouting at Yorke. While not all of his words can be heard, he calls on the singer to “condemn the Israeli genocide of Gaza”.
Yorke responds by telling the heckler to “hop up on stage” to make his remarks.
“Don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You want to piss on everybody’s night? Ok you do it, see you later,” Yorke continues, before removing his guitar and halting his set.
His exit came as the heckler had repeated his call and added “how many dead children will it take”.
Segments of the crowd could be heard booing the disturbance, and Yorke returned to cheers shortly after to play the Radiohead song Karma Police.
Concert-goer Elly Brus said the protester “did not have support” from the Sidney Myer Music Bowl crowd.
“He was escorted away by security. He then continued to engage with people outside the venue as well,” she told the BBC.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage.
More than 43,160 people have been killed in Gaza since then – including thousands of women and children – according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Both sides deny accusations they have broken the laws of war.
In the past, Radiohead has faced pressure to cancel shows in Israel and take part in a cultural boycott of the country over its policies towards the Palestinians.
Yorke pushed back on that pressure, saying 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,” Yorke said in a statement in 2017, defending a decision to go ahead with a planned concert in Tel Aviv.
“We don’t endorse [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America. Music, art and academia is about crossing borders not building them,” he added at the time.
Earlier this year, pro-Palestinian activists also accused Yorke’s bandmate Jonny Greenwood of “artwashing” for performing alongside Israeli-Arabic musician Dudu Tassa in Tel Aviv.
“No art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us,” Greenwood said in a statement on X.
“But… silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like any way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this apparently endless conflict.”
The BBC has contacted representatives for Yorke’s Australian tour. The Arts Centre Melbourne, which oversees the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, declined to comment.
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