How the 1977 'In the Flesh' Tour Alienated Pink Floyd and Spawned 'The Wall'

The 1977 ‘In the Flesh’ tour was Pink Floyd’s first real stadium blowout, and it nearly broke the band. Earlier tours like Dark Side of the Moon had been polished, seated affairs in theaters and arenas, where the band could control the sound and the audience mostly sat still. In ‘77, they were suddenly playing to 70,000 people a night in places like Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, and the massive outdoor venues turned the sound into mush. The band hated it, and the crowd wasn’t much happier — they threw firecrackers and screamed over quiet passages. It was the first time Pink Floyd felt genuinely disconnected from their audience.

The setlist leaned heavily on the new Animals album, which was darker and more cynical than anything they’d done live before. Only “Money” and “Us and Them” carried over from Dark Side, and Wish You Were Here was represented by “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and the title track. No “Echoes,” no “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” — older, atmospheric pieces were gone. The show had no theatrical sets or props beyond a giant inflatable pig; it was just the music, which made the crowd’s rowdiness feel even more jarring. During “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” Waters started screaming “Get your filthy hands off my sound!” into the mic — a moment that directly predicted The Wall.

Band interactions on that tour were famously sour. Roger Waters was already separating himself from the group, staying in different hotels and refusing to travel with the others. The breaking point came in Montreal on July 6, when a fan near the front kept shouting and climbing the barrier. Waters, fed up, leaned down and spat in his face. That single act of disgust became the seed for The Wall — the idea of building a barrier between performer and audience. The tour also saw Waters and Gilmour barely