How the 1977 'In the Flesh' Tour Turned Roger Waters Against His Own Audience

On the surface, Pink Floyd’s 1977 “In the Flesh” tour was a commercial triumph—the band headlining massive stadiums for the first time, playing to crowds of 80,000 or more. But for Roger Waters, it was a nightmare. The impersonal scale of the venues, the constant roar of drunken fans, and the physical violence of people spitting at the stage pushed him into a dark place. At one show in Montreal, Waters actually spat back at a fan in the front row—a moment he later called the ugliest of his life.

That single incident became the seed for The Wall. Waters began to see the audience not as collaborators in a shared experience, but as an anonymous, hostile mob separated by a barrier. His frustration with the band itself also grew: he felt David Gilmour and Nick Mason were content to just play the hits, while he wanted to confront the alienation head-on. The tour ended with Waters so disillusioned that he literally drew a wall on a napkin in his hotel room, imagining a barrier between performer and crowd. It wasn’t just a concept—it was a scream that changed Pink Floyd forever.