Kicking off on January 23, 1977 at the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, the ”In The Flesh Tour” stands as one of the most important and, at the same time, most troubled chapters in the history of Pink Floyd. It was in fact the only tour on which the band performed “Animals“ in full, but it's remembered above all for the tensions that surfaced between Roger Waters, the rest of the band and an ever-growing audience. Those frictions would go on to spark the idea for “The Wall“.
After a European leg that wrapped up at the end of March, the tour resumed on April 22 at the Miami Baseball Stadium. On stage, alongside Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason, were also Dick Parry on saxophones and keyboards and Snowy White on guitar and bass. The setlist remained largely unchanged throughout the tour: the complete performance of “Animals” and “Wish You Were Here“, with encores adding classics such as “Money” or “Us And Them” from “The Dark Side Of The Moon“.

Behind the success of the shows, however, lay a growing unease. Waters felt increasing discomfort at the transformation of the concerts into mass events, and struggled to recognize himself in the relationship that had formed between the band and part of the audience. That discomfort reached its peak on July 6, 1977, during the final date of the tour at the Olympic Stadium in Montréal.
The evening proved troublesome in more ways than one. David Gilmour, unhappy with the performance, refused to take part in the closing encore, an improvised blues jam that went down in history as “Drift Away Blues”. Snowy White took over the solos in his place. But the episode destined to become legendary happened shortly before, during the performance of “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”.
Exasperated by the behaviour of some spectators in the front rows, Waters got into a heated exchange with a fan who was trying to climb onto the stage and ended up spitting on him. Years later, in an interview with Howard Stern, he explained the reason for the gesture in no uncertain terms: “Because he was climbing up the front of the fucking stage!”.

That moment had far-reaching consequences. Not only for the audience present that night, but above all for Waters himself, who would later identify that very episode as the conceptual origin of “The Wall”. Recalling what happened in Montréal, the musician explained: “It was one of those moments when life changes, it made me think about what level of alienation I'd reached. Suddenly a light bulb went on in my head, 'Do a rock show with a wall built between the band and the audience, as a physical expression of the alienation that led me to spit on that guy'”.
That reflection was rooted in a discomfort that had been building for years. In a 1979 radio interview, shortly after the album's release, Waters recounted: “The idea for “The Wall” came out of 10 years of touring with rock shows. Particularly in the last few years, I'm thinking of '75 and '77, in the big stadiums, when we played in front of a very large audience, part of which was our old audience, who came to listen to what we wanted to play, but most of it was just there for the beer. As a result it became quite an alienating experience doing the shows (…) I became very aware of a wall between us and our audience”.

The other key figures involved also remember Montréal as one of the toughest nights in the band's history. In 1982 David Gilmour said: “I thought it was a real shame to end a six-month tour with a bad show”. Snowy White, interviewed in 2020 by Rolling Stone, confirmed the atmosphere that night: “For some reason there weren't good vibes. That was the show where I looked to my left and saw Roger spitting at someone in the crowd. I thought: 'What's he doing? That's not very…' I remember it”.
Almost forty years on from those events, Montréal has once again become intertwined with the story of “The Wall”. In 2017 Roger Waters teamed up with the Opéra de Montréal to create “Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera”, an operatic adaptation of the album developed together with composer Julien Bilodeau, executive director Pierre Dufour and director Dominic Champagne.
Waters was initially deeply skeptical. “I wrote them a very polite but very firm e-mail, in which I said that in my experience most collaborations between popular music in general, but rock'n'roll in particular, and symphony orchestras had turned into disasters, and I thought it was a terrible idea”. His mind changed after a meeting in New York: “I got a fantastic letter back from Pierre Dufour. And it was so eloquent in defending their idea that I decided to meet them”. After viewing the early operatic adaptations of “Comfortably Numb” and “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2”, the musician was finally won over: “We started talking and five hours later we were still there talking. After that meeting I said 'You know what? Fine, you've convinced me. Let's do it.'”

The opera confirmed the extraordinary vitality of a work born out of one of the most turbulent phases in Pink Floyd's career. Reflecting on the album's long-lasting fortune, Waters observed: “It's been moving people since 1979. It struck the right chords, and I think it's really great that Dominique and Julian have picked up that kind of baton and carried it into a different genre in the world of opera. And that's very flattering”.
What was meant to be the celebratory tour for “Animals” thus turned into the experience that permanently changed the outlook of its principal author. Out of the chaos and frustration of Montréal came the idea destined to become one of the most celebrated concept albums in the history of rock.

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29/05/2026