Pink Floyd's market strategy for the In the Flesh Tour was very aggressive, filling pages of The New York Times and Billboard magazine. To promote their four-night run at Madison Square Garden in New York City, there was a Pink Floyd parade on 6th Avenue featuring pigs and sheep.2
This was the first tour since their 1972 tour that Pink Floyd didn't use female backing singers. The musicians that augmented the band for the tour was sax player Dick Parry (occasionally playing keyboards too out of view of the audience) and guitarist Snowy White (who would also help out on bass guitar on some of the songs).
In the first half of the show, Pink Floyd played all of the Animals album in a slightly different sequence to the album starting with "Sheep" then "Pigs On the Wing (Part 1)", "Dogs", "Pigs On the Wing (Part 2) and "Pigs (Three Different Ones)". During "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", Waters would shout the number of the concert on the tour, such as "1-5!" for the fifteenth show. The second half of the show comprised the Wish You Were Here album in its exact running order ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)", "Welcome to the Machine", "Have a Cigar", "Wish You Were Here" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 6-9)"). The encores would usually consist of either "Money" or "Us and Them" from Dark Side of the Moon or both. At the Oakland, California show on 09 May they played "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" as a third encore; it was the last time it was ever performed live. The final night of the tour on 06 July at Montreal's Olympic Stadium had a third encore of "More Blues" which saw David Gilmour sit out the final encore as he was unhappy with the band's performance that night. Snowy White played a bluesy guitar solo with the rest of Pink Floyd in Gilmour's place.
During the tour Waters began to exhibit increasingly aggressive behaviour, and would often yell abusively at disruptive audiences who wouldn't stop yelling and screaming during the quieter numbers.2 In the New York shows they had to use local workers as lighting technicians due to union problems with their own crew. They had several difficulties with the workers; for example, Waters once had to beckon one of the spotlights to move higher when it only illuminated his lower legs and feet while he was singing. He eventually became exasperated, brought the whole band to a halt to remark "I think you New York lighting guys are a fucking load of shit!", and then continued the song.3
The Montreal show, 06 July 1977, the final performance of the tour, ended with Pink Floyd performing a blues jam as the roadies dismantled the instruments in front of the insatiable audience who refused to let the band leave the stadium. A small riot at the front of the stage followed the band's eventual exit. That night, Waters spat in the face of a disruptive fan; The Wall grew out of Waters' thoughts about this incident, particularly his growing awareness that stardom had alienated him from his audience.4 Three unofficial audience recordings are known to exist (one aptly named Who Was Trained Not To Spit On The Fan?, a pun referencing a lyric in the song Dogs, played that night, and the spitting incident); during "Pigs on the Wing (pt. 2)" Roger halts the performance to yell this at the rather rowdy crowd:3
Add comment
