Roger Waters says his “disaffected” feeling towards touring formed the base for Pink Floyd‘s The Wall tour.
The veteran songwriter and bassist believes the tour was a way for him to counter how “fed up” he felt about being on the road. Waters, speaking to Jim Ladd during a radio special on The Wall ahead of its anniversary back in 2010, confirmed the stadium gigs were an annoying aspect of Pink Floyd’s popularity that he countered by creating The Wall. Waters explained to Ladd that the “alienation” he felt when performing shows of this size directly fed into not only how the band were writing music at the time, but also how the shows came together. He said: “The reason that I designed this show in the first place all those years ago was because I had become somewhat disaffected by doing gigs in football stadiums in front of large numbers of people who I felt were not really engaged in the same thing that I was engaged in.
“And for one reason or another, whether it was to do with them or me I’ll never know, but I did become disaffected from it all. And that’s why around that time I thought of building a wall to express the feelings of alienation that I felt from the audience.
“So the guys that go to stadium gigs, and I’m sure that they exist, and they go because it’s the thing to do and they stagger around and break bottles and they shout and scream, that’s sort of the mindless element that you get in any large group of people, who are annoying to all of us.”
Waters had been open about his negative experiences with crowds pre-The Wall in several interviews. An incident at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal in 1977 was a sign of the anger bubbling over, with the bassist confirming he spat at a fan during the show.
He said: “Montreal 1977, Olympic Stadium, 80,000 people, the last gig of the 1977 tour, I, personally, became so upset during the show that I spat at some guy in the front row.
“He was shouting and screaming and having a wonderful time and they were pushing against the barrier and what he wanted was a good riot, and what I wanted was to do a good rock and roll show and I got so upset in the end that I spat at him, which is a very nasty thing to do to anybody. Anyway, the idea is that these kinds of fascist feelings develop from isolation.”
The incident would ultimately influence the writing of In the Flesh, another song featured on The Wall. Waters noted: “This is him having a go at the audience, all the minorities in the audience. So the obnoxiousness of In the Flesh and it is meant to be obnoxious, this is the end result of that much isolation and decay.”
