Later that night, he told the producer Bob Ezrin and a psychiatrist friend of Ezrin’s that he sometimes fantasized about building a wall between himself and the audience-an embodiment of how isolated he already felt, and a device by which he could protect what little of himself he thought he had left. Risky investments had put them under major financial pressure audiences seemed more interested in the party than the show band rapport had gotten so strained that Waters started referring to the rest of the members as “the muffins.”Īnd so, alone in a crowd of about 80,000 people, standing under the 40-foot-long inflatable pig that had become a central prop of the band’s set, Waters spit.
This was July 1977: The band was finishing out their lengthy In the Flesh tour to stadium-size crowds, working at scales unfamiliar and uncomfortable to everyone involved. You could say The Wall started taking shape the night Roger Waters leaned over the edge of the stage and spit in a fan’s face.
