In the Flesh (Pink Floyd tour)

History

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.

This was the first tour since their 1973 tour that Pink Floyd didn't use female backing singers. The musicians that augmented the band for the tour were sax player Dick Parry (who occasionally played keyboards out of view of the audience) and guitarist Snowy White, who also played bass on "Sheep", "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" and "Welcome to the Machine" while Roger Waters played electric guitar on "Sheep" and "Pigs" and acoustic guitar on "Welcome to the Machine".

In the first half of the show, the band played all of the Animals album in a slightly different sequence to the album, starting with "Sheep" then "Pigs on the Wing (Part I)", "Dogs", "Pigs on the Wing (Part II)" 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) so recordings of the shows would be easy to distinguish from each other. The second half of the show comprised the Wish You Were Here album in its exact running order ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V)", "Welcome to the Machine", "Have a Cigar", "Wish You Were Here" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI–IX)"). This was the first time "Welcome to the Machine" and "Wish You Were Here" were played live, with the latter being played differently than the studio album. It featured an extended guitar solo, a reprise of the second verse and Richard Wright closing out the song with a piano solo. The encores were "Money" and often "Us and Them" from The Dark Side of the Moon. At the Oakland, California show on 9 May they played "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" as a second encore, the first time it had been played since 1974 and the last time it was ever performed. The final night of the tour on 6 July at Montreal's Olympic Stadium had a second encore of "Drift Away 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. 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.

The Montreal show, 6 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. Earlier 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.

Although the Animals album had not been as commercially successful as the previous two, the band managed to sell out arenas and stadiums in America and Europe, setting scale and attendance records. In Chicago, the band played to an estimated audience of 95,000; in Cleveland and Montreal, they set attendance records for those venues by playing to over 80,000 people.

Tour band

Additional musicians:

Set list

A typical 1977 set list would include the following:
Set I – Animals:

1. "Sheep"
2. "Pigs on the Wing (Part I)"
3. "Dogs"
4. "Pigs on the Wing (Part II)"
5. "Pigs (Three Different Ones)"

Set II – Wish You Were Here:

1. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V)"
2. "Welcome to the Machine"
3. "Have a Cigar"
4. "Wish You Were Here"
5. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI–IX)"

Encore 1:

1. "Money"
2. "Us and Them" (added to February)

Encore 2:

1. "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" (performed once in 9 May 1977 Oakland, California)
2. "Drift Away Blues" (with Snowy White) (blues improvisation performed once in 6 July 1977 Montreal, Quebec in response to an aggressive audience)