Pink Floyd: The 1st Time Roger Waters Planned to Attack a Fan

Pink Floyd had to wait before they became a classic rock success story. They wrote the song that predicted their breakthrough on The Dark Side of the Moon, and then their world changed. That album catapulted them to fame and the trappings of it. Bassist Roger Waters almost attacked a fan in 1967, which came a decade before his confrontation with a concert-goer inspired Pink Floyd’s last great album.

Roger Waters considered attacking a Pink Floyd fan a decade before he assaulted a concert-goer

After parting ways with their creative leader, Syd Barrett, in 1968, Pink Floyd waded through several years of mixed results as a psychedelic band. When they shifted gears and headed in a more prog-rock direction in the early 1970s, it sparked the fire that burned brightly for most of the decade.  

The success and fame that came with The Dark Side of the Moon didn’t necessarily make life easier for Pink Floyd or their bass player. Years before The Notorious B.I.G. sang about “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” Waters lived it.

During the final show of Floyd’s 1977 tour promoting Animals, Waters attacked a fan by spitting on him. The fan in Montreal was yelling and trying to climb onto the stage during an acoustic song. Years of pent-up frustration came out of Waters via a glob of phlegm. The incident inspired the 1979 multi-platinum album The Wall.

That wasn’t the first time Waters considered attacking a fan. 

Pink Floyd’s music didn’t go over well in England’s more provincial towns. Even London’s outer suburbs weren’t welcoming. When a fan threw a coin and opened a gash in Waters’ forehead during a 1967 gig, he nearly had his first face-to-face confrontation with an audience member.

“I bled quite a lot. And I stood right in front of the stage to see if I could see him throw one. I was glowering in a real rage, and I was gonna leap out into the audience and get him. Happily, there was one freak who turned up who liked us, so the audience spent the whole evening beating the s*** out of him.”

Roger Waters

Fans in the balcony at another Floyd gig threw beer on the band. Not a good mix with electric instruments. So the coin-throwing fan sent Waters over the edge and nearly led to him attacking the offender. The album sales and notoriety changed 10 years later, but Waters lost none of his frustration with unappreciative fans.

Waters also attacked his Floyd bandmates later in the band’s career

Some close to Pink Floyd in the early days said Waters was one of the members pushing for Barrett’s ouster when his mental state threatened the band’s future (per the band biography book Saucerful of Secrets). The run of classic albums made after the lineup change (Barett out, guitarist David Gilmour in) suggests it was the necessary move.

Barrett might have gotten off easy. As Waters gained more creative control of the band, he never held back from his bandmates.

The bassist fired keyboard player Rick Wright during the making of The Wall. Drummer Nick Mason was barely out of the band when it made 1983’s The Final Cut. Gilmour didn’t earn a producer credit on The Final Cut even though he produced some tracks.

Waters left Pink Floyd soon after that album, thinking the band would break up without him. Gilmour, Mason, and Wright soldiered on instead, releasing two more studio albums (A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell) before Wright’s 2008 death.

Intra-band bickering was always there, but it deteriorated throughout the 1970s and drove the classic Pink Floyd apart in the 1980s. At least Waters never tried to physically attack or spit on his bandmates (that we know of).

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