When Dark side Of The Moon came out everything changed for the Pink Floyd. They had gone from a relatively small band with a loyal following to a super group The Dark side Of The Moon has sold over 27 million copies and spent over 760 weeks on the American charts. Roger Waters has often said that it was at this point that Pink Floyd achieved everything they set out to and that they should have broken up in 1973. Now no longer would Pink Floyd's audience sit silent and at attention. By the end of 1974 the entire band was exhausted and shell shocked by their elevation to the status of super group. The success of the Dark side Of The Moon and the exhausting tour that followed ended with the breakup of Roger Waters marriage to Judy Trim and Nick Mason marriage to Lindy. The band in other words were in turmoil both professionally and personally. It wasn't till the summer of the following year that the band managed to come together again. Capital records and EMI were now putting pressure for the band to produce another concept album. The first week of 1975 the band started working on an album which would end up being titled Wish You Were Here.
The Wish You Were Here sessions were miserable as the band continued recording between legs of American tour dates. Originally the plan was to put 'Shine On' on one side of the album and 'Raving and drooling and 'You Got To Be Crazy' on the other side. For the albums concept Waters drew from Syd's experience and his own guilt over the way Syd was treated during 1968. Of course the famous story is Syd Showed up at the recordings of album. Dressed in a vinyl trenchcoat and toothbrush in his pocket. Syd sat in on the session obviously in another world. Syd did attend David Gilmour's wedding, chatting with a few colleagues barking "I've got a very large fridge and it has a lot of pork in it." Before disappearing. None of the band have seen him since. The next day the Floyd embarked on yet another tour.
The remainder of 1976 the Floyd stayed out of the spot light recovering from so many years of touring stadium gigs. When recording began for Animals there was no concept, just three sections of music. All, from bits and pieces over the last 5 years. The albums lack of focus and difficulties in recording left the band feeling they no longer had any reason to go on. It was the beginning of the end for the band. The album did end up proving to be a landmark in the Floyd's career, if only for the album cover. Animals transformed the Battersea Power station into one of the most recognized landmarks on Earth. The pig flying over the power station was a symbol of power and greed.
Despite the huge success's of Dark side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here the Animals tour of 1977 was the first time Pink Floyd played full blown stadium tour, often playing to more than 100,000 fans at a time. It was a disastrous time for the Floyd. Waters in particular was feeling more and more isolated. His fractured mental state giving way to feelings of hatred for his audience. Waters was having increasingly difficulty communicating with the fellow band members. It all came to a head one night in front of 90,000 screaming fans at Montreal's Olympic Stadium when Roger fought back at the crowd and ended up spitting at a fan. Waters was horrified buy his own behavior and began from that moment, backstage to conceive a physical barrier between himself and the audience. The barrier being called....
