Crowd surfing

When a person is passed overhead

Crowd surfing at a Heideroosjes concert in Amsterdam, January 2019.

Crowd surfing is the process in which a person is passed overhead from person to person (often during a concert). The "crowd surfer" is passed above everyone's heads, with everyone's hands supporting the person's weight.

## Origins

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Crowdsurfer at Music Midtown festival, Atlanta, 1997

Iggy Pop leapt into the crowd at the 1970 Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival, an early example of crowd surfing.[1]

In early 1980 Peter Gabriel crowd surfed during performances of "Games Without Frontiers" by falling into his audience "crucifix style" and then being passed around.[2][3] The rear sleeve of his 1983 album Plays Live, recorded during Gabriel's 1982 tour, features a photograph of him crowd surfing.[4]

Said Gabriel:

> "Iggy Pop had jumped into an audience prior to me," Gabriel explained to Mark Blake, "but he hadn't done that thing of lying on the hands and being carried around by the audience. I had the idea from a game you did with a therapy group where you had to fall backwards and trust the person behind to catch you...At an open-air show in Chicago I was passed around and returned to the stage minus every piece of clothing except my underpants. There was an edge to doing it and part of you was praying you'd get back to the stage in one piece."[5]

The first official video release to depict Gabriel crowd surfing was POV, a concert video released in 1990 and produced by Martin Scorsese.[6] When Billy Joel crowdsurfed in a concert during his 1987 concert tour of the Soviet Union, bandmate Kevin Dukes described it as the "Peter Gabriel flop".[7]

Crowd surfing extended for the first time to the classical music scene, when in June 2014 at the Bristol Proms an audience-member was ejected by fellow audience members during a performance of Handel's Messiah after he took the director's invitation to "clap and whoop" to the music a step too far by attempting to crowd-surf.[8]

## See also

[edit]

* Headbanging
* Moshing
* Stage diving
* Trust fall

## References

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1. ^ Richard Metzger (2010-09-22). "RAW POWER: IGGY POP INVENTS STAGE DIVING IN 1970 AND SMEARS HIMSELF IN PEANUT BUTTER". dangerousminds.net. Retrieved 2013-10-10.
2. ^ Hugh Fielder (1980-03-08). "The Games People Play: Peter Gabriel and Random Hold". thegenesisarchive.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
3. ^ Lynn Hanna (1980-03-01). "Peter plays with politics and passion". thegenesisarchive.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-02-03.
4. ^ "Plays Live - Peter Gabriel | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
5. ^ Blake, Mark (December 2011). "Cash for questions: Peter Gabriel". Q. p. 44.
6. ^ Bill Clarke (2008-09-07). "Bill Clarke: First Recorded Instance Of Crowd Surfing?". Bilclarke.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
7. ^ Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust - The Bridge to Russia. Showtime. 2014-01-31. Archived from the original on 2014-02-01.
8. ^ "Audience ejects crowd-surfer from classical concert". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-02-27.

## External links

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Crowd surfing.

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