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.
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:
The first official video release to depict Gabriel crowd surfing was POV, a concert video released in 1990 and produced by Martin Scorsese.[5] 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".[6]
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.[7]
