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Credit: Far Out \/ Andr\u00e9s Ibarra<\/p>\n
Mon 21 September 2026 3:00, UK <\/p>\n
\u2018Comfortably Numb\u2019 by Pink Floyd<\/a> is a song that really highlights the beauty that two contrasting minds are capable of producing. <\/p>\n A lot of people think when they have a writing partner that partner should like the same things as them, but this isn\u2019t always the case. Sure, you need a commonality as far as style and genre is concerned, but you also need to be able to leap over creative hurdles, and that means approaching things differently from time to time. It\u2019s the differences in creatives that bring out their best work, not the similarities. <\/p>\n When Pink Floyd started working on \u2018Comfortably Numb\u2019, David Gilmour and Roger Waters had different ideas<\/a> about what the music should sound like. Gilmour wanted the song to be a lot more stripped back, while Waters wanted the song to be larger than life and deeply psychedelic. Bob Ezrin had the same opinion as Waters, and remembered the back and forth between band members during the recording process. <\/p>\n \u201cI fought for the introduction of the orchestra on that record,\u201d he said. \u201cThis became a big issue on \u2018Comfortably Numb\u2019, which Dave saw as a more bare-bones track. Roger sided with me.\u201d <\/p>\n What you hear on the end result of the track<\/a> is essentially the middle ground that both Gilmour and Waters agreed to meet on. In the first verse of the track, you get to hear Gilmour\u2019s much more subdued version. In the second verse, you get the experience of the much heavier and psychedelic version that both Ezrin and Waters wanted. The result is a song that we at Far Out dubbed the best Pink Floyd song ever written. <\/p>\n \u201cWe argued over \u2018Comfortably Numb\u2019 like mad,\u201d said Gilmour when discussing the track. <\/p>\n \u201cReally had a big fight, went on for ages.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a massive surprise that Waters fought for his version of the song given that the original idea of the track came from something quite personal to him, namely, being sick but having to push through it. The lyrics for the song originally came about because Waters was once very sick with stomach cramps, but was on tour with the band at the time and so needed to keep taking to the stage and performing at different stadiums around the world. Given that the show must go on, he wound up taking a lot of pain medication, so much that he felt numb as a result<\/a>. <\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n The gig that comes to Waters\u2019 mind when talking about how horrible he felt was in 1977 at the Philadelphia Spectrum, when he went on stage but barely felt like he was in the room because of how much medication he had. The show was pretty horrendous, but the end result is a track which is undoubtedly one of the very best that Pink Floyd ever put together. <\/p>\n \u201cThat was the longest two hours of my life,\u201d said Waters when reflecting on the show. \u201cTrying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm.\u201d He originally wanted to call the track \u2018The Doctor\u2019, but when he finished writing the song, the words \u2018Comfortably Numb\u2019 screamed out <\/a>to both him and the rest of the band.<\/p>\n
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