{"id":291121,"date":"2025-11-30T08:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T08:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/291121\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T08:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T08:43:09","slug":"comfortably-numb-by-pink-floyd-the-story-behind-a-prog-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/291121\/","title":{"rendered":"Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd: the story behind a prog classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Waters was in agony. It was June 29, 1977, and Pink Floyd<\/a> were due to play the Philadelphia Spectrum as part of their tour in support of that year\u2019s Animals<\/a> album.<\/p>\n

The bassist and vocalist was suffering from such crippling stomach cramps that he faced a choice between cancelling that night\u2019s show or getting a tranquiliser shot that \u201cwould have killed a fucking elephant\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Waters played the show, despite the muscle relaxant rendering him unable to feel his hands or raise his arms. And from that anaesthetised sensation came the seed for Comfortably Numb, the cornerstone of 1979\u2019s epic concept album The Wall<\/a> and a moment of musical, if not personal, unity in the increasingly stormy Floyd camp.<\/p>\n

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The bassist was becoming increasingly dominant within the band and The Wall was emphatically his album, a hugely ambitious multi-layered concept piece that built on loss, anxiety and the alienating nature of fame. Waters\u2019 abrasive nature would ultimately lead to Floyd\u2019s first split a few years, but the band were still functioning as a collaborative unit during the wall \u2013 and never more so than on Comfortably Numb, which remains the perfect illustration of Waters and guitarist\/vocalist David Gilmour<\/a>\u2019s yin-yang personalities.<\/p>\n

Comfortably Numb itself began as a Waters tune titled The Doctor, which found the bassist rhyming \u2018listen\u2019 with \u2018physician\u2019,\u2018condition\u2019 and \u2018magician\u2019 like an uninspired O-Level student. The bassist was reluctant when Gilmour pitched a chord sequence left over from his first solo album.<\/p>\n

Producer Bob Ezrin persuaded him to not make the song so personal and to work with Gilmour instead. Waters would eventually accept the guitarist\u2019s contribution under duress, though he ensured he would claw back a degree of ownership by supplying lyrics and verse music for the song that would become Comfortably Numb.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Pink\n<\/p>\n

Pink Floyd\u2019s David Gilmour performing onstage in 1981 (Image credit: Pete Still\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

But still there were ructions, with Waters and Bob Ezrin favouring a version with lush orchestration by Michael Kamen, while Gilmour preferred a leaner, harder take.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

\u201cI fought for the introduction of the orchestra<\/a> on that record,\u201d recalled Ezrin. \u201cThis became a big issue on Comfortably Numb, which Dave saw as a more bare-bones track. Roger sided with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe argued over Comfortably Numb like mad,\u201d said Gilmour. \u201cReally had a big fight, went on for ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

After much heated debate, the two warring sides thrashed out a compromise, with Comfortably Numb ultimately featuring a little of both men\u2019s visions. \u201cOn the record,\u201d Waters told Absolute Radio, \u201cthe first verse is from the version [Gilmour] liked, and the second verse is from the version I liked. It was a negotiation and a compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n

\"Pink\n<\/p>\n

Pink Floyd performing onstage in 1981 (Image credit: Rob Verhorst\/Redferns))<\/p>\n

Thankfully there was no such debate over Gilmour\u2019s celebrated guitar playing. Comfortably Numb\u2019s drama escalated with each passing verse and required a similarly dramatic solo. The finished version of Comfortably Numb contained not one but two solos. The first is just an aperitif; the second is the vintage red brought out from the cellar for special occasions only.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe argued over Comfortably Numb like mad. Really had a big fight, went on for ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Gilmour<\/p>\n

\u201cI banged out five or six solos,\u201d said Gilmour. \u201cFrom there I just followed my usual procedure, which is to listen back to each solo and make a chart, noting which bits are good. Then, by following the chart I create one great composite solo by whipping one fader up, then another fader, jumping from phrase to phrase until everything flows together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result was arguably the best song Pink Floyd ever recorded. Waters and Gilmour split the vocals, each seemingly mirroring their real life personalities. The former, taking the verses, brimmed with menace and malevolence as the doctor administering a shot of bliss to calm an agitated Pink. The latter, taking the song\u2019s choruses, embodied a soul as it drifts away, his vocals at their most languid,. Those two celebrated guitar solos only deepened the dislocated, otherworldy nature of it.<\/p>\n

Placed at the end of Side 3 on the original vinyl album, Comfortably Numb is a pivot point on The Wall, the last moment of calm before its increasingly unhinged final act. It took on another life during the extravagant shows the band played in support of The Wall, where Comfortably Numb found Gilmour playing his solo from atop the giant wall that had been constructed during the gig. In the pre-Internet age, it held audiences in raptures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a fantastic moment, to be standing up on there, and Roger\u2019s just finished singing his thing,\u201d said Gilmour. \u201cI\u2019m in pitch darkness and no one knows I\u2019m there yet. And Roger\u2019s down there and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big back spots and everything go on, and the audience are all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there\u2019s all this light up there and their heads all lift up. Every night there\u2019s this sort of [gasp] from 15,000 people. And that\u2019s quite something.\u201d<\/p>\n

On record and in concert, Comfortably Numb was a moment of true transcendence \u2013 one that rendered the bickering between the men that made it irrelevant. But the song would ultimately be the nail in the coffin for Pink Floyd\u2019s most famous line-up. They followed up The Wall with 1983\u2019s dark The Final Cut, effectively a Waters solo album that just happened to feature the other members of Floyd. Waters left acrimoniously soon afterwards, instigating a bitter battle over the soul of Pink Floyd that would run for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think things like Comfortably Numb, were the last embers of mine and Roger\u2019s ability to work collaboratively together,\u201d Gilmour reflected.<\/p>\n

Yet it has also built bridges. It was notable as the final song performed by the reunited line-up at Live 8 in 2005, and in May 2011 Gilmour joined Waters during the latter\u2019s show at the 02 Arena in London to play Comfortably Numb from the top of a recreation of the original Wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cDave wanted to do this thing called the Hoping Foundation,\u201d said Waters of the latter. \u201cFinally, I\u2019d heard enough and I went: \u2018I tell you what. I\u2019m gonna be doing a few nights in the O2. You come and do Comfortably Numb one of those nights, and I\u2019ll do the bloody Hoping Foundation.\u2019 And I thought he\u2019d just go: \u2018Fuck off.\u2019 And he didn\u2019t. He went: \u2018All right.\u2019 So we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Waters was in agony. It was June 29, 1977, and Pink Floyd were due to play the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-291121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}