Released by Pink Floyd on June 23, 1980, “Comfortably Numb” was the U.K.-platinum third single from The Wall, Roger Waters‘ double-album rock opera about growing alienation between a singer and his audience. Decades later, it became the last song ever performed by the group’s classic-era lineup.
On these things, all are in agreement. Everything else? Not so much. David Gilmour once said the song was constructed with “my music, his words,” while Waters said Gilmour only “gave me a chord sequence.” Waters even argues over how Gilmour completed his iconic closing solo.
“‘Comfortably Numb’ started off as a demo of Dave’s,” The Wall co-producer Bob Ezrin told Guitar World. “At first, Roger had not planned to include any of Dave’s material, but we had things that needed filling in. I fought for this song and insisted that Roger work on it. My recollection is that he did so grudgingly. He came back with this spoken-word verse and a lyric in the chorus that to me still stands out as one of the greatest ever written.”
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Many have taken Waters’ narrative to be about drugs, but “Comfortably Numb” instead connected an onstage experience with this frightening memory from childhood. His doctor misdiagnosed a stomach ailment and gave Waters something for the pain just before a 1977 concert in Philadelphia. “He said it was a muscular relaxant, but it rendered me almost insensible,” Waters told Mojo. Suddenly, a childhood memory returned: “I remember having the flu or something, an infection with a temperature of 105 and being delirious.”
At the end of the concert, however, Pink Floyd fans were apparently unaware of his diminished state. They clamored for an encore anyway. The disconnect he felt contributed to a larger sense of isolation surrounding Pink Floyd’s distance-creating jump to arena-sized shows. “Comfortably Numb” became a linchpin song in a larger concept about a figurative wall being erected between a performer and his audience.
Drummer Nick Mason slips into the song like a thief. “The opening verse of ‘Comfortably Numb’ has a very, very sparse drum part,” he told NME. “There are lots of beats missing from it. That’s one of the great things about it: It doesn’t immediately start up a pattern that continues throughout the whole piece.”
Waters sings the doctor’s lines while Gilmour responds as Pink, the main character in the LP and subsequent film. “I gave Roger the bits of music. He wrote some words,” Gilmour told Guitar World. “He came in and said, ‘I want to sing this line here. Can we extend this by so many bars so I can do that?’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll put something in there.”
“Comfortably Numb” would become one of three songs on The Wall with a co-writing credit for Gilmour, along with “Young Lust” and “Run Like Hell.” But how much he contributed to “Comfortably Numb” is a point of contention for Waters. “I think in the choruses he actually hummed a bit of the melody, but in the verses he certainly didn’t,” Waters countered with Guitar World. “That’s never been a problem for me. I think it’s a great chord sequence.”
Listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’
Two Pink Floyd Takes Lead to an Argument
Pink Floyd emerged with two early studio versions, one stripped down (which Gilmour preferred) and another bolstered by a surging orchestra (which Waters preferred). Their compromise was to marry the two takes. “That’s all we could do without somebody ‘winning’ and somebody ‘losing,'” Waters told Musician magazine. “And of course, who ‘lost,’ if you like, was the band – because it was clear at that point that we didn’t feel the same way about music.”
Ezrin said he served as mediator while the argument unfolded, but he had his own ideas, too. “I fought for the introduction of the orchestra on that record,” he said in a separate Guitar World interview. “This became a big issue on ‘Comfortably Numb,’ which Dave saw as a more bare-bones track. Roger sided with me. So, the song became a true collaboration: It’s David’s music, Roger’s lyric and my orchestral chart.”
Gilmour had a specific sound in mind as he entered the session, according to The Wall‘s other co-producer James Guthrie. “As most guitarists know, David uses a lot of finger vibrato as well as the whammy bar, often at the same time,” Guthrie told the Swedish monthly MM. “On the first solo of ‘Comfortably Numb,’ he was exaggerating the effect quite dramatically. I asked if he thought it was too much and he replied, ‘No, I want it to sound drunk!’ And there it was.”
He then played a celestial blues to bring the song home. “It was so powerful when I heard it and saw him play it. It literally brought tears to my eyes – and it has many times since then,” Ezrin told Total Guitar, adding that it “may be the best solo of all time.”
Watch Pink Floyd’s Final Performance of ‘Comfortably Numb’
Was the Final ‘Comfortably Numb’ Solo a First Take?
On the short tour that followed, an actual 35-foot wall was erected between Pink Floyd and the audience. Waters sang the initial portion of “Comfortably Numb” in a spotlight below after the structure was assembled, while a hydraulic lift raised Gilmour from behind the wall. He was suddenly spotlighted for the answering verses and solos.
“It was a fantastic moment,” Gilmour told Source magazine. “To be standing up on there, and Roger’s just finished singing his thing, and I’m standing there, waiting. I’m in pitch darkness and no one knows I’m there yet. … Every night, there’s this sort of [gasp] from about 15,000 people – and that’s quite something, let me tell you.”
One legend that grew up around Gilmour’s titanic closing solo, since repeated by Ezrin, was that Gilmour nailed the studio version on the first try. Despite “scores of takes” that followed, the solo “never got better,” Ezrin told Total Guitar. “It was always that first moment of inspiration that produced the magic.”
The only problem? Waters calls that a false memory. “Ezrin has lied through his fucking teeth about it for years and years,” Waters argued in a 2023 fan Q&A. “Bob Ezrin was not in the studio when Dave did that. Guthrie was there – and David did umpteen takes, and then he went away and James Guthrie edited the best bits of all the takes and stuck it all together.”
Guthrie apparently confirmed that the Gilmour’s turn on guitar was constructed from several takes. “For the majority of the solos, it was just David, myself and [sound engineer] Phil Taylor in the room,” he told MM. “We would make numerous passes, then Dave would take a break and I would combine a solo from all the different performances. He would come back, have a listen and either we would move on to the next piece, or he would have me make one or two changes and then we’d move on.”
Moving on, unfortunately, would only get harder. “Things like ‘Comfortably Numb,'” Gilmour told Guitar World, “are really the last embers of Roger and my ability to work collaboratively together.” They’d only make one more Pink Floyd LP together. By the time Waters issued a solo re-recording of “Comfortably Numb” for 2022’s The Lockdown Sessions, the guitar solo had vanished.
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