“If he knew karate, he would have broken the table with how hard he hit it. He said, ‘That has to be on the album!’”: Can you imagine Pink Floyd’s The Wall without Comfortably Numb? Roger Waters once did

Among the many powerful moments in Pink Floyd’s history, their performance of Comfortably Numb during The Wall shows numbers among the most powerful. Since its release in 1979 it’s become the band’s signature track – but if Roger Waters had got his way, it wouldn’t even have appeared on the album, as Prog discussed in 2023.

Comfortably Numb was the subject of a series of battles as Pink Floyd struggled to make The Wall. Producer Bob Ezrin had suggested adding an orchestral sequence, an idea which Roger Waters liked but which David Gilmour hated.

On top of that, the pair of musicians had furiously disagreed on the format and content of the track. The version which was finally released was an amalgam of both artists’ visions, featuring not one but two stirring guitar solos from Gilmour.

But one thing they could agree on was its impact on stage, when Gilmour suddenly appeared at the top of the giant wall to take over the song. “It was a fantastic moment, to be standing up on there, and Roger’s just finished singing his thing,” he told Classic Rock.

“I’m in pitch darkness and no one knows I’m there yet. And Roger’s down there and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big backspots and everything go on. The audience are all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there’s all this light up there and their heads all lift up. Every night there’s this sort of gasp from 15,000 people. And that’s quite something.”

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Yet Comfortably Numb might never have been part of the show. Relationships within the band had been slowly, almost impenetrably deteriorating since The Dark Side Of The Moon. Never a band of brothers as such, as success meant they had to spend less time together, it was almost as if strangers were reconvening every time they gigged or recorded.

“There was terrible conflict,” says artist Ginger Gilmour, David’s wife from 1975 to 1990. “Roger and Carolyne, his new wife, would always be in a separate limo, separate hotel – always separate. She was building up his belief so that he could break out of the chains that he felt we had.

“We were in LA and they were working on finishing the album. They were talking about royalties, and we all met up at a Japanese restaurant. The day apparently had been really tough because Roger didn’t want Comfortably Numb on the album.

“David doesn’t show anger very often, but on that night, in the Japanese restaurant, if he knew karate, he would have broken the table with how hard he hit it. He said, ‘That fucking has to be on the album!’

“Well, for me, having gone through that summer where there was so much angst in the demos, and watching it evolve into something that we could watch, it represents the archetypal journey of us with chaos.”

She adds: “When Comfortably Numb comes, it’s the release, it’s a hope. He’s up there, the light totally shifts and you’re absolved of all the angst. If that wasn’t there, it would be a terrible album.”

Gilmour might have effectively won the battle over the song, but there was no way to win his war with Waters. “I think things like Comfortably Numb were the last embers of mine and Roger’s ability to work collaboratively together,” he said later.