Comfortably Numb

 

"Comfortably Numb" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on their eleventh studio album, The Wall (1979). It was released as a single in 1980, with "Hey You" as the B-side.

The music was composed by the guitarist, David Gilmour, while the lyrics were written by the bassist, Roger Waters, who based them on his experience of being injected with tranquilisers before a performance in 1977. Waters and Gilmour argued during the recording, with Waters preferring an orchestral arrangement and Gilmour preferring a more stripped-down arrangement. They compromised by combining both versions. Gilmour said the song was the last time he and Waters were able to work together constructively.

"Comfortably Numb" is one of Pink Floyd's most popular songs, notable for its two guitar solos. In 2021, it was ranked number 179 on Rolling Stone's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 2005, it became the last song ever performed by Waters, Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason together. An early version was included on the 2012 Wall "Immersion Box Set". The song was covered by Scissor Sisters with a radically different arrangement, which was a UK top ten hit in 2004.

Composition

The Wall is a concept album about an embittered and alienated rock star named Pink. In "Comfortably Numb", Pink is medicated by a doctor so he can perform for a show. The verses are in B minor, while the chorus has been described as using a modal interchange of that key's relative major, D major, and D Mixolydian.

Writing

"Comfortably Numb" originated in a wordless demo recorded by the guitarist, David Gilmour, while he was working on his debut solo album in 1978. He did not use the composition for that album, but kept it for future work. Gilmour originally wrote the verses in the key of E minor, which Waters changed to B minor. Gilmour also added bars for the “I have become comfortably numb" line. Waters' lyrics were inspired by his experience of being injected with tranquilizers for stomach cramps before a performance in 1977 during Pink Floyd's In the Flesh Tour. He said, "That was the longest two hours of my life, trying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm." The song's working title was "The Doctor". Producer Bob Ezrin looked at the completed lyrics and said they "just gave me goosebumps".

Recording

For the chorus, Gilmour and the session player Lee Ritenour used a pair of acoustic guitars strung similarly to Nashville tuning, but with the low E string replaced with a high E string, two octaves higher than standard tuning. The same tuning was used for the arpeggios in another song from The Wall, "Hey You". To write the two guitar solos, Gilmour pieced together elements from several other solos he had been working on, marking his preferred segments for the final take. He used a Big Muff distortion and delay effects on the solos.

The strings were recorded in New York by Ezrin and the American composer Michael Kamen. According to Waters, though he and Ezrin were satisfied with the recording, Gilmour found it "sloppy" and spent a week rerecording it. Waters described Gilmour's version as "just awful ... stilted and stiff, and it lost all the passion and life the original had".The disagreement became acrimonious.

Eventually, the group compromised by using the orchestral elements for the main portion and using Gilmour's stripped-down mix for the final guitar solo. Waters said: "That's all we could do without somebody 'winning' and somebody 'losing.' 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 later said he was happy with the final mix as it provided a good contrast. Gilmour said "Comfortably Numb" represented "the last embers" of his ability to work collaboratively with Waters.

Live performances

Pink Floyd

During the Wall Tour, where a giant wall was constructed across the stage during the performance, the song was performed with Waters dressed as a doctor at the bottom of the wall, and Gilmour singing and playing guitar from the top of the wall on a raised platform with spotlights shining from behind him. It was the first time the audience's attention was drawn to the top of the completed wall. According to Gilmour, the final solo was one of the few opportunities during those concerts that he was free to improvise completely. Gilmour said:

It was a fantastic moment, I can tell, 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. And Roger's down and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big back spots and everything go on and the audience, they're all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there's all this light up there and they all sort of-their heads all lift up and there's this thing up there and the sound's coming out and everything. Every night there's this sort of "[gasp!]" from about 15,000 people. And that's quite something, let me tell you.

After Waters left the band, Gilmour revised the verses to suit his "grungier" preference for live performances. Verse vocals were arranged for three-part harmony. In both the A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell tours, these were sung by Richard Wright, Guy Pratt and Jon Carin.

In December 1988, a video of the live performance from the A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour, released on the live album Delicate Sound of Thunder, reached number 11 on MTV's Top 20 Video Countdown. The video was two minutes shorter than the album version and the video clip had different camera angles from the home video version.

Pink Floyd performed the song at Knebworth Park on 30 June 1990, published on CD as Knebworth: The Album, and on video as Live At Knebworth 1990.

A 10-minute version of "Comfortably Numb" was performed at Earls Court, London on 20 October 1994, as part of The Division Bell Tour. The Pulse video release edited out approximately 1:20 minutes of the ending solo, whereas the original pay-per-view video showed the unedited version.

Pink Floyd, complete with Waters, reunited briefly to perform at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London in July 2005. The set consisted of four songs, of which "Comfortably Numb" was the last.

Roger Waters

After leaving Pink Floyd, Waters first performed "Comfortably Numb" at the 1990 concert staging of The Wall – Live in Berlin on 21 July 1990. The event's purpose was to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Waters sang lead, Van Morrison sang Gilmour's vocal parts backed by Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band, with guitar solo by Rick Di Fonzo and Snowy White, and backup by the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir. This version was used in the Academy Award-winning 2006 film The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese. Van Morrison's 2007 compilation album, Van Morrison at the Movies – Soundtrack Hits includes this version.

Waters subsequently performed the song at the Guitar Legends festival in Spain in 1991 with White on guitar solos, Waters playing acoustic guitar during the second solo and guest vocals by Bruce Hornsby, and later at the Walden Woods benefit concert in Los Angeles in 1992 with guest vocals by Don Henley.

During his In the Flesh concert series, Doyle Bramhall II and Snowy White stood in for Gilmour's vocals and guitar solos; a role carried out by Chester Kamen and White in 2002 with Andy Fairweather Low on bass while Waters played acoustic guitar in unison with Jon Carin with Andy Fairweather Low on bass; whose role was carried out by Harry Waters in 2002. In his show The Dark Side of the Moon Live, Gilmour's vocals were performed by Jon Carin and Andy Fairweather-Low (while both playing acoustic guitar and Waters playing bass) with Dave Kilminster and White performing the guitar solos.

During Waters' The Wall Live, Robbie Wyckoff sang Gilmour's vocals, and Dave Kilminster performed the guitar solos with G E Smith on bass, both of them atop the wall, as Gilmour had been in the original tour. During the performance of 12 May 2011 at the London O2 Arena, David Gilmour appeared as a guest during this song, and both sang the choruses and played guitar from the top of the wall, echoing the original performances from The Wall Tour. The song contains one of the show's most memorable moments, when, at a specific point of the final guitar solo, Waters steps toward the wall and pounds it with his fists, triggering both an explosion of colours on the previously dark-grey screen projections and a collapsing wall.

Waters performed the song with Eddie Vedder singing Gilmour's vocals at 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief.

During Mexico City and Desert Trip shows, Waters performed with the same band setup as The Wall Live.[citation needed] During the Us + Them Tour, Gilmour's vocals were performed by Jonathan Wilson with guitar solos by Kilminster and bass by Gus Seyffert.[citation needed] On This Is Not a Drill, Waters performed a new version of the song as an introduction to the concerts.

David Gilmour

Gilmour has performed the song during each of his solo tours. In About Face, his 1984 tour to promote his album of the same name, the set list referred to the song as "Come on Big Bum". The vocals during the verses were performed by band members Gregg Dechert and Mickey Feat (in harmony).

In 2001 and 2002, the verse vocals were performed on different dates by guest singers: Robert Wyatt, Kate Bush, Durga McBroom, and Bob Geldof, who had played Pink in the film version of The Wall. Geldof, who had not memorized the verses, read the lyrics as he sang.

On 29 May 2006, at the Royal Albert Hall, David Bowie, in a guest appearance, sang the verses, in which was his final live performance in the United Kingdom. The next day, 30 May, Richard Wright sang the verses, by himself (as per the rest of the tour), at the same venue. Both performances were included on Gilmour's Remember That Night concert video, compiled from all three of his shows there on 29, 30 and 31 May 2006, which were part of his On an Island concert series, to promote his album of the same name.

In 2006, Gilmour performed the song in a concert, with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra providing the orchestral parts that had usually been done with backing tapes or multiple synthesizers. This version would be released on Live in Gdańsk.

On the 2016 Rattle That Lock Tour, the verses were sung by Jon Carin (on legs 1-3), Chuck Leavell (on leg 4) (this version can be seen and heard on Live at Pompeii) and Bryan Chambers (leg 5). They were also performed by Benedict Cumberbatch on 28 September 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall.

During a performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 April 2016, Gilmour and his band incorporated the final refrain of the Prince song "Purple Rain" into the song as a tribute to Prince, who had died three days earlier.

Reception

Cash Box said that "Gilmour's guitar cries out eloquently." Billboard said that "it displays the supergroup's lyrical strengths and passion for colorful, textured melody". Record World said that "dreamy vocals float over a sea of thick synthesizer textures and solo guitar waves".

In 2011, the song was ranked fifth in the BBC Radio 4's listeners' Desert Island Discs choices. Gilmour's solo was rated the fourth best guitar solo of all time by Guitar World, in a reader poll. In August 2006, it was voted the greatest guitar solo of all time in a poll by listeners of the radio station Planet Rock.[30] Gilmour's guitar tone in the song was named best guitar sound by Guitarist in November 2010. The two guitar solos were ranked as the greatest guitar solos of all time by Planet Rock listeners. In 2017, Billboard and Paste both ranked the song number four on their lists of the greatest Pink Floyd songs.

Lyric

Comfortably Numb

Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?

Come on
Now
I hear you're feeling down
I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again

Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move
But I can't hear what you're saying

When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like
Two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain
You would not understand
This is not how I am

I... Have become comfortably numb

O.K.
Just a little pinrick
There'll be no more aaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick

Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working
Good
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on
It's time to go

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move
But I can't hear what you're saying

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I... Have become comfortably numb