A guitar riff from legendary instrumentalist David Gilmour is constantly improvised, the Pink Floyd member says.
The song in question, Comfortably Numb, is featured on The Wall. While it may be one of the band’s best-remembered songs (in part because of its guitar solo), Gilmour says he never bothered to fully learn the instrumental section. Even now, the guitarist will perform the guitar solo differently each time. Speaking to Rick Beato, Gilmour confirmed he had never learned that particular Pink Floyd guitar solo. Instead, he opts to find a new route through the song, preferring the improvised sound he can give the song on stage. Gilmour has performed the track 192 times as part of his solo tours, and it seems the song has a slightly different instrumental style each time.
Gilmour would say the reason for his lack of instrumental preparation with Comfortably Numb is nothing more than wanting to excite himself in the moment. He said: “I’m not thinking about the audience and what they want, to be honest. I just like it starting the way it starts, and the rest of it sort of so ingrained in me that the various parts of it are going to find their way into what I’m doing.”
“But I’ve never learned it. Yeah, I’ve never learned that guitar solo.” Gilmour would go a step further and say he’s not sure whether the song is more or less popular because of his guitar part. The former Pink Floyd member, who was frontman of the group following Roger Waters’ departure in 1985, suggested he isn’t sure which version people would rather here.
He explained: “I mean, there are a lot of guys who can play that. But I don’t play it. To me, it’s just different every time. I mean, why would I want to do it the same? Would it be more popular with the people listening if I did it exactly like the record?
“Or do they prefer that I just wander off into whatever feels like the right thing at the time? I don’t know. I suspect they like they prefer it to be real, and to be happening, you know? There are cues within it, which I use to tell the band, ‘We’re going to end’, or, ‘We’re going to do this.’ And so, they crop up as being the same every time, pretty much.”
Gilmour would explain the recording process for Comfortably Numb also, with the guitarist wanting specific “gaps” in the song throughout rather than bass drum or instrumental fill. He said the reason for this was solely to have the gap there, saying it was “his thign” at the time of recording.
He said: “But there were things. On Comfortably Numb, there’s a place where there’s a bass drum missing. I said, ‘Can you just not play that bass drum? I want that gap.’ And that was my thing. I wanted that gap. Little things like that.”
