A “compromise” between music legends Roger Waters and David Gilmour was reached on a Pink Floyd hit.
It seems to have changed the final version of the song massively, with Waters suggesting “both versions” were “great”, though only one was chosen. The song in question, Comfortably Numb, remains one of the band’s biggest-ever songs. Waters confirmed there was a “big rift” between he and Gilmour when recording The Wall hit, and the argument persisted for much of the recording. Neither musician relented and what happened next is the song was pulled into two completely different musical styles. Waters, speaking to Uncut Magazine in May 2007, confirmed the song was thrown back and forth until a “bargaining” arrangement was reached.
Waters said: “There was an argument. We cut the track, sent it to Michael Kamen in New York, who wrote and recorded the string charts. They sounded fantastic, almost the best thing that Michael ever did. I love it. Dave said he thought the track was sloppy, or something, and he wanted to recut the drums, the bass, this, that and the other.
“At this time I was working in Jacques Loussier’s studio doing vocals because we realised that we had to split the work up. Dave was still in Bear Studios, doing keyboard. He recut the basic rhythm of the piece and stuck it together and went, ‘There you go.’
“I listened to it and I hated it. It had suddenly become, for me, very wooden; just not moving at all. And that was the big argument. I went, ‘No, the way it was, was great. This is bad.’ He said, “No, the way it was, was terrible. This is great.’ So the song ended up with four bars of his and four bars of mine… the whole track is like that. It was a weird sort of bargaining thing between he and I.”
Waters would reflect that both versions were likely worth releasing, and that the two had made up a “battle” of differences for the two versions of Comfortably Numb. Waters added: “Yes, it became a battle. The final track is a compromise between two different views.
“Who’s to say whether – if we went back and listened to the two different versions – we could tell any difference. The final compromise is so good, I suspect both versions were great.”
Despite the song’s legacy, Gilmour once confirmed he had never actually learned the notes to the guitar solo, instead preferring to improvise the performance on stage. 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.”
