How David Gilmour and ‘Comfortably Numb’ defined ‘The Wall’
Pink Floyd has always been thought of as Roger Waters’ brainchild. Inspired by the whirlwind that comes with stardom, the album follows Pink and his struggles to make his way through the world of rock and roll excess. Waters may have been the brains behind the songs, but David Gilmour was the beating heart.
Towards the climax of the album, Gilmour turns in one of the best guitar solos of his career on ‘Comfortably Numb’. When discussing the moment he created the main guitar figure, Gilmour said: “I wrote the music that became that when I was doing my first solo album. I was just reaching the end of recording my album, and I couldn’t be bothered to work on this one song.”
While it might not have had a home with Gilmour, producer Bob Ezrin saw something in the song. As Gilmour recalled: “It was going spare, and Bob Ezrin got me to play it to the rest of the band along with what would become ‘Run Like Hell.'”
Gilmour’s guitar playing on ‘Comfortably Numb’ originated from his discovery of a high-tuned guitar. While working on his solo project, Gilmour said: “One of the producers working with me said he wanted to use a high-strung guitar. I had no idea what it meant. So I got an Ovation acoustic guitar and strung it with all unwound strings. I found that the higher the strings were, the better the song started sounding. I later found out that the traditional high-strung guitar is nothing like what I did. So it was my own creation for that song.”
Regardless of Waters’ involvement, every one of Gilmour’s songs added a new dimension to the album’s central theme. When you’re listening to something like ‘Another Brick In The Wall’, Gilmour’s guitar almost seems to be crying over the main changes of the song. When it comes to actually writing down his guitar solos though, Gilmour usually takes a different approach. For working out solos, Gilmour explained: “Sometimes I plug my guitar in and play and see what comes out on the very first take. Sometimes I sing over it and then try to play what I’ve been singing.”
From the sounds of The Wall, you can hear exactly what Gilmour is talking about. On every single guitar break, he almost approaches the solo like a singer trying to reach a high note, reaching further and further until he finally hits the right note. Of course, there was always a human element to Gilmour’s playing. When talking about his perspective on his music, Gilmour made a point to add the organic element into things: “People want to feel that other people have felt what they have felt,” he said. “Other people can describe it. It’s a way of being a part of a shared experience.”
In a song like ‘Mother’, the solo could be an emotional experience unto itself, having a clear beginning, middle, and end that sound like a child crying out for his mother.
Going into the next tour, at the time, Gilmour also remembered how The Wall became too big for a traditional rock band as well, saying: “You had to have teams of people who knew exactly what they were doing. When you’re in rehearsals, you have more of a part in that stuff, but when you’re out on the road, you need to not worry about that kind of stuff.”
Though Pink Floyd had created the ultimate rock opera, the touring cycle became almost like rock and roll theatre for Gilmour. He noted: “For the shows that we did, for me, it was pretty complicated, particularly for the first few shows. I had the whole show written out on a long piece of paper with all the notes that had to happen all the way through the night.”
