“Far too long”: The solo David Gilmour worried was self-indulgent
Imagine if mere shyness had cost the world one of the best guitar solos ever put to tape? They say that self-consciousness is the ultimate thief of art, as likely there are countless geniuses and virtuosos out there who are simply too shy to make their work public, and David Gilmour almost fell into their ranks.
It wasn’t so much that he was shy in the studio. Without a doubt, that’s his kingdom, especially when he first took the reins at the helm of Pink Floyd. It was his kingdom because, really, he’d saved it. After Syd Barrett fell deeper and deeper into addiction and became more and more unreliable, the band needed Gilmour to step in, first just as a guitarist, and then as someone to provide the vision.
Before then, it had all been crafted in Barrett’s shape and by his mind. Yet when that mind became too clouded, Gilmour was the one who pushed the group more into that prog-rock space, into something more epic and cinematic, encouraging them to go beyond being another psychedelic-tinged rock troupe and morph into something altogether more interesting.
It wasn’t just him, obviously. The other members played a part, especially the interplay and, admittedly, the tension between Gilmour and Roger Waters. But when looking at the crowning moments that lifted the band to higher and higher levels, Gilmour was the elevator.
However, one of those moments was almost canned as Gilmour’s shyness caught up with him when the band hit the stage. After happily writing and recording the epic guitar solo for ‘Comfortably Numb’ in the studio, standing as a central and special moment on The Wall, it was only when the group started playing it live that Gilmour almost axed it.
It wasn’t so much the original solo he almost axed, but a secondary one as the track becomes an extended jam live. “‘Comfortably Numb’ has the first guitar solo, which is played sort of almost note-for-note the same every night, then it has the end guitar solo where I start off with the first three or four licks, and then wander off wherever I feel like, as long as I feel like,” he explained.
It was a high point of their live set and is still one for Gilmour now, as he typically ends his show with a soaring encore of this track. But still, he could never quite shake the worry that it was all a bit too much.
“Probably far too long, sometimes, for some people, but nonetheless,” he said, with that self-consciousness all artists know well creeping in, as Gilmour clearly worries that the extended spotlight moment is a bit too self-indulgent for the sensitive creative spirit.
But it’s not. It never has been, as anyone who ever saw Pink Floyd, or has seen David Gilmour live, will attest to, as the slow, emotive song suddenly splinters. Those guitar solos are the goose-bump moments, taking this track about disassociation and numbness, and suddenly sparking the room to life.
