How Roger Waters and David Gilmour Created 'Comfortably Numb' Without Really Talking

“Comfortably Numb” is probably the most famous example of Waters and Gilmour working in complete isolation from each other. Gilmour had been noodling on a chord progression at home—he recorded a demo with just acoustic guitar and a simple string arrangement. Waters, meanwhile, was writing lyrics about a childhood fever dream that later morphed into the “doctor injecting me” scene from The Wall. They didn’t sit in the same room to finish it. Waters wrote the vocal melody over Gilmour’s track, and when Gilmour heard it, he thought the vocal phrasing was off. Rather than argue, he just added his guitar solo in one improvised take at the end of the session.

The song was pieced together like two different songs fighting for the same space. Waters insisted on a certain drum feel; Gilmour wanted more space. The final arrangement came from producer Bob Ezrin, who basically acted as mediator. Gilmour’s solo—widely considered one of the greatest ever—was played on a Fender Stratocaster through a Big Muff fuzz pedal and a Yamaha rotating speaker, and he recorded