The Two Solos in 'Comfortably Numb' and the Volume Fight That Almost Killed One of Them

David Gilmour recorded two separate solos for “Comfortably Numb” during the The Wall sessions—a quieter, more melodic one for the middle section and a soaring, emotional one for the outro. The middle solo was played on a Gold Strat through a Leslie rotating speaker, giving it a haunting, slow-rotating wobble. The outro solo, recorded a day later in a different studio, went through a fuzz box and a Yamaha RA-200 rotating cabinet, producing that screaming, saturated sustain that feels like it’s climbing out of the song.

Between takes, Gilmour and Roger Waters had a real argument about the volume of the guitar. Waters wanted it lower, buried in the mix—part of his whole “the guitar shouldn’t be louder than the vocals” philosophy. Gilmour wanted it to cut through, especially the outro. They actually left the studio and kept arguing in the hallway. Bob Ezrin, the producer, eventually made the call to keep Gilmour’s preferred levels. That outro climb—where the solo gets louder and more intense as the song fades—exists because Gilmour won that fight. It’s now widely considered one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded.