(Credits: Far Out / Anton Corbjin)
Mon 29 December 2025 18:45, UK
Many Pink Floyd fans would quite passionately claim that ‘Comfortably Numb’ is the greatest rock song ever written.
Poignant lyrics of personal isolation are layered over the top of a melody built on luscious rock orchestration, before descending into a quite mesmerising solo from David Gilmour. It’s anthemic in all the best ways and has set somewhat of a benchmark for music after it. Be it in rock, pop or even electronic music, musicians have taken that formula of tension build and release and taken it into new realms.
While it is rightly credited as a Pink Floyd song, many attribute its brilliance to David Gilmour. For how iconic that solo is, he is often heralded as the de facto beholder of this now iconic tune and is often the name on everybody’s lips when asked to name an influence. But while his style in the Floyd was largely forward-thinking, the influences he calls his own were rooted in tradition.
“I think the same sources are there that have always been there at the heart of everything I do,” he explained when asked about the root of his virtuosity style. He continued, “I don’t spend much time now listening to new music in that obsessive way that I did then, and there are precious few moments nowadays that leap on me and knock me over like those early records did.”
He elaborated on what those precious records exactly were, proving that most of the greats who dominated the 1970s all came back to one simple sound: blues. Gilmour explained, “Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was the first single that I bought, and Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ was a major thing as well, and still every time I listen to it, I think, ‘How did they put something as perfect as that together?’”
Both songs represent a key grounding point for Gilmour. They are absolutely packed with a simple but profound sense of emotion, and so remind Gilmour, Pink Floyd or any of their ‘70s contemporaries that wherever their sonic experimentation takes them, the pursuit of emotion can’t be left behind if they are seeking musical greatness.
Gilmour’s understanding of that can be heard in ‘Comfortably Numb’, and all of the Pink Floyd tracks that represent something more personal to him, namely ‘Wish You Were Here‘. So it comes as no surprise that the remaining support players of influence he mentioned are ones who have exhibited a similar skill.
He elaborated, “But there are a thousand other influences that have sort of gone together — folk music, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, John Fahey, Joni Mitchell — there are thousands of players and singers who have directly influenced the music that I make and who have sort of created the bedrock of what you might call my style.”
Concluding, “It’s so deeply embedded in me that I have no idea where it comes from now or where it’s gonna go. But the influences that I had as a child are still very deeply embedded in me.”
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