I heard "Comfortably Numb" was originally going to be on Gilmour's first solo album but it ended up on "The Wall". How did that happen?

Quote:While most songs on The Wall were written by Waters alone, most of the music for "Comfortably Numb" was written by David Gilmour, who originally recorded it for his first solo album. Gilmour later decided not to use it for his album, and instead brought his demo of it to The Wall sessions.

The song is one of two tracks on The Wall which are completely freestanding and do not fade into or out of an adjacent track. (The other freestanding song is "Mother".) This is because on the original LP there was a break on the music as side three of the album finished.

According to Rolling Stone the lyrics came from Roger Waters' experience when he was injected with tranquillizers for hepatitis by a doctor prior to playing a Pink Floyd show in Philadelphia on the band's 1977 tour for the Animals album.[3][4] "That was the longest two hours of my life," Waters said. "Trying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm." The experience gave him the idea which became the lyrics to this song.

Waters and Gilmour disagreed about how to record the song as Gilmour preferred a more grungy approach to the verses. In the end, Waters' preferred opening to the song and Gilmour's final solo were used on the album. Gilmour would later say, "We argued over 'Comfortably Numb' like mad. Really had a big fight, went on for ages." [Rock Compact Disc magazine, September 1992]

From Wikipedia :-)

Actually, Dave only wrote the music to the chorus, and guitar solos. Roger had already written a song titled "The Doctor" which eventually became the verses to CN.

I believe "The Doctor" is lurking around on the internet somewhere and may be a part of A Treeful of Secrets.

Interesting, I had only heard it the other way and have never heard of "The Doctor", I don't see it on TFOS. Anyone know where to find this little gem?

Ive got it somewere... i emphisise on the somewere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqOottpxrdY.

The URL contained a malformed video ID.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqOottpxrdY i must have added a . to the end

pinkfloydfan1 Wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqOottpxrdY i must have added a . to the end

Though that is an amalgamation of at least 2 demos. Roger's original "Doctor" demo has none of Dave's stuff added to it, and there's also a demo out there of Dave's untitled demo which is him playing the chorus of CN and singing the melody (no lyrics), Roger wrote the lyrics to fit Dave's melody.

Thanks D and pff1! I've never heard that and it's always amazing where a song starts and ends up.