Published on Saturday 28 April 2012 09:26

ROCK memorabilia collected by a former Sunderland club promoter is set to go under the hammer.

Music man Geoff Docherty has decided to hand over four decades of memories to Bonham’s auctioneers in London.

Docherty cut his showbiz teeth handling rock royalty such as Pink Floyd, The Who, Led Zeppelin and Tyrannosaurus Rex in the 1960s and 70s.

The promoter put Sunderland on the musical map with packed-out gigs at The Bay Hotel and the Locarno, which this week was demolished to make way for a Tesco superstore.

Now Geoff, who still lives in Sunderland city centre, has decided it’s time for a clear out of the vast collection of musical history he picked up while booking the biggest names in the business.

Among the treasured hoard are tickets for the premiere of Led Zeppelin’s film The Song Remains the Same, autographs from The Who when they played Sunderland in 1969 and personal mementos including an invitation to the wedding of Radio One legend John Peel.

The stash also includes contracts from his time as a promoter – including one when he paid £1,500 for the Small Faces to play the Locarno in 1973, a large amount of money at the time, but which earned the accolade of being John Peel’s favourite-ever gig.

But Geoff says he has never put a price on his collection.

“I honestly don’t know how much it will all be worth. I think the most valuable thing will be the Led Zeppelin tickets.

“Anybody who anybody from the rock businesses was there that night,” he said.

A music memorabilia specialist from Bonham’s is due to visit Geoff in the next few weeks.

•With demolition work well underway on the former Locarno, the Echo is hoping to hear from people who have special memories of the venue.

The popular night spot was renamed the Mayfair and then the Palace, before closing down for good in April 2003.

Contact jane.oneill@northeast-press.co.uk or phone 565 8557 and tell us your memories of the club.

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There are 6 comments to this article

What a great shame but I suppose it is time for the old girl to go I remember many a Friday night dance fighting to the likes of Sabbathcrimson and Zeppelin. My mate was a resident DJ.

I think its part of Sunderlands cultural heritage and that we should petition the museum to bid for the collection.

Good shout bob; the bands that played at the bowling alley aren’t “my generation” by a long chalk but I do own quite a bit of their music. The thing with music is that it always goes in cycles anyway so a bar similar to the hard rock cafe would be great for older and younger ‘general’ music fans; themed up with all of this genuine local memorbelia. Perhaps the old fire station? (close to the “old 29″)I have been told this was also a great place to see live music back in the day.

It’s a great pity that we haven’t a cafe|pub in Sunderland that could have used the poster, etc in the same way as the Hard Rock Cafe’s displays such things. I’m sure there would be many of my generation that would like a “Classic Rock Cafe” with a more relaxed atmosphere during the day and a livelier one at night. I remember years ago, about 2004, there was a special “Bay” night on at Sinatra’s. Talking to people back then there was a call for such a bar, with good beers, wines and music, both live and recorded. Ten years on, have we missed a golden opportunity or have actually we come full circle.

I’m sad as I mispent part of my youth in that Mecca ballroom watching the likes of Pink Floyd for a ticket price often as much as 50p

The article is wrong in one respect it was the Faces ( with Rod Stewart on vocals ) and not the Small faces who had by that time broken up .Steve Marriot going off to form Humble pie and Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan went on as the Faces .
That gig was a high as it came after Sunderlands victory overArsenal to qualify for the 1973 FA Cup final .
I wasnt there that night . . . . I cant stand Rod Stewart

Shame the collection couldn’t have been displayed locally before being sold. I bet there is some cracking stuff in there!

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Uh-oh! Jake Shears seems to be getting his excuses in early for Scissor Sisters’ fourth studio album when he says, “we made it really fast. It was a collaborative effort. It style-hops all over the place unabashedly”.

When Scissor Sisters arrived with their debut album and cute name they were
welcomed as a breath of stale air. You know, that distinctive sweaty socks
smell that cracked amyl poppers provide.

Appropriating Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb was the masterstroke that cemented
their position as the hot new fun act of the post-rave generation. Their
album became the biggest-selling album of 2004.

Today, Lady Gaga has demonstrated how to take club consciousness and edgy
performance art to the stadium stage. Successfully navigating the
conflicting demands of stardom, she’s established herself as a pop icon.

Perhaps having too good a time hampered Scissor Sisters.

Calvin Harris supplies the standard production know-how and
120-beats-per-minute groove for the single Only The Horses which sounds like
an average Calvin Harris release with guest vocals by Jake Shears.

endure

For the brave souls who endure the listless electro plod of Irresistible
(their Bee Gees homage) and Year of Living Dangerously (“still haven’t
found what’s going to set me free…”) — craving a blast of the sassy
Sisters of old — it’s only when they hit Let’s Have A Kiki, which, word has
it, celebrates female genitalia, that things begin to go w-h-o-o-s-h in a
good way.

Shady Love is endearingly dumb and blithely un-selfconscious. Unlike the disco
nights San Luis Obispo, which ranks as third-division Madonna. Self Control
carries positive echoes of old skool, deep house and Darryl Pandy. With
their Fraggle Rock movie soundtrack due, Scissor Sisters define the
difficulties of remaining hip while striving for cross-over success.

At least they’re still trying.

HHHII

- Eamon Carr

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Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. show today at the State Theatre, 1307 J St., Modesto. Tickets are $20 children and students, $36 for seniors and $38 general.

For more, call (209) 527-4697 or see www.thestate.org.

Grandaddy reuniting for Outside Lands Festival

Indie rock favorite Grandaddy, formed in Modesto 20 years ago, is back and touring again. The group, which broke up in 2006, is performing San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival from Aug. 10-12 in Golden Gate Park. The band then will play several dates in Europe in August and September. Led by Jason Lytle, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist, the band achieved international success, releasing four studio albums, including 1997′s acclaimed “Under the Western Freeway” and 2000′s “Sophtware Slump.” Lytle now lives in Montana. For more information, visit www.grandaddymusic.com.

Wayne Brady added to Gallo Center lineup

Funnyman Wayne Brady is the latest artist to be added to this season’s talent bill at the Gallo Center for the Arts. Brady, host of the popular former television series “Who’s Line Is It, Anyway?” and an Emmy Award-winning improvisational comedian, will appear June 30 at the Gallo Center.

Tickets for the 8 p.m. Brady show start at $39. The Gallo Center is at 1000 I St., Modesto. Call (209) 338-2100 for more information.

Ex-Turlocker to appear on ’20/20′

An 18-year-old singer who grew up in the Turlock area and attended Pitman High School will be featured Saturday on “20/20″ episode “Sunset Boulevard — the American Dream.” The show airs from 9 to 11 p.m. on ABC.

Kacey Baughan, who also goes by the name Kacey Roe, will talk about her experiences performing at Hollywood High, where she transferred during her sophomore year. She broke both arms during an accident backstage when she was playing Mimi in a school musical production of “Rent,” but still finished the show.

Baughan is one of several people featured in the show, which centers on people chasing their dreams on Sunset Boulevard. Others in the program include a gossip columnist, a new band trying to gain fame, a young war veteran turned actor and a runaway who became a murder victim.

Baughan’s mother, Michelle, said “20/20″ producers approached Kacey in March 2011 and have been following her for a year. Baughan is now studying music at Santa Monica College and trying to make a career as a singer.

Her grandparents Paul and Wy Toupin still live in Turlock.

Video-chat month with filmmakers

April is “Ask a Filmmaker Month” at the State Theatre in Modesto. Audience members can participate in Skype chats with filmmakers on opening night of two films:

April 20 , 7 p.m. — “Losing Control,” a quirky romantic comedy about a female scientist. Introduction of screening and QA afterward with Valerie Weiss, who loosely based the film on her experiences working on her doctorate at Harvard Medical School. Weiss was interviewed about the movie on National Public Radio’s “Science Friday.”

April 27, 7 p.m. — “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” about the world’s only sushi bar to earn a 3-star Michelin rating. Thousands around the globe make reservations months in advance for the 10-seat eatery located in a Tokyo subway station. Introduction of screening and QA afterward with director David Gelb.

Tickets to the shows are $10 each; (209) 527-4697 or www.thestate.org.

Twain Harte hosts dogs on parade

All dogs are invited to march in the “Who Let The Dogs Out” parade April 28 in Twain Harte. Dog registration is at11:30 a.m. in front of Cal Fire, 22978 Meadow Drive; the parade begins at noon on Joaquin Gully Road. Registration is $5, with proceeds benefitting the Humane Society of Tuolumne County.

Last year, 100 dogs participated. This year’s grand marshal is Wally, a yellow Labrador adopted from the society. Also making an appearance will be Cruella de Vil from “101 Dalmatians.”

There will be contests for the best-dressed dogs over and under 50 pounds and a competition for human howling. There will be dog obedience demonstrations, a petting area, hot dogs and dog balloon animals.

The event is sponsored by the Twain Harte Business Association and Soroptimist International of Twain Harte. Call Shirley Vierth at(209) 352-6267.

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Early Tom Petty homesteaders at the New Orleans Jazz Fest‘s Acura Stage on Saturday heard musical references from the New Orleans pop band Empress Hotel that reside in a lot of CD collections of a certain vintage. Talking Heads (slinky rhythms, full-throated singing), Prince (an engineered-noise guitar solo) and even Pink Floyd (a dreamy organ under lyric-less background vocals) all checked in during the set.

The Times-PicayuneEmpress Hotel opens the Acura Stage on Saturday at New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Then checked out, as the band fused a unique, agreeable, contemporary ensemble sound atop driving beats. If tempos sometimes didn’t immediately lock down, chalk it up to the massive venue, adrenaline, nerves.

Related: Lead vocalist Micah Mckee twice announced that this was the group’s first Jazz Fest show.

You never would’ve otherwise known.

For this set, the band’s core of brothers Ryan and Eric Rogers, (guitar and drums, respectively), Jack Clark (keyboards) and Mckee, were augmented by Jonny Campos (bass), Leo Dejesus (percussion and keys) and Julie Odell (vocals).

Song endings and song-to-song transitions were tight, tricky unison vocals were well-executed, the band’s compositions were challenging, unpredictable, a cool soundtrack for a Jazz Fest eye-opener.

As the set ended, McKee said, “We’ll see you around.”

Sounded right to me. 

A Park the Van Records act that hadn’t played a venue larger than a local club before, Empress Hotel proved totally Acura-worthy.

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A new video has been released to summarize the 2012 Women of Aviation Worldwide Week. Pink Floyd Music Publishers Limited gave their official permission to use “Learning to Fly” as the video’s soundtrack. Keen aviatrix Annette Lynton Mason (wife of Pink Floyd’s drummer) can be seen in the video, as she was one the pilots participating to the week’s activities.

 

Originally launched in 2010 by Mireille Goyer, (International Team Leader for Women Of Aviation Worldwide, www.womenofaviationweek.org), the annual worldwide celebration aims to address the lack of progress in aviation when it comes to diversity.  Knowing that the centennial of Harriet Quimby’s flight across the English Channel was fast approaching in 2012, Goyer took steps to arrange a never done before event in Europe.

 

The event named “Across the Channel: Women Unifying Nations” took place simultaneously at two airports, England’s Headcorn Aerodrome and France’s Le Touquet Paris-Plage Airport, located in separate countries and time zones. Pilots from seven countries took part and introduced girls and women to flying over the English Channel as a salute to Harriet Quimby. On the same day, pilots from all over North America introduced over 1,000 girls and women to flying.

 

Last week, a video was released highlighting the week’s events. Pink Floyd’s song “Learning to Fly” from the album Division Bell seemed more than appropriate and was used as the soundtrack.

 

Both Nick and Annette Mason’s have strong ties to aviation. When asked about learning to fly small aircraft during an ITV interview prior to her flight across the English Channel, Annette Lynton Mason said: “I absolutely fell in love; it’s best thing I have ever done.” In fact, she can actually be seen flying the Mason’s helicopter, which boasts a unique looking custom cloud paint theme, in the video.

 

“Learning to Fly is such a beautiful song and so appropriate for our outreach effort that aims to encourage girls and women to take a look and take a chance. The video shows a rarely seen face of aviation,” said Goyer.

 

The video can be viewed below or on Youtube here: http://youtu.be/OJE-3ngbYGc

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Apr 26, 2012; New York, NY, USA; Michael Floyd (Notre Dame) is introduced as the number thirteen overall pick to the Arizona Cardinals in the 2012 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-US PRESSWIRE

The Arizona Cardinals have found their newest addition to the birds nest, WR Michael Floyd was selected as the 13th pick overall in the 2012 NFL Draft this evening.  The Cards vetted Floyd heavily and was the best player on the board when it came time for the Cardinals to make their selection.  Since January, I had been saying Floyd would make the most sense.  They didn’t disappoint me one bit.  Now Larry Fitzgerald has someone to mentor and the Cards have their slotted number two receiver.  Let’s hope he ends up playing like one.  I have little doubt.

Floyd, who had his off the field issues, was genuinely excited to have the Cards pick him with their first round selection.  He said he was excited when he saw the area code 602 show up on his phone, meaning the Cards were coming calling.  It is certainly a great thing to hear that.

Floyd is a receiver who isn’t the fastest in the world, but has great leaping ability, had drop issues at times, but clearly overcame those to land in the upper half of this years draft.

Congrats to the Cardinals too for not reaching for an offensive lineman, although they probably could have been safe with a couple of guys.  However, based on the drop the offensive lineman, looks as if it was a wise choice to pass on guys like Reily Reiff from Iowa and David DeCastro from Stanford.

Tags: 2012 NFL Draft, arizona cardinals, David DeCastro, featured, Iowa, larry fitzgerald, Michael Floyd, notre dame, popular, Reily Reiff, Stanford

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Pink Floyd

The Wall (Capitol)

The Wall is Pink Floyd’s greatest contradiction. The 1979 double album signifies both the band’s most ambitious accomplishment – a tyrannical, two-act spectacle of profound proportions – and its most personal, detailing the English quartet’s fatal estrangement from its audience and each other. The latter feat serves as a focal point for this seven-disc Immersion box. With two discs dedicated to demos in various stages of completion, this Wall offers a brick-by-brick analysis of the doomed masterpiece in scrapped selections – frantic psych-funk sample “Backs to the Wall” and juvenile piano ballad “Teacher, Teacher”; guitarist David Gilmour’s skeletal stab at “Run Like Hell.” While legally regarded as bassist Roger Waters’ masterpiece, the sheer volume of demos reiterates the full band’s impact on the material, most notably in the way Gilmour’s wordless blueprint for “Comfortably Numb” lays the foundation for Waters’ medicated prototype “The Doctor.” Much like the complimentary deluxe reissues of The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, the rest of the set is mostly filler (coasters, marbles, commemorative cards, and photocopies of Mark Fisher’s sketches for the concert production), dominated by remastered editions of both the original 2-CD set and the previously released Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall: Live 1980-81. Storm Thorgerson’s original LP designs have been usurped by the satirical surrealism of animator Gerald Scarfe. “I really wanted to get away from standard Disney animation and try to draw things in a more realistic way to have more impact,” notes the former in a vintage 18-minute interview included in the otherwise forgettable DVD. The real prize here is Waters’ demo excerpts, 22 recordings chopped into a dizzying 14-minute medley of delusional grandeur. The bassist sounds not like a jaded rock star, but like an outsider folk artist – sheltered and off-kilter – finding escape in lo-fi pop oddities full of echo, warm synths, and cross-faded effects. He mimics explosions (“Hey You”) and drums (“Bring the Boys Back Home”), while “Empty Spaces” and “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2″ are cast in ghostly dementia. It’s a shame that only this fleeting glimpse is allowed into Waters’ work, the singer-composer still relishing “perfect isolation” as he notes in the 50-minute DVD documentary cold comfort provided by the wall.
(Roger Waters tears down The Wall at the Frank Erwin Center Thursday, May 3.)

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Published on Saturday 28 April 2012 13:30

CLASSIC 70s rock music will echo around Clumber Park in Worksop this summer as big names from the golden age of guitar rock take to the stage.

Rockin The Park on 17th August will see a unique line-up headed by popular tribute band Brit Floyd.

Hawkwind, Focus, Carl Palmer Band, Curved Air and The Strawbs will also perform, promising a rocking day for everyone involved.

YOUR Gainsborough Standard has teamed up with organisers UK Events to offer TWO lucky readers the chance to be there.

“Brit Floyd are the premiere Pink Floyd tribute in the UK and having performed to over 50,000 UK fans in the during 2011,” said organiser Neil Butkeratis.

“We are delighted they will be headlining Rockin the Park and performing their brand new show A Foot In The Door which includes all of Pink Floyd’s best work.”

Floyd fans will also be in for an extra treat as everyone who buys a ticket will get a free two-hour live performance DVD by Brit Floyd.

UK Events hope that Rockin the Park will become an annual event and a firm favourite of rock fans everywhere.

Hawkwind are true professionals, with over 40 years in the business. They are widely acknowledged as having created a new genre of music – space rock – which lead to their massive hit single Silver Machine.

The band have been a firm favourite with festival goers for many years.

Carl Palmer is one third of former rock super-group Emmerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP) and is highly regarded as a drummer’s drummer.

Recently he joined forces with bassist Simon Fitzpatrick and guitarist Paul Bielatowicz to form the progressive Carl Palmer Band.

They play a combination of new material and fresh renditions of ELP classic tracks.

Focus are a Dutch rock band founded by classically trained organist/flautist Thijs van Leer in 1969, and most famous for the instrumental pieces Hocus Pocus and Sylvia.

In 1971, they released Focus II (aka Moving Waves), which brought international acclaim and a hit on both sides of the Atlantic with the radio edit of Hocus Pocus.

Curved Air are a pioneering British progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classic, folk, and electronic sound.

Considered one of the most dramatically accomplished of all the bands to come out of late-60s prog-rock explosion, Curved Air released eight studio albums and had a hit single with Back Street Luv which reached number four in the UK.

Known mainly for their 1973 UK number two hit, Part of the Union, The Strawbs have been performing for nearly 40 years and still have two original members in the band.

Looking forward to their 40th anniversary in 2013, UK Events is pleased to announce The Strawbs will open the inaugural Rockin the Park.

Tickets and information are available on our website at www.ukeventsandproduction.com or by calling 01909 512534.

To be in with a chance of winning a pair of tickets to Rockin the Park, simply answer this question:

Q) What is the name of Brit Floyd’s new show?

Send your answer, along with a daytime contact number, to Rockin Competition, Gainsborough Standard, 5-7 Market Place, Gainsborough, DN21 2BP.

Or email competitions@gainsboroughstandard.co.uk

Entry closes Wednesday 23rd May 2012. Normal Gainsborough Standard competition rules apply.

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Released March 1 1971, English Progressive Rock band Pink Floyd have pushed the boundaries of music to uncharted waters. Just passing the album’s 40 year anniversary, the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon lives on interestingly enough in much of today’s youth and modern culture. The way that the band ties the concept and the music together in unison makes for a mesmerizing hypnotic effect that sends the listener into a whirlpool of emotions. Never before has a band been able to send such a clear message to the listener depicting the reality of life as we know it. Darkside asks the questions that we all face, and documents the lifecycle of the human being from life till death. The clarity of the lyrics is striking, but at the same time vague enough for the listener to come to his own interpretations and tie it to his own life. In this week’s feature of Music Landscape, I will be reviewing one of progressive rock’s finest masterpieces, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

The album starts off with the pulse of a human heartbeat. This is important because it is symbolic of birth. Just as you are welcomed into this life from the mother’s womb, Pink Floyd begins the album in much the same way. As the heartbeat continues, it becomes synchronized to the ticking of a clock. This could symbolize the man/machine connection right from the start, as we combine the natural elements of birth to the ticking of a man made clock. We find our self taken back to our own birth, bonded to the mechanical ticking of man. This is the time that keeps the world going, the time that we live our lives by, and the time that gives us order. But also, this is the time that binds us from the very beginning as we must adapt at a very young age to mankind’s sense of time. The opening track continues as voices begin crossing over the heartbeat/clock patterns as well as the opening “ching” of the cash register. Pink Floyd is introducing appetizers spread throughout the album of what’s to come using excerpts from various other songs in their intro Speak to Me.

The intro bleeds into the 1st track entitled Breathe which is packed with many deep lyrics compacted into a short segment. David Gilmour’s voice seems to echo through time and space causing a hypnotic effect upon the listener. As if a teacher informing a student about what to expect in life, and how to handle all these new sensations that he is experiencing. “Breathe breathe in the air, don’t be afraid to care” he says. “For long you live and high you fly,

and smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry, and all your touch and all you see, is all your life will ever be.” He’s right, our lives appear to be nothing but sensory perception. This sends a message to the listener that is both chilling, and maybe even artificial, but is he right? The song ends with an interesting comparison to that of rabbits in the fields, continuously digging holes from sun up to sun down only to dig a new hole and continue right where we left off. This describes the element of the working world that we live in, where we perform the same tedious task over and over and over again like a machine, void of any personal value.

The writers now give the listener a chance to dwell on the previously mentioned ideas as synthesizers propel us through some sort of psychedelic trance. In the track entitled On the Run, Voices over the intercom are heard in conjunction with the introduction of footsteps. The tempo has picked up now as we listen to a man running through an airport trying to catch his flight. “Here for today, gone tomorrow” is a line thrown in during this musical venture that captures the essence of future lyrical content. The heartbeat now comes back into play as we begin to hear the plane taking off and an explosion. Our imaginary man is still running back and worth as the listener is greeted by a series of pacing footsteps through the airport terminal partially unaware that his plane has already left him. The silence is eventually halted as a ticking clock is greeted with a thunderous boom of alarms from various clocks almost as if we had just been awakened by a dream. However this dream is all too real, and as observers and listeners we experience this frantic race against time every day in our waking lives, just as our frantic man racing through the airport does.

The song Time puts us back into our youth initially, and as a young man myself, I can understand this period of life quite well since I am living in it now. Wasting our time with nothing to do, “kicking around on a piece of ground” longing for a purpose or a guide. But time quickly gets away from us, and begins to elude our grasp in the coming of old age. We as humans end up wanting that time back, because in our youth we had no grasp of its value. Time has seemed to have eluded us, and though the sun continues on its cycle, and the moon and the stars rise and fall, we look in the mirror and are greeted by our old age, a shadow of our former self. This thought is expressed in this well placed line, right after an energized guitar solo by Gilmour..”So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking, racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.” The music continues to sway the listener in a trance, almost having the ability to lift us off the ground.

By this time, female vocalist Clare Torry begins introducing a whole new element to our experience by adding the presence of a female backing vocalist. She is introduced in the latter half of Time before taking a more prominent role in The Great Gig in the Sky. Time ends with a well placed transition right back into a reprise of Breathe. A transition so smooth in fact, that we may have even forgotten that we are being reintroduced to previous material on the record. The reprise takes us…home. Home to a familiar place in our cozy chair, feet propped up to a roasting fire, as we are transported into a sense of security, slowly lulled into a state of relaxation set to the keys of pianist Richard Wright. It is then that we are again introduced to various snippets of lines separated through the music. As we sit in our chair, reflecting upon a past life, “And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I don’t mind. Why should I be frightened of dying?

There’s no reason for it, you’ve gotta go sometime.”

The piano is met by bass and drums, as Clare Torry again makes her presence felt through an elaborate display of vocal work. Her voice almost represents a state of panic, but is slowly drawn to a soothing murmur. The bass and drums drop and the listener is again graced by sweeping piano to that of a lullaby. The piano slowly fades and slows to an eventual haul and we are greeted with silence. The composition that had once lifted us off the ground has set us gently back into our seats. Side one is finished as the vinyl stops spinning and the needle lifts up. Our musically journey will continue next time as we explore side two. This concludes this week’s edition of Music Landscape.

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Columbia Records

Pink Floyd‘s David Gilmour and Roger Waters are almost as famous for their feuding as they are for their music — and although they were bandmates for nearly two decades, their personality conflicts precluded true collaboration for many of those years. One notable exception: the No. 9 song on our Top 100 Classic Rock Songs list, ‘Comfortably Numb.’

Originally released on 1979′s ‘The Wall,’ ‘Numb’ is one of only three songs on the album credited jointly to Gilmour and Waters — and it’s telling that the song had an infamously difficult birth, marked by a long-running, heated argument over how to record the verses.

Gilmour, who composed ‘Numb’ as an instrumental demo while working on his 1978 solo album, wanted the verses to have a harder sound, but he was eventually overruled by Waters, who drew his lyrical inspiration for the track from an experience he had after being shot up with painkillers prior to a Pink Floyd gig.

After Waters quit the band in the mid ’80s, Floyd went on to play ‘Numb’ the way Gilmour had always envisioned it, while Waters subjected the song to his own tinkering, employing an array of special guests (including Van Morrison, Bruce Hornsby, and Don Henley) at various live performances. But it could be said Gilmour had the last laugh, as his solo is generally considered one of the best of the rock era.

And all’s well that ends well: In 2005, when Waters, Gilmour, and their former Floyd bandmates Richard Wright and Nick Mason reunited for Live 8, they concluded their set with ‘Comfortably Numb’ — and with Wright’s untimely death in 2008, it became the final song ever to be performed by the quartet, adding a fitting, albeit terribly poignant, coda to its story.

Listen to ‘Comfortably Numb’ by Pink Floyd

Next: SONG NO. 8, BY Van Halen

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