David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Comfortably Numb” Live (2006)

David Bowie and David Gilmour singing “Com­fort­ably Numb” togeth­er? Yes, thank you. Filmed at the Roy­al Albert Hall, the clip above shows the two per­form­ing at the end of Gilmour’s 2006 Euro­pean solo tour in sup­port of his solo album On an Island. Dur­ing two oth­er nights in the same venue, Gilmour was joined by David Cros­by, Gra­ham Nash, and Robert Wyatt, and the footage saw release as a DVD titled Remem­ber That Night: “It goes with­out say­ing,” writes All­mu­sic of the disc, “that it is stun­ning, both visu­al­ly and aural­ly; how could any Pink Floyd-relat­ed project fail to be? […] but it is Gilmour’s show, and no star can out­shine him.” Maybe, but Bowie’s pret­ty riv­et­ing singing what may be the most spell­bind­ing of Gilmour and Roger Waters’ col­lab­o­ra­tions on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Gilmour played sev­er­al Floyd clas­sics dur­ing the Roy­al Albert Hall stint. Gilmour and band play Pink Floyd’s “Breathe,” “Time,” and “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” in addi­tion to songs from On an Island, “a most­ly laid-back, utter­ly ele­gant Eng­lish record,” writes Thom Jurek. Laid-back and ele­gant might also describe the stage show—its star and his guests some­what less ani­mat­ed than in their heyday—but Gilmour’s solos soar, and the light show, true to form, is a dra­mat­ic com­ple­ment to an equal­ly dra­mat­ic set in which clas­sic Floyd seems to mix seam­less­ly with the first col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal songs Gilmour had released in 22 years.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.


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