Roger Waters has spoken about the fierce dispute within Pink Floyd over an early demo of "Comfortably Numb", one of the band's most celebrated songs, revealing that he considered David Gilmour's reworked version of the track "awful" and refused to let it go on the album. The clash illustrates the tension between Waters and Gilmour during the making of The Wall, a period when Waters exerted tight control over the band's direction and was rarely willing to compromise on his creative vision.

Waters explained that Gilmour spent a week re-recording the track, but when he and producer Bob Ezrin listened to the new version, they found it "stilted" and "stiff", feeling it had lost the passion of the original. Although the finished song kept the intro from Gilmour's version, Waters' preferred slower build-up largely won out, while a later live rendition on Pulse leaned closer to Gilmour's original slower approach. The episode reflects a broader creative divide between the pair, with Waters prioritising lyrical storytelling and Gilmour focused on the music itself.