One of the most ‘Didn't have that one on my bingo card!’ moments in music this year came via Body Count's recruitment of David Gilmour himself for their re-imagining of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb.
More amazing still, Gilmour's participation came at his own behest, rather than that of Body Count.
Earlier this week, Body Count frontman, hip-hop icon, and cop procedural legend Ice-T dropped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to discuss the fascinating collab, and the hurdles involved in making it happen.
While there, they also tore through the song onstage, with Body Count guitar hero Ernie C nodding to Gilmour's singular tone, while imbuing some funky and industrial flair of his own.
Reflecting on how Body Count's Comfortably Numb re-working came to be, Ice-T told Fallon, “Rappers always listen to music for tracks they could rap over – breakbeats and things like that. I always liked the bassline to Comfortably Numb – I wanted to rap on it. Then I said, ‘Let's just do it with Body Count.’
“So I write the lyrics and we lay it out – I just [didn't] think about the politics. They go, ‘You have to send this to Pink Floyd to get it approved,’ and everybody said, ‘That's not gonna happen.’”
Indeed, upon sending the request to Pink Floyd's publishers, Body Count were told that the band allow neither samples nor reworkings of their songs. The case seemed to be closed, Ice-T said, until his manager got in touch with David Gilmour's manager.
“David heard the record and was blown away – just by the lyrics,” he said. Approval after that on Gilmour's end came quickly, but then came the matter of the song's co-writer, Roger Waters.
“Now, I don't know what's going on with [Gilmour and Waters' relationship],” Ice-T explained. Waters, however, upon learning that Ice-T was the one reinterpreting the song, gave his own approval.
“You've got two people on opposite sides who approved the song, which made me feel really good, because that means the song is honest and real.”
Not even that unanimous approval, though, prepared the band for what Gilmour said after word came of his approval.
“Gilmour says, ‘I want to play on it,’” Ice-T recalled. “So, he plays on it, then says, ‘What's up with the video?’”
Of the collaboration, Gilmour himself said, “The initial contact from Ice-T was for permission to use the song, but I thought I might offer to play on it as well. I like [Ice-T's] new lyrics, they're talking about the world we’re living in now, which is quite scary.
“Body Count's version of Comfortably Numb is quite radical, but the words really struck me. It astonishes me that a tune I wrote almost 50 years ago is back with this great new approach. They've made it relevant again.”
Though ferocious, we doubt Body Count's Tonight Show performance quite got the reaction of Knocked Loose's recent hell-raiser on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which one disapproving parent said made their son cry.
