Former Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour don’t agree on much these days, but Body Count frontman Ice-T says he got the pair to agree on something thanks to his band’s cover of Floyd’s classic 1979 track Comfortably Numb – and even got Gilmour to play on the track.
Speaking in the brand new end-of-year issue of Classic Rock, the rapper revealed that he approached the two warring ex-colleagues’ camps to get approval Body Count’s version, which features new lyrics from Ice addressing the current state of the world.
“With the new album [2024’s Merciless], I thought why don’t we just do it,” he tells Classic Rock. “My lyrics are saying we fucked up – if God is looking at us we ain’t looking good. We’ve got all this war and tension, and we just scroll through, change the channel. We’re comfortably numb until the pain comes to our front door.”
But changing the song’s lyrics meant the band needed to get permission from both Waters and Gilmour.
“I approached the publishing company, but they said that Floyd don’t clear samples or accept remakes,” explains Ice. “We were defeated. Then our manager got hold of David’s manager, who got it to David, and he loved it. But we had to talk to Roger Waters – and I didn’t know about the situation with Roger and David. We were fucked again. But Roger asked: “Who’s singing it?” “Ice-T.” “Approved!
“The next thing was that David asked to be on it – and be in the video! He gave us more than we could imagine, and it’s got a thumbs up from the listeners. To connect with a little band called Body Count says a lot about David Gilmour, more than the music. God bless him.”
Read the full interview with Ice-T in the new issue of Classic Rock, on sale now. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.
