Roger Waters, Van Morrison, & The Band Perform “Comfortably Numb”

It was all so surreal and fantastic when Roger Waters, together with a handful of famous stars, went to Berlin, Germany in 1990 and performed there; 9 months after the wall was torn down.

Among the featured artists were Joni Mitchell, Ute Lemper, Cyndi Lauper, Marianne Faithfull, Tim Curry, the Scorpions, Sinead O’Connor, The Band, and Van Morrison. And when the time has come for Waters, Morrison, and the Band to entertain, they picked the best and well-suited song to their liking: Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”

The concert was held between the Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate on July 21, 1990. It was both a celebration and a charity event, raising funds for the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, a byproduct of Lord Leonard Cheshire’s efforts. Lord Cheshire was a hero of Britain’s Royal Air Force during World War II.

While the other guests shone brightly on their individual performances, the true cream of the crop was when the former Pink Floyd member sang the classic while wearing a doctor’s lab coat and a stethoscope, which a propman gave to him in the midst of singing his verses. No, he wasn’t even comfortably facing the 200,000 people in attendance, and instead, chose to face the Styrofoam brick wall – in a very Roger Waters fashion.

When the chorus came, Van Morrison cut through David Gilmour’s lines, also feeling the good vibe the song provides. It was a breathtaking moment, a cathartic piece of performance that went down in music history, much like how the dividing wall went down in German history books.

Watch the performance below.