Comfortably Numb

During the 1980/81 The Wall tour, where a giant wall was constructed across the stage during the performance, the song was performed with Roger Waters dressed as a doctor at the bottom of the wall, and David Gilmour singing and playing guitar from the top of the wall on a raised platform with spotlights shining from behind him. It was the first time the audience's attention was drawn to the top of the completed wall. According to Gilmour, the final solo was one of the few opportunities during those concerts that he was free to improvise completely. Gilmour said:

It was a fantastic moment, I can tell, to be standing up on there, and Roger's just finished singing his thing, and I'm standing there, waiting. I'm in pitch darkness and no one knows I'm there yet. And Roger's down and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big back spots and everything go on and the audience, they're all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there's all this light up there and they all sort of—their heads all lift up and there's this thing up there and the sound's coming out and everything. Every night there's this sort of "[gasp!]" from about 15,000 people. And that's quite something, let me tell you.[13]

After Waters had left the band, Gilmour also revised the verses to his preferred grungier approach during live performances. The verse vocals were arranged for three-part harmonies. In both 1987–88 and 1994, the verses were sung by Richard Wright, Guy Pratt and Jon Carin.

In December 1988, a video of the live performance from Delicate Sound of Thunder reached number 11 on MTV's Top 20 Video Countdown. The video was two minutes shorter than the album version and the video clip had different camera angles from the home video version.

Pink Floyd performed the song at Knebworth Park on 30 June 1990, published on Knebworth: The Album (cd) and on Live At Knebworth 1990 (DVD).

A 10-minute version of "Comfortably Numb" was performed at Earls Court, London on 20 October 1994, as part of The Division Bell tour. The Pulse video release edited out approximately 1:20 minutes of the ending solo, whereas the original pay-per-view video showed the unedited version.

Pink Floyd, complete with Waters, reunited briefly to perform at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London in July 2005. The set consisted of four songs, of which "Comfortably Numb" was the last.[14]

After leaving Pink Floyd, Waters first performed "Comfortably Numb" at the 1990 concert staging of The Wall – Live in Berlin on 21 July 1990. The event's purpose was to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Waters sang lead, Van Morrison sang Gilmour's vocal parts backed by Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band, with guitar solo by Rick Di Fonzo and Snowy White, and backup by the Rundfunk Orchestra & Choir. This version was used in the Academy Award-winning 2006 film The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese. It is also heard in the TV show episode of The Sopranos, titled "Kennedy and Heidi", when Christopher Moltisanti plays The Departed soundtrack on his car stereo before a serious accident. Van Morrison's 2007 compilation album, Van Morrison at the Movies – Soundtrack Hits includes this version.

Waters subsequently performed the song at the "Guitar Legends" festival in Spain in 1991 (with guest vocals by Bruce Hornsby), and at the Walden Woods benefit concert in Los Angeles in 1992 with guest vocals by Don Henley.

During 1999–2000, Doyle Bramhall II and Snowy White stood in for Gilmour's vocals and guitar solos; a role carried out by Chester Kamen and White in 2002. In 2006–2007 Gilmour's vocals were performed by Jon Carin and Andy Fairweather-Low with Dave Kilminster and White performing the guitar solos.

During Waters' The Wall Live tour, Robbie Wyckoff sang Gilmour's vocals, and Dave Kilminster performed the guitar solos, both of them atop the wall, as Gilmour had been in the original tour. During the performance of 12 May 2011 at the London O2 Arena, David Gilmour appeared as a guest during this song, and both sang the choruses and played guitar from the top of the wall, echoing the original Earls Court performances.[15] The song contains one of the show's most memorable moments, when, at a specific point of the final guitar solo, Waters steps toward the wall and pounds it with his fists, triggering both an explosion of colours on the previously dark-grey screen projections and a collapsing wall.

Waters performed the song with Eddie Vedder singing Gilmour's vocals at 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief.

Gilmour has performed the song during each of his solo tours. In his 1984 tour to promote his album About Face, the set list referred to the song as "Come on Big Bum". The vocals during the verses were performed by band members Gregg Dechert and Mickey Feat.

In 2001 and 2002, the verse vocals were performed on different dates by guest singers: Robert Wyatt, Kate Bush, Durga McBroom, and Bob Geldof, who had played Pink in the film version of The Wall. Geldof, who had not memorized the verses, read the lyrics as he sang.

On 29 May 2006, at the Royal Albert Hall, David Bowie, in a guest appearance, sang the verses. The next day, 30 May, Richard Wright sang the verses, by himself, at the same venue. Both performances were immortalised on Gilmour's Remember That Night concert video, compiled from all three of his shows there on 28, 29 and 30 May 2006, which were part of his "On an Island" Tour to promote his new album of the same name.

In 2006, Gilmour performed the song in a concert, with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra providing the orchestral parts that had usually been done with backing tapes or multiple synthesizers. This version would be released on Live in Gdańsk.

On the 2016 Rattle That Lock tour, the verses were sung by band member Chuck Leavell. This version can be seen and heard on Live at Pompeii.

During a performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 April 2016, Gilmour and his band incorporated the final refrain of the Prince song "Purple Rain" into the song as a tribute to the artist, who had died three days earlier.[16]