Pink Floyd - 20) The Doctor (Working Title For Comfortably Numb)

Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979) stands as one of Pink Floyd’s greatest achievements, as well of one of the greatest achievements in rock music and live concert production. The album spawned a tour, a film, a book of the film (now quite collectible), and eventually an all-star revival concert in Berlin, and finally in 1999 a double live album. But before The Wall was a film, a concert, or even an album, The Wall was just an idea... an idea under construction. The Wall went through at least two “demo“ stages. The first was a crude recording of Roger Waters strumming his guitar and singing alone. Presented by Waters at the same time as another concept called The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Waters’ first demo - still uncirculated even today - was deemed unlistenable by the rest of the band, but they felt it had potential. The Hitchhiking demo was set aside, but The Wall demo was developed further. Many writing sessions later, Pink Floyd - probably with assistance from Bob Ezrin - recorded a second, more complete demo. The lyrics were not polished, and neither was the music. Thankfully, lyrics like “I am a physician/ who can handle your condition/ like a magician“ would be entirely discarded and rewritten before the songs were finally committed to tape in a studio, but the rough lyrics and the risky musical experiments which appeared in that second demo have finally made it to the public.