The Greatest Rock Song Of All Time: My Choice and Defense

[What follows is the culmination of a conversation that started here. Also, I notice quite a few internet searches for "analyzing [insert title of song discussed below]" leading people here. That is wonderful. However, I hope that readers intend on doing their own analysis, and do not intend to lift my words for use in some term paper.]

It is now time for me to finally get around to fulfilling a promise. Today I offer my selection for the best rock song of all time. In getting here I have led some of you astray by changing rules or criteria in the course of making our selections. I asked, in a rather unsteady way, what readers thought was their single favorite song, or the one they’d have – if they could only have one – while stranded on a deserted isle. And I also asked, thinking it was the same question, what song readers thought the best irrespective of whether it was a favorite. Lastly, I asked readers, if they felt so led, to defend their choices. What follows, then, is my defense.

Let me quickly name a few of your nominees: “Born To Run”, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Sweet Child Of Mine”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Wish You Were Here”, “We Just Disagree,” “Where The Streets Have No Name”, “God Save The Queen”, “Hey Jude”, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. Great tunes, all!

My choice, as I hinted, is not the sort of song one would dance to, nor is it a product of any American band. It is a deeply philosophical tune, full of sorrow, beauty, alienation; the loss of innocence, passion and even compassion. And yet it is rife with yearning, with pleading for grace, mercy, redemption, hope. In it there are two of rock’s greatest guitar solos; the second one has consistently won kudos, often listed as one of the top solos ever. In short, it is a song that lasts, that lingers.

FIRST: What Is This? 

What is rock-and-roll? Is it not more than mere music; isn’t it a lifestyle, a chosen attitude? Is it not about sex, love, even careless or just unrequited love, or even just casual love and the love of the casual? Is it not about drugs, about doing what feels good, about life in the moment (“Live For Today” by the Grass Roots comes to mind)? Is it not about protest, about liberation from moral and social constraints; about non-conformity, rebellion against "the man" or "the system"; of raging against the machine? Is it not a kick in the teeth of formality, of procedure and protocol and expectation? Is it not about alienation and estrangement; about nuclear and climatic annihilation; about the search for meaning – or the denial of it? Is it not about the death of God, about liberty self-defined; about doing one’s own thing free of guilt drummed into a soul by Church, state or even the public school? Is it not about being “Born To Be Wild”, about being “Born To Run”, about being like a free bird, like a rolling stone, like a kite, like an eagle flying high; like a Yellow Submarine on a Tuesday Afternoon winding down the road, our shadows taller than our souls; looking to the east, our spirits crying for leaving?

Is it not, in the end, about independence, about “Me and You and A Dog Named Boo”, two young lovers with nothing better to do, living in a “shanty, mama, and put[ting] a good buzz on”?

I think it is all of these things, and more. But I believe it is essentially about protesting against expectations and consequences, even against responsibility. It is a middle finger jammed in the face of convention, even if convention is just physical health. And I think each genre and sub-genre of rock-and-roll is some form of protest against rock’s own tendency towards conformity: metal protests folk rock’s apparent passivity; Southern rock rejects northern coolness toward good old southern ways; disco protests music that does not inspire movement; Christian rock protests rock’s penchant for nihilism or hedonism; one artist protests that too few are angry, while another protests against the many who have no joy; U2 protests injustice, faithlessness, the loss of hope; the Sex Pistols even protest conventions of beauty.

Ironically, in the heart of much rock-and-roll is the hope for a better world, a utopian dream: John Lennon is perhaps the very flag-bearer of rock’s noblest aspiration: if we all would just party, love, and give peace a chance, we’d find that we are not the un-Grateful Dead, but the grateful living.

In this maelstrom of protest and the search for meaning; in the claustrophobia of alienation and the battle of the sexes; in the search for love in all the wrong places, in all of the wrong ways; in the abandonment of convention for pleasure in lust, drugs, materialism, hedonism; in the dreams for a rock-and-roll utopia based on Aquarius and free love; in the midst of ALL of this is just one song, the one song that perfectly captures what is the incarnation of the rock-and-roll spirit. For if one were to fully live the rock-and-roll life -- from fast women and fast cars and fast yachts and smashing TV sets and burning the Union Jack; from berating power and wealth and warmongering and capitalist greed -- one would become, as so many of us know all too well, “Comfortably Numb” (by Pink Floyd). This monumental work, I believe, is rock's greatest song.

Are not many of us (though surely not all), in fact, Comfortably Numb right now, numbed by work, war, the humdrum, the day-to-day grind? Many of us are sexually sated to the point of boredom, while others are sexually dissatisfied, left so by the sexual impossibilities shaped into idolatry by the marketplace. We are numbed by newsreels and sundry horrors; road kill gets nary a notice or even a light tap on the brake pedal. We are numbed by the mind-killing rhetoric of politicians, pundits, poets and even priests. In short, we have found our freedom and indulged in it; we have followed impulse and intuition; we have given into our muses and our drug-fed demons; we have followed ourselves and all that we (and others) promise to those very selves, and we have become lukewarm, indifferent, even insipid. We are numbed by countless prescribed narcotics or some other sedative.

Now, what I think you should do here is download the tune, if you don’t have it already. Get the track from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or “Echoes (Greatest Hits)” [my choice]. Don’t listen to a live version, since no live track has the full complement of sounds I think are important. And then put on your headphones. Get the volume right, and proceed.

Analysis: Comfortably Numb

Study the lyrics and the structure of the song as we analyze this tremendous work. The lyrics themselves are presented in two voices. The first is the voice of everything false that is OUTSIDE us, begging to control and command. It is the voice of evil dressed in a doctor’s white jacket; if not, it is that dulling voice trying to prod us, offering a salvation -- a salve or booster shot -- that will keep us fit for the machine that is grinding us to death. It is the voice of alleged health issuing from a very sick corpus. Perhaps it is our own “adult” voice, the voice of convention, duty and responsibility. Maybe it’s the voice of Madison Avenue – a truly distorted parent if there ever was one -- promising joy in a bottle, or a new automobile: tell us where it hurts and we will fill your void. Surely it is at the very least the voice allegedly from outside of us, beyond our grief, fear, anxiety and misery, and yet it is a voice still trapped within a fallen world.

First, note that there is a preamble, a preface. Random (?) noise and voices are blended in a mantra-like rhythm: fading seashore sounds, gulls calling on the wing. Then, a knock on the door, repeated. Someone say’s “Time to go!” over and over. A woman’s voice, distant, maternal, young: “Are you feeling OK?" (also repeated). Other sounds, like distant laughter, a telephone operator hinting at infidelities. Slowly, from deep underneath, there’s an almost groaning thunder, and then a voice, loud, full of doubt: “Is there anybody out there?” The most important question of all. Then – silence (3 seconds). Then the music begins. (While listening to the whole song, please note the instrumental layering -- perhaps done on a synthesizer -- with strings hinting at playfulness and youth, and horns suggesting loss, fear. Listen to the bass guitar weaving through, at times pointing upward, then downward, like a leaf on the wind.)

Voice One (the outer voice, perhaps):

“Hello? Is there anybody in there? [Contrasting with the big question asked earlier.]

Just nod if you can hear me

Is there anyone home?

Come on, now.

I hear you’re feeling down.

Well I can ease your pain

Get you on your feet again.

Relax. I need some information – first.

Just the basic facts.

Can you show me where it hurts?”

And then, the second voice, the inner voice. Ohh, what sorrow! What loss!

Voice Two:

“There is no pain you are receding

A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon

You are only coming through in waves

Your lips move

But I can’t hear what you’re sayin’.

When I was a child I had a fever

My hands felt just like two balloons.

Now I got that feeling once I again.

I can’t explain, you would not understand,

This is not how I am.

I have become comfortably numb.”

Think of the image of a fevered boy whose hands feel like two balloons, his hands sailing upwards, reaching for help, a help that does not come, leaving him with nothing to hold. Think of the innocence in a child’s need for purpose, meaning, safety. Think of the much-needed comfort of a parent who does not come or the God who does not hear. All have drifted out of reach, lost over some far horizon. Innocence, too, is lost. Think of feeling that same way “once again," trapped in an adult world where childish things – like permanent fidelity and hope and love -- are rejected, disdained as so much wishfulness. And think of this sad admission offered by a voice estranged from its very self: This is not who I am. Oh!

And then a stunning guitar solo, nostalgic, gentle; the guitar acting as the deepest inner voice where language is not spoken. It is all a looking backwards, a longing for home, for youth, for being loved unconditionally; and of finally being dulled to that longing:

Again, second voice, repeating:

“I have become comfortably numb.”

Voice One continues:

“Ok.

Just a little pinprick.

There'll be no more ...Aaaaaahhhh! [Voice two’s cry of pain]

But you may feel a little sick.

Can you stand up?

I do believe it's working. Good.

That'll keep you going for the show.

Come on, it's time to go.”

Voice Two responds:

“There is no pain, you are receding.

A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.

You are only coming through in waves.

Your lips move but I can't hear what you're sayin'.

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,

Out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to look but it was gone.

I cannot put my finger on it now.

The child is grown, the dream is gone.

I have become comfortably numb.”

Let me admit to you that usually at this point (if I am paying attention) my eyes well up with tears:

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,

Out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to look but it was gone.

I cannot put my finger on it now.

The child is grown, the dream is gone.

My very first memory, or so I believe, is of waking up in the late afternoon in my New Jersey home. The shades are drawn. In the far right corner of the room, on a bureau, sits a little nightlight. It is a tiny glass lamb. The light inside of it is on, casting a warm glow. I am sick, fevered, waiting for the doctor (Dr. Canavan, I’d learn later) who is coming on a house call.

What is the fleeting glimpse in the corner of the eye, the one a little boy cannot fix his eyes on? Is it heaven? Is it God? Is it any hint of the permanent, the lasting, the enduring, the real? Is it the fading image of a father lost to war who will never come home? Is it the loss of a mother who disappears into alcoholism or depression? Is it the loss of innocence, and the loss of an innocent love?

It is all of these things, and more. But it is clearly the loss of the permanent; it is a glimpse that is but fleeting. But what it ultimately is the singer no longer knows: the child and dream are both gone; comfortable numbness is all that lasts.

And then the most harrowing guitar solo of all time, introduced by a deep downward slide on the bass guitar and a short scream from the lead guitar itself; surely it is also one of the most beautiful guitar solos ever recorded. For again we return to that innermost, language-less voice carried through the guitar, but now the soul's voice deep within, affected by that ‘little pinprick” from outside, the drug or lie that keeps him going, looks forward from a past that is forever gone.

What do you hear in this solo? Do you not hear the soul’s descent into hell and its screams for help? Do you not hear the soul cry out for change -- for release! -- from its descent into loneliness, hopelessness? Listen closely. Hear the anger, the bitterness of loss. Hear the cynicism of life’s broken promises, of the accumulated resentment, and regret for things unsaid. Hear all of this: hear a soul looking straight at the end of meaningless Life; see the soul fight against this fact, hear it scream that this can’t be all there is to living. Hear the fight with demons and lies and disappointments; hear the smashing of furniture in a hotel room and in an empty heaven. Hear the struggle for freedom; hear the scratching inside the coffin. Hear that numbness which is neither real nor comfortable. And then, at minute 6:21, hear the height the soul can reach, such beautiful desperate heights; hear the soul’s clear worth, its furious fight, its clear plea to live a life with purpose, and yet hear it weaken again, perhaps slipping into one final, contentious resolve. Finally, hear the guitar’s voice drift passed you, and away, as if you are on the same descent, only you’re watching something wailing, distorted, in great struggle, move beyond your reach, falling faster than you. Or are you just standing there, staring, mouth agape?

Since I've been listening to the song while writing this, I can say that, again, it has left me weeping. I do not know where to go. I feel myself falling to my knees. I hear my own soul cry out as the song concludes, and I fear I’ve witnessed, in sound and the images such sound invokes, the very crucifixion of Christ, his body writhing and fighting on the cross, the wailing guitar at minute 6:21 nothing other than Christ looking heavenward: Father, why have you forsaken me?

Closing Remarks

Here ends my foray into rock’s greatest, and most important, song. This song completely captures all that the rock-and-roll world, nay, the world alone, stands for, creates, if indeed, there is Nobody “out there.” Our life, or our search for meaning IN life, is in vain if there is no God, if all is ephemeral, passing, fleeting. And even the Christian’s life is in vain if there is indeed no Body out there, no crucified and risen Christ, offering hope of an afterlife. This song captures, with real beauty, the need for something beyond us, but something that is also beyond this world and its ephemera.

This is why this is the greatest of all rock songs. This song stares at the flight downward and asks, “Is there anybody out there?”; and it unflinchingly looks at what follows if the answer is, “No.” As such, the song shatters all pretensions, all ambitions of those who do not ask the great question; or who are content with nihilism, narcissism or hedonism, the very marrow of the rock-and-roll ideal.

My goal, if I have one, is to fight for all souls; it is to give all souls hope that there is no need to fall into the abyss. The hope is that comfortable, even uncomfortable numbness, is NOT the final end of life.

Peace. And thanks for playing with me over the past week.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.

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