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Were strings on Friends & Kashmir? If so, who performed? Or was it Jonesy on keys?


dpat

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I always assumed it was John Paul Jones on keyboards recreating the orchestral sounds for Friends and Kashmir. Or was it an actual orchestra on each song? If so, what orchestras/string sections performed on them? (and... why no credit?).

Rock on...

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On 11/22/2022 at 8:53 PM, dpat said:

I always assumed it was John Paul Jones on keyboards recreating the orchestral sounds for Friends and Kashmir. Or was it an actual orchestra on each song? If so, what orchestras/string sections performed on them? (and... why no credit?).

Rock on...

Friends has a real string section.

Kashmir has real strings and some brass instruments too, as well as the mellotron. If I recall correctly, JPJ's score for Kashmir went up for auction a few years back. 

In both songs the strings can be heard gliding from one note to another - an effect that is fiendishly difficult to recreate on a keyboard with todays tech, and simply wouldn't have been possible in 1970.  Far easier, and cooler, to use the real thing. (No two string players will glide from one note to another at the same speed, or in exactly the same way. Put a bunch of string players together and get them all to glide from one note to another, all slightly differently,  and you get that glorious sound..... lush! ). They would have been brought in as session musicians and paid for the job, probably an hour or two's work. No reason to credit them.... in fact in some ways it's better not to.  People with their name on a recording have a tendency to get litigious if they feel that the fee they were paid at the time was insufficient in comparison to the monetary success of the recording in subsequent years....

I think Viram Jasani may have kicked up a bit of a stink over his part in Black Mountainside, and there may have then been an element of 'sod you - here's your fee, play the parts and then go away' after that. 

How many of the records Page appears on in the 60's was he credited for?

6 hours ago, jsj said:

If I recall correctly real strings were attempted on Kashmir but the idea must have been dropped

You may be thinking of the sessions where Friends and Four Sticks were recorded with the Bombay orchestra that eventually ended up on the deluxe reissue of CODA.

Edited by woz70
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