Written by Page and Plant while vacationing in the Welsh countryside, the second track off Led Zeppelin's third album "Friends" is an intricate eastern flavored acoustic piece with a string accompaniment. The singer and guitarist wrote the song together in a cottage named Bron-Yr-Aur, they later met up with John Paul Jones and John Bonham and rehearsed "Friends" as well as a number of other songs the pair had written in a dilapidated mansion in East Hampshire known as Headley Grange. "Friends was ultimately recorded between May and August in a series of sessions at Headley Grange, Olympic Studios in London, and mixed at Ardent Studios in Memphis.
The writing credits are attributed solely to Jimmy Page and Robert Plant which is odd for a number of reasons. Firstly it has been said that the intro is a very close reproduction of a song written by Neil Young and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, titled "Carry On". Secondly, John Paul Jones, the bassist wrote and arranged the entire string section that appears on the track, but his contributions weren't deemed notable enough to be included in the credits.
The song does have a lot of eastern influence, and like the track "Bron-Yr-Aur", and "Poor Tom", was played on an acoustic guitar in a C6 open tuning. Jimmy Page played a Harmony acoustic guitar on this song and used a device called a Altair Tube Limiter to enhance the sound of the instrument. Page, "I used an Altair Tube Limiter. I'd got that from a chap called [Dick Romini] who recorded an album called [Adventures for 12-Strong, 6-string and Banjo on Electra in 1964]. I'd never heard an acoustic sound quite like that. I bumped into him in the States and asked him how he got his recorded sound, and he said the whole secret was the Tube Limiter. It was so reliable." The beginning of the song features some background chatter, including the voice of Led Zeppelin manager, Peter Grant and the outro feature a Moog synthesizer that is also used as the intro for the next track "Celebration Day".
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| Possibly recording "Friends"??? |
As I've mentioned "Friends" is played in an open C6 tuning, so to play it, you have to tune your guitar to (C-A-C-G-C-E) rather than the traditional standard tuning of (E-A-D-G-B-E). The open tuning makes it actually quite easy to play actually, though it seems more complicated than it actually is.
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Excellent resource for zepplin fans!
ReplyDeleteConsider putting your tabs up on you-tab.com, they have a tab editor that lets you sync your tabs to the original song's music and video, so you can rock out along with the band.