Kashmir is a cornerstone song in Led Zeppelin’s catalogue. Included on their sixth album Physical Graffiti, released on 24 February 1975, but its origins date back to 1973.
The band had recording sessions booked at Hadley Grange in 1973. One day, John Paul Jones was late, and Page started jamming with drummer John Bonham. Bonham had come up with a very good rhythm pattern, and Page had a riff that got its shape when he played along to it.
In the book Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page recounted “I had a particular idea for a mantric riff with cascading overdubs. I started playing the riff with John Bonham and we just locked in and played it nonstop. It was so infectious, such a delight and just so us.”
Page and Bonham built off the vast reverberations of the drum sound captured in the Headley Grange hallway. The drummer’s contribution was so crucial that he wound up with a co-writing credit. Vocalist Robert Plant has said that Bonham’s drumming is the key to the song: “It was what he didn’t do that made it work.”
They got the idea down on tape, and the song was very immediate. “I overdubbed the electric 12-string to what was later the brass parts,” Page said. “I visualised this piece as being mighty, orchestral, even threatening. When I heard the playback of just myself and drums, I knew this was truly innovative. This was the birth of Kashmir.”
Page expanded the stark riffs with brass and strings. Jones added an eerie mellotron. Plant later added lyrics and a middle section.
Kashmir, also known as Cashmere, is a lush mountain region North of Pakistan. India and Pakistan have disputed control of the area for years. The fabric Cashmere is made from the hair of goats from the region. The area is also famous for growing poppies, from which heroin is made.
However, Plant was nowhere near Kashmir when he wrote the lyrics. They were also born in 1973, while Page and Plant were driving through the Sahara Desert region on the way to the National Festival of folklore in south Morocco.
Plant told Mojo magazine in September 2010: “Kashmir came from a trip Jimmy and me made down the Moroccan Atlantic coast, from Agadir down to Sidi Ifni. We were just the same as the other hippies really.”
The song is very much a collection of thoughts on a car journey, to the point that the original title was Driving To Kashmir.
The song went through a few incarnations before it found its final form. Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant said: “I remember Bonzo [Bonham] having me listen to the demo of Kashmir with only him and Jimmy. It was fantastic. What’s funny is that after a first recording of the song, we found it sounded a bit like a dirge. We were in Paris, we had Atlantic listen to it, and we all thought it really sounded like a dirge. So Richard [Cole] was sent to Southall in London to find a Pakistanese orchestra. Jonesy put it all together and the final result was exactly what was needed. He was an exceptional arranger.”
This is one of the few Zeppelin songs to use outside musicians. Session players were brought in for the string and horn sections. Jimmy Page told Rolling Stone in 2012: “I knew that this wasn’t just something guitar-based. All of the guitar parts would be on there. But the orchestra needed to sit there, reflecting those other parts, doing what the guitars were but with the colours of a symphony.”
Speaking with Dan Rather in 2018, Robert Plant said: “It was a great achievement to take such a monstrously dramatic musical piece and find a lyric that was ambiguous enough, and a delivery that was not over-pumped. It was almost the antithesis of the music, this lyric and this vocal delivery that was just about enough to get in there.”
Jimmy Page: “The intensity of Kashmir was such that when we had it completed, we knew there was something really hypnotic to it, we couldn’t even describe such a quality. At the beginning, there was only Bonzo and me in Headley Grange. He played the rhythm on drums, and I found the riff as well as the overdubs which were thereafter duplicated by an orchestra, to bring more life to the track. It sounded so frightening at first…”
All band members agreed this was one of their best musical achievements. In the liner notes to The Complete Studio Recordings box set (1993), Robert Plant said: “It’s one of my favourites. That, All My Love and In the Light and two or three others really were the finest moments. But Kashmir in particular. It was so positive, lyrically.”
Page concurred. “There have been several milestones along the way,” he told Trouser Press in 1977. “That’s definitely one of them.” When asked what the greatest Zeppelin riff is, Page has often answered by citing this song.
The song clocks in at a wholesome 8:31. Editing the song down in any way was – of course – totally out of the question. Radio stations still had no problem playing it. Zeppelin had already proved their point with Stairway To Heaven which was still doing incredibly well and continued to be a top requested song.
Led Zeppelin would play Kashmir in every live show from its debut in 1975 to their last concert in 1980. They did not play it at Live Aid, but brought it out again at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary party in 1988 with Jason Bonham on drums, as well as the Celebration Day concert in 2007. Page and Plant also recorded it with an orchestra and Moroccan musicians for their 1994 Unledded album.
Kashmir remains as vital today as it did when it was first released. Not even close to dating or showing road wear, it is perhaps the finest example of the sheer majesty in Zeppelin music.
Facebook Comments