For as touted as Led Zeppelin were for their album productions, they almost never employed true orchestras in their recordings. "Kashmir," "Rain Song," "Four Sticks," and "All My Love," all use pseudo string parts performed by John Paul Jones on mellotron or some other device. I can understand that they maybe wanted to preserve some of the sound of their live show, but man the real stings of "Friends" sound so rich. I almost wish they had used them more. (Listen to that live Page and Plant version of "Kashmir" with real strings sometime.)

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant tried multiple times to record orchestral songs that evoked the Indian musical ideas they were fairly obsessed with. "Friends" was the first go. "Four Sticks" was another attempt. The grand culmination was "Kashmir." It's fun to think of "Friends" as a proto-"Kashmir," both songs relying on a droning orchestral ostinotto broken up with instrumental refrains of excellent scales.

On its own terms, "Friends" is a great short experiment of a song, the kind of fragment that fits as a brilliant interlude on an album back in times when people listened to albums front to back as the work, not individual tracks.

The the string line of the verses reaches strange, wonderful places. The Robert Plant vocal is powerful, bluesy, and ends with a great phrase.

The instrumental refrains are these jarring strums of a open tuned guitar, finished with this Indian-inspired scale jumping all over the beat. The sounds are transfixing.

The ending is a mind trip of an ascending guitar over synth drone, strings winding, and a fantastic vocal melody by Plant, all accelerating until collapse. I love songs that end in new territory. I love songs that earn it with as much odd beauty as this.