An unusual musical collaboration, well worth a listen if you happen to be a fan of prog rock and/or jazz violin…
French fiddler Stéphane Grappelli featured in my Unusual Jazz Instruments post the other week, and it has been brought to my attention that a tape of him jamming with Pink Floyd during their recording sessions for the 1975 record Wish You Were Here was recently unearthed.
The tape, previously presumed wiped, was included on yet another money-spinning, horse-flogging EMI re-release of the prog-rock classic last year. Apparently Grappelli was recording with Yehudi Menuhin in studio two at Abbey Road while the Floyd were in studio three. Both maestros were invited to play on the track but Menuhin didn’t like improvising and chickened out.
Grappelli’s solo comes in about halfway through. Listening to it, I reckon the violin gives the track a lovely rural feel, a bit like much of Bob Dylan’s Desire album.
Just another rosin in the wall.
Yahooneyoony, never off black and white BBC tele, many thought he was the worlds only violinist, why can’t we all have sisters named Hephzibah, lovely name.
🙂
Quite pleasant. Nice also to have someone other than David Gilmour on a Floyd track who can actually play his instrument. Unique among prog bands, Floyd contained two members who objectively could not play, and a pianist who was at best so-so. Perhaps it was their limitations that won them success- unable to play 1000 notes in bizarre time signatures they played three or four very very slowly. Thus when the fashion for complex rock passed, they alone survived since they were not very complex.
That’s an interesting theory, Daniel, I’ll ponder it.
This reminded me of The Who concert at the RAH In 2000 when one of Menuhin’s most talented former pupils, Nigel Kennedy, played a blinder on Baba O’Riley. It really takes off from the 4 minute mark. Was this the same violinist who as a much younger man had given us a gloriously mellow recording of the Elgar concerto? Kennedy’s versatility and willingness to play almost anything – as opposed to the reluctance of the admittedly great Menuhin – makes him special. As Nige would say: “It sure does, man”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZerKlpIk9A
‘Quite pleasant’. Just about the two deadliest words in the musical lexicon DK.
I also think it helped that Roger Waters’ lyrical content was mainly about angst, fear and anger, and not pastoral hippy stuff. Latter King Crimson also dumped the pastoral nonsense for much heavier concerns (while maintaining ferocious levels of musical complexity) and albums such as “Red” were embraced by the likes of Kurt Cobain as a result.
Van Der Graaf Generator he says, showing his age most horribly. Now theres angst for you. And 18 minute songs with more time changes than you could shake a stick. Besides, shaking a stick in such noodly times for 20 minutes a song is exhausting.
They played in Falls Church VA only a couple of years ago and I never even knew.
Bugger.
I did see Grappeli playing with Soft Machine guitarist John Etheridge but then he was in Grappeli’s band
V D G G also escaped some of the censure aimed at the likes of Yes, perhaps because of Peter Hammill… his solo stuff isn’t prog at all. When they reformed a few years back their new record got a lot of praise from most quarters.