Kashmir
by Led Zeppelin
- 80
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 48
- Danceability
- 49
- Acousticness
Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" took about three years to write. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote it with contributions from John Bonham, and its lyrics date back to 1973. Plant wrote them right after the band's 1973 US tour. None of the group had visited Kashmir. Plant was inspired instead during a drive through a desolate desert area of southern Morocco.
Page recorded a demo with Bonham in late 1973. Plant later added lyrics and a middle section, and in early 1974 John Paul Jones added orchestration. Session players were brought in for the string and horn parts, and Jones played a Mellotron. Jones was late arriving to the recording sessions, so he received no writer's credit. Page used a Danelectro guitar, which he rarely did, in a tuning of D-A-D-G-A-D that he had also used on "White Summer" and "Black Mountain Side". Plant felt the drumming mattered most and that Bonham did not overplay his part.
The song appeared on Physical Graffiti in 1975. The band played it at almost every concert after that. At the 2007 reunion show at The O2 in London, Bonham's son Jason played drums.
Kashmir runs at 80 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 750 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.