As a piano playing singer and song writer, North Carolina’s Ben Folds is almost inevitably going to draw comparisons to Elton John, the godfather of piano pop. But the first single from Folds’ second solo album, 2005’s Songs For Silverman, is essentially an Elton John pastiche that remarkably measures up to John’s classic 1970s singles. There’s one person who was involved in both ‘Landed’ and Elton John’s 1970s singles – string arranger Paul Buckmaster, who passed away this week at the age of 71.
“The first time he arranged for me, on the song “Landed,” I was taken aback at his score. I felt he’d changed something about the song. He’d weighed in strong, almost intrusively I thought. There wasn’t enough time for what he’d done to sink in, and with release date on our tails, I made the decision to leave the strings out. MISTAKE! I regretted it before it hit the stores and made sure all subsequent versions of the song were released with strings.
As well as Elton John, Paul Buckmaster arranged the strings on impeccably classic rock songs like David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sway’, Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’, and Harry Nilsson’s ‘Without You’. He continued working, contributing to more recent projects by Taylor Swift, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Michael Buble.
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Read about the discographies of musical acts from the 1960s to the present day. Browse this site's review archives or enjoy these random selections:
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Great track. Buckmaster had
A way of avoiding schmaltz when arranging the strings, huh?
Yeah – he took those songs to different places, essentially.
That’s a pretty impressive CV for Buckmaster!
Yes, he really was the BuckMASTER.
Awesome stuff, love me some Folds. James does even more so! That’s a great song, too.
Also, anybody involved in Sway has my vote. RIP Paul Buckmaster.
I hadn’t even really thought much about Sway’s strings before. When I think about it, I can remember the part, and how they take the song to a different place at the end, but it’s such a guitar oriented song that it’d never registered. Great piece of work – it’s a candidate for best loved album cut ever.
And that’s saying A LOT, coming from an amazing qrtifact of art like Sticky Fingers!
Yes, it has a lot of great deep cuts.
That whole string of albums from 68-72 is mind-blowing.
I awarded them 9.5, 8.5 (never quite connected to Let It Bleed as much as the others), 10, and 10.
Nice acknowledgement, A.
I never actually realised he did so many other songs – mainly knew him from the early Elton John records.
Awesome song. A good friend of mine put together a mix tape of his top 20 songs from 2005, and this was for me, the outstanding highlight. I can remember listening in the car to the CD and skipping through tracks to get to this one.
I think it’s pretty much an Elton John pastiche, but it’s so good it would be one of Elton John’s best 1970s songs.