French Horn in Rock Music

<---This is a French Horn

I am a French Horn player (aka Horn, we ‘Horn’ players nix the ‘French’ forename because there’s not much French about the horn, it’s quite German actually). And that’s not the end of my dorking out here, folks…

I’ve played for about 15 years, went to college for horn and came out with a Masters in Music Performance. I do still play, although not professionally nor full-time. I play with orchestras often, so I’m totally fascinated and thrilled when I hear rock/pop songs and other genres of music using horns.

Some of the hipsters among us may have heard of the group French Horn Rebellion, consisting of Brooklynite brothers Robert and David Peck-Molinari. Robert co-produced and engineered MGMT Time to Pretend and David is an accomplished horn player, having attended Northwestern University (which is an excellent music school and horn studio, by the way). Pretty neat combo, I’m excited to see them when they play at Brookyn Bowl in June.

Trivia: Did you know that John Entwistle (left), bassist for The Who, was originally trained as a horn player? He plays horn in the song “Pictures of Lily”. Don’t know this song? Listen to “Pictures of Lily”

A couple more famous rock songs that feature the horn:

The Rolling Stones - “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”: Al Kooper was brought in to play the organ and French horn for this song. These instruments would have been played by Brian Jones, but he was having severe drug problems at the time and was unavailable. That's Kooper playing at the beginning of the song. "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was listed as the 100th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

Paul McCartney – "For No One": Revolver album (1966). The French horn solo was by Alan Civil, a British horn player that Geoff Emerick described as the "best horn player in London." During the session, McCartney pushed Civil to play a note that was beyond the usual range of the instrument.

According to Emerick, the result was the "performance of his life." Civil said that the song was "recorded in rather bad musical style, in that it was 'in the cracks' neither B-flat nor B-major. This posed a certain difficulty in tuning my instrument." 

Listen to “For No One”

Any more rock classics out there that feature the horn? I’m sure there are…let me know!

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Why is the French horn a divine instrument?
Because a man blows in it, but only God knows what comes out of it.