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Just as pop singing wasn't the same after Elvis or the guitar didn't recover after Hendrix, neither was rock orchestration the same after Paul Buckmaster, the half-British, half-Italian string arranger who died Tuesday at age 71 of undisclosed causes. Even if his name doesn't ring any bells (or, more appropriately, triangles), the records Buckmaster arranged and orchestrated will. Starting with his work on David Bowie’s "Space Oddity," Buckmaster's alternately lush and brooding string arrangements enriched, deepened and darkened pop records for nearly 50 years.



If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider just some of the records featuring his arrangements. In Buckmaster's hands, string sections on rock records weren't schmaltzy. They were trippy and panoramic (the Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile"), dark and brooding (Elton John's "Madman Across the Water," the Stones' "Sway"), stately (Harry Nilsson's "Without You," John’s "Levon"), high-stepping (Simon's "You're So Vain"), and lush without being overbaked (Taylor Swift's "Back to December"). The muted French horns and other woodwinds that underscored Guns N' Roses "Madagascar" made that the moist listenable song on the messy Chinese Democracy.

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