It was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in 1970 at Bron-Yr-Aur, a small cottage in Wales where they stayed after completing a concert tour of the United States.
[2] Plant has acknowledged the influence of the Indian and Caribbean music he first heard during his childhood in the Black Country on "Friends", "There's something really splendid and otherworldly about trying to even touch those bigger ideas as a British rock group, to go past singing about bars and chicks and all that crap.
Bass player John Paul Jones contributed the string arrangement, however, received no writing credit for this song.
[6] The song was re-recorded by Page and Plant with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1972, during their trip to India, along with another track, "Four Sticks" from Led Zeppelin IV.
"[8] In a retrospective review of Led Zeppelin III (Deluxe Edition), Kristofer Lenz of Consequence of Sound stated while listening to Led Zeppelin III, "Friends" is like a "re-calibration" from the face-melting "Immigrant Song" to a more "woozy, loose tuning" track, with tabla by John Bonham.