Career in Popular Music
Kamen became a highly-sought arranger in the realms of pop and rock music. His contemporaries in this field included Academy Award winner Anne Dudley, Richard Niles, and Nick Ingman. His successes include his work with Pink Floyd, David Gilmour and Roger Waters (he is one of the few people to have been invited to work with both former Pink Floyd members, after their acrimonious split), as well as Queen (orchestration on Who Wants To Live Forever), Eric Clapton (on Edge of Darkness), Roger Daltrey, Aerosmith (live orchestral version of Dream On for MTV), Tom Petty, Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Eurythmics, Queensrÿche, Rush, Metallica (on their live album, S&M), Def Leppard, Herbie Hancock, The Cranberries, Bryan Adams, Jim Croce, Coldplay, Sting, and Kate Bush. For Bush, Kamen delivered an orchestral backing for "Moments of Pleasure" from The Red Shoes album, substantially building upon a simple piano theme Bush had composed. In this instance, and many others, he conducted the orchestra personally for the recording. In 1984, Kamen had similarly heightened the impact of a pop recording for the Eurythmics "Here Comes the Rain Again", that score relying as much on his compositional skills as his arranging talents. Five years later, he did the music for For Queen and Country.
In 1990, Kamen joined many other guests for Roger Waters' performance of The Wall in Berlin and headed the National Philharmonic Orchestra during the 24 Nights sessions with Eric Clapton the following year.
Lenny Kravitz recorded a cover of "Fields of Joy" on his 1991 CD Mama Said that Michael co-wrote with Hal Fredricks.
In 2002, he was part of the Concert for George as string conductor.
Kamen had a very successful partership with Bryan Adams and R.J. Lange composing scores and songs. The ballad "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" for the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves would be the number one song of that year, worldwide. Other songs would be "All For Love" for the movie "The Three Musketeers" in 1993, and "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" the song from the film "Don Juan DeMarco" in 1995.
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