![]() ![]() Bonham’s bongo breakdown during the bridge of the song stands out as one of the most amusing moments on an album dominated by guitar overdubs and desperation. The cohesion of the guitar, bass, and drums sounds like a steam train chugging along over Plant’s playful delivery. Equally forgotten is “Royal Orleans”, a biographical account of John Paul Jone’s misadventures with a transvestite prostitute. With its powerful bassline, rugged guitar riff, and sardonic lyrics, “For Your Life” is one the brightest hidden gems in the band’s entire catalogue. If Physical Graffiti represents the zenith of the band’s career, then “Achilles Last Stand” is the sound of the band taking in one last view before climbing back down to earth.īacking up “Achilles Last Stand” is the egregiously forgotten (and according to Sporlce one of least known Led Zeppelin Songs) “For Your Life”. ![]() Between Bonham’s heart attack-inducing drumming, Page’s incendiary guitar play and Plant’s hypnotic shrill singing, the opening track is more of a cold opening, one where Led Zeppelin is firing on all cylinders with no need for introduction. Kicking off the album is the band’s last true epic, “Achilles Last Stand”, which picks up right where “Sick Again” left off. Despite being only seven tracks deep, Presence has more than its fair share of memorable moments and standout songs. As a result, Presence became the band’s simplest album, but again, that by no means makes the album bad, a fact that went largely ignored by initial critics of the album. The biggest issue plaguing Presence is that it’s Physical Graffiti-era Led Zeppelin trying to be Led Zeppelin II-era Led Zeppelin. Because of the spontaneity of the album’s genesis, Presence is their jammiest and funkiest album, standing in stark contrast to the meticulous precision of the band’s earlier works. After writing the majority of the songs together, the pair reconceived with John Paul Jones and John Bonham in Germany where the recorded and mixed the album in only 18 days. While he was recovering, he was joined by guitarist Jimmy Page, where the idea of recording an album was first conceived. Before they could even do so, frontman Robert Plant was involved in a near-fatal car accident on the island of Rhodes. The fundamental difference between Presence and every other Led Zeppelin album is that it was the band’s first album produced in the midst of internal turmoil.įollowing the wildly successful Physical Graffiti, Zeppelin were given the monumental task of following up such a flawless album. When in doubt, and when faced with stacked odds against them, Zeppelin could always be counted on to rebound and come back stronger than ever. After the lukewarm reception of 1969 debut Led Zeppelin many were wondering if Led Zeppelin had committed career suicide, and with the release of House of the Holy, those same critics wondered if Zeppelin had anything left in the tank at all. Rolling Stone magazine wrote that on the band’s first album, Led Zeppelin “waste their considerable talent on unworthy material”. Led Zeppelin had been used to making records in the face of public criticism and external strife. ![]() Like most albums that are misjudged as being “bad albums”, Presence is often criticized for what it’s not, instead of what it accomplishes. However, because of the (since unparalleled) critical and commercial garnered by the band’s first six albums, their 1976 opus, Presence, often goes ignored and underappreciated by both critics and fans alike. Amongst the innovative Led Zeppelin II, the eclectic House of the Holy, and the perfect Physical Graffiti, it’s hard to believe that Led Zeppelin had something akin to a forgotten album. ![]()
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