Led Zeppelin-Presence
Things got weird in the fall of 1975. Led Zeppelin, the most indestructible force in the history of modern music, destructed.
In February of 1975 Physical Graffiti is released to the world. Up to this point the band has released five straight stone cold classics with the most recent Houses of the Holy being their most eclectic and musically advanced record to date. Despite their well documented excesses the band is an unstoppable live machine. The combination of hard driving blues and eastern mysticism draws fans from all across the musical spectrum filling the largest venues across the globe.
With seemingly nothing left to prove musically and no reason to do anything but tour and print money, Physical Graffiti is unleashed on the world, and it is an opus. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant empty the well and produce the most confident rock record ever recorded. In the world of audiophiles and sound engineers the superlatives for Graffiti are never ending. It is the greatest drum record of all time. The greatest guitar record of all time. The greatest vocal record of all time. The greatest sounding record of all time. The greatest Double LP of all time. Graffiti unleashed Zeppelin’s relentless energy and honored their influences without losing any of their mystique. This is what the top of the world sounds like.
On Monday, August 4th, 1975, weeks away from two sold out shows at the massive Oakland Coliseum in California, Maureen Plant, wife of Robert, drives an Austin Mini off the road and into a tree in Greece. The accident leaves her with a fractured skull and significant blood loss and her husband Robert with a shattered elbow, ankle, and a broken leg. The second leg (no pun intended) of the Physical Graffiti tour is cancelled. Robert Plant is told he may never fully recover from the injuries and will spend months in a wheel chair recovering.
Plant falls into a depression as the band’s touring days are put indefinitely on hold. With no plans for touring, Jimmy Page the band’s de facto leader, falls into a well of self destruction relying on massive amounts of heroin and cocaine to get by. In September, Plant and Page decide to try and write new music. Because of the scope of Physical Graffiti there is no backlog of material, words or music, to draw from. Plant, depressed and ailing, travels to Los Angeles to stay at a beach house with Page, who is also depressed and ailing and a drug addict. Neither of them know if the band will survive. The result is Presence. The result is Zeppelin in their purest form.
Without a plethora of great material to lean on and a rushed 18 day recording session, the band fights to make something meaningful that can stand alongside the rest of their incredible catalogue. For the first time you can hear Plant’s voice straining to hit notes, in fact you can hear everything on Presence. There is little to no studio trickery which results in an incredibly dry, expansive production that leaves a wide canvas for the listener. It is their boldest production choice yet considering the material is admittedly their weakest to date. But the performances and the sonics are jaw dropping. You can hear Page searching for new ways to interface on the guitar, twisting and squirming his way through each song. You can hear Bonham pushing the rusty Zeppelin unit when they need pushed and pulling them back when they lose the groove. You can hear Jones innately in lock step with Bonham the entire way, the strongest rhythm section in rock history at it’s clearest. You can hear Plant lose his breath and stretch for more air. It is all there for us to experience. We are in the room with the greatest band in the world in their darkest hour.
Much like Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, Presence, is a record that leaves nothing to the imagination and much like Neil’s downer masterwork, the sound is startling. Perhaps more startling in Zeppelin’s case as Neil Young always had fragility. But Zeppelin had never sounded like this. Like they finally didn’t have all the answers. As if they were as lost as we all are. They never sounded so human.
Yet in the midst of the confusion you can hear something else. Something amazing. Something that makes this record totally compelling on each listen.
It is the sound of the band winking at us, grinning through their pain, looking at each other collectively, smiling and saying..
“We got this”
I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way
I know the way, know the way, know the way, know the way