In 1976, eight years after its foundation, the high-flying Led Zeppelin airship began to show the first visible cracks. In 1975 singer Robert Plant was badly injured in a car accident in Rhodes. A planned world tour had to be canceled for that reason and guitarist Jimmy Page decided to use that time to write and record a new album. For practical reasons, the group only had three weeks to record it
… in Munich. Plant was still in a wheelchair and later confessed that he really just wanted to go home. Page worked day and night on Presence, which appeared in the spring of 1976. All the energy seems to have gone to the mighty opener Achilles Last Stand, a ten-minute epic that still ranks among the best of Led Zeppelin, with a complete, endlessly overdubbed guitar symphony by Page and a text that is as mystical as it is cryptic by Plant. The title is almost prophetic as it may be the last bigger-than-life-itself song Led Zeppelin recorded. Presence then collapses with a number of meaningless rock songs and the bluesy closing song Tea For One as a pale reflection of the intense Since I've Been Loving You from III. On Presence, Led Zeppelin sounds tired of the musical powers they once unleashed and which had made them supreme for years. Tired of herself, it seems. (MR) Presence then collapses with a number of meaningless rock songs and the bluesy closing song Tea For One as a pale reflection of the intense Since I've Been Loving You from III. On Presence, Led Zeppelin sounds tired of the musical powers they once unleashed and which had made them supreme for years. Tired of herself, it seems. (MR) Presence then collapses with a number of meaningless rock songs and the bluesy closing song Tea For One as a pale reflection of the intense Since I've Been Loving You from III. On Presence, Led Zeppelin sounds tired of the musical powers they once unleashed and which had made them supreme for years. Tired of herself, it seems. (MR)more
