Aftermath: Led Zeppelin's Presence
by Howard Cressi-Stallworth
Welcome to Aftermath, a column where we take a closer look at the albums made by artists coming after their imperial periods or the highest point in their career trajectory before they starting falling in popularity, critical acclaim, or kept riding high but the creativity started petering away. Today I’m going to look at the oblique and groove oriented Presence by Led Zeppelin.
Coming off of whirlwind tours and success beyond any of their peer’s imaginations, Led Zeppelin in the fall of 1975 were a ripple in the cultural tide so massive that they seeped into the very fabric of the social strata. It was impossible to ignore their music as well as their marathon live shows attracting fans now into the hundreds of thousands. But by the end of 1973 burnout was taking its toll on the group. Having toured over 100+ dates per year since their debut in 1969, each band member was struggling with homesickness, vocal damage, drinking, and ever-increasing drug use. It trapped them into a routine, but also formed an image that they simply couldn’t escape from - an image embraced in a bittersweet fashion. The group knew their live shows and image were becoming as important as the music, and to move away from it suddenly would harm the groups most marketable image based trait. As a result, it was decided that the tour following Physical Graffiti would be smaller than those before.
Despite all the touring woes, it was not evident in the music itself. By the time Houses of the Holy was released, the group was firmly comfortable in their increasingly progressive song structure and instrumentation. The result of this was the infamous double album Physical Graffiti. Graffiti was equally a patchwork of older material and a step forward, a continuation of their effort to move past their blues and hard rock roots evinced just a few years earlier. Romps such as “The Rover” and “Sick Again” were concert favorites, confirming their own mythos lyrically, and formerly passed over tracks such as “Night Flight”, and “Boogie With Stu” kept up the appearance that Robert Plant still had his vocal range (which he was quickly losing), all while providing fantastic dynamics musically. To boot, their well-crafted songs finally won them long absent critical support from those who thought they were just a bloated jamming group. However, cuts based on jammed out riffs such as “The Wanton Song”, “Custard Pie”, “In My Time of Dying”, and “Trampled Underfoot” truly showed where the group was going to continue as far as Presence was concerned.
On 1975’s Physical Graffiti tour, if there was one thing the group couldn’t escape from, it was the increasing pressure to live up to the marathon 3+ hour nightly performances. The only way to meet expectations was to rely on long form jamming, specifically with tracks like “The Wanton Song”, “In My Time of Dying”, and “Trampled Underfoot”. These were tracks that could be extended live, built out of a structure based more around jamming, rather than the meticulous song-smithing they had become known for on their earlier records. This came at the expense of removing the acoustic portion of their show, which contained some of their best loved and most well crafted songs.
Led Zeppelin was one of the few groups who could bash out a riff or two, glue them together, and some how churn out a well written song. Undoubtedly, this had much to do with how the songs were enhanced by the sheer virtuosity from each member. Unfortunately, this style of jam songwriting often drips into laziness: the pitfalls of sleep inducing solos, which almost all of their peers trailing behind were guilty of, demonstrated their inability understand Zeppelin’s awesome ability to write well crafted songs. Ironically, the group themselves would rely on this crutch more and more, and in this late period of their career, exploring this new mode of songwriting gave way to a laziness that showed.
Once their 1975 American tour and the week-long Earl’s Court run ended, the exhaustion started to creep into the music. With members spiraling or coping with issues, this aforementioned new style of rush jamming riffs together all impacted how the overall sound of their new album Presence would come off. In spite of all the signs warning them to slow down, the group still managed to reconvene not six months later. As they were tax exiles at this time, the group settled into Musicland Studios in Germany. This was all despite the fact that Robert Plant experienced a life threatening accident that landed him in a wheelchair while traveling in Greece, and Bonham and Page were starting to choke in the grip of their various addictions.
Legendary opening track “Achilles Last Stand” is a multi-layered, multipart heavy rock epic with galloping bass, hammering drums and layered guitar. It was like nothing the group had attempted before, and at nearly 10 minutes it was one of the longest songs the group had tracked. The instrumentalists used the six months to recover and bang out one of their greatest tracks; however, Robert’s voice was still recovering from the previous tour, and firmly settling into the damaged, pinched “eewoooohhhyeah” mode it would forever reside in. Despite the song's legendary status with fans, it also came with its detractors. Achilles was seen as an overlong and snore-inducing prog rock birthed epic, possibly about the epic Greek hero fighting in war, or maybe a story about the band themselves? It seemed the group were starting to take those overlong jams from their stage show into the studio, unsure of whether to trim the fat or embrace the pounds.
Presence’s first missteps occur just after one of their strongest tracks, and Zeppelin were not a band familiar with the concept of the misstep. “For Your Life” is about-what else?-getting burnt out on sex and drugs, yet pushing your sense of desire to perform live and in the bedroom. On “Royal Orleans” it’s like the band forgot to let the collage dry, with lyrics based on an incident when Jones accidentally set his room on fire while falling asleep with a lit cigarette. In Led Zeppelin’s case, there was a distinct difference between utilizing their life and tour experiences for good, and then not having enough time to live and experience things. At this point they were just reporting the things they did in hotel rooms out of boredom and placed them into songs. “Over The Hills and Far Away” succeed because of its multiple parts and its lyrical optimism of conquering the road, “Royal Orleans” is simply a tossed aside news report on top of a jumpy riff. Whereas their other jam rock songs had riffs, structure and solid song craft, such as (“The Immigrant Song”, “Kashmir”, “The Ocean”), these songs came off as pure vehicles for riffs and grooves, and past subject matter was beginning to feel like a retread subject.
It’s also the first time Zeppelin songs felt truly boring. “For Your Life” and “Royal Orleans” were repetitive with little dynamics, and while this is a fault of Page, it oddly enhances the rhythm section of Jones and Bohnam, who kick the shit out of these parts. If you aren’t interested in the performances of Page and Plant, Presence alone is worth it for the rhythm tracks. That being said, it’s not that Page’s riffs aren’t interesting -some of his best recorded and tightest performances occur here- it’s just that they seem like jams taped in a basement rather than truly inspired songs at times.
The above issues are why Presence was their lowest selling studio album in the groups discography. It came at a time when the general public was slowly becoming tired of the group. After touring nearly half of every year since 1969 and releasing an album almost every year (including a double album), even their fans were ready for a break. If the band was still in semi-recovery, why didn’t they just wait until 1977 to release a record once they were rested and ready for a tour, especially with the infamous film Song Remains The Same still in production? Strangely though, for a flop it’s grooves and rhythms ended up having some longevity, and lent themselves to being like some strange mutant brother of current R&B bands. Even the band factored all of this when on their 1977 tour the only songs they performed from it were “Achilles Last Stand” and a jam riff piece that flew in the face of the repetitive eye rolling nature of the two previous songs, “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”.
“Nobody’s” opens with a glistening multi-layered guitar is followed by an echoing delivered by Plant, adding to its unison ring, the major key brother to the dour mood intro of “Achilles”. It is clear the band was stealing the structure from “Trampled Underfoot”, but that’s exactly what’s surprising. Led Zeppelin never sought out to become a self-referential, self-borrowing group, but on Presence the band never sounded so content to live within one mood based solely around rhythm and cyclical guitar riffs, and they never quite captured it ever again either. All the negative elements of Presence worked so well on “Nobody’s Fault”. Cryptic lyrics, repetitive riffs, powerhouse instrumental performances—it just rocks the house down. It was an instant no brainer alongside “Achilles” for concert performances, and it’s no wonder this is the track that one hears on the radio to this day.
Following one of their best songs are two of their most middling. The rock and roll raveup “Candy Store Rock” could’ve been best left to the jam sections of their live shows or even to a potential b-side; likewise for “Hots on for Nowhere”. While “Candy Store Rock” is filler, “Nowhere” has one of the most playful rhythms in their entire catalogue. Ironically, it also has some of their most bitter lyrics. Instead of taking time to iron the songs out, both tunes smell of tossed off riffs; at least “Hots On For Nowhere” has one of the most interesting second halves of any latter era Zeppelin song.
The album’s final cut, “Tea for One”, is one of their most downtrodden mood pieces, reportedly inspired by Plant drinking alone while on tour. “Tea For One” finds them once again revisiting their playbook. The track is the younger, sunken eyed brother of the absolutely classic “Since I’ve Been Loving You”. It is in the same key, yet feels completely remote and alien. Another example of a jam-written song, it opens with a classic Zeppelin trick: using a riff from another song to open and then change gears just as you become familiar. They had been performing this trick famously by playing the opening riff from “Out On The Tiles” only to lead into “Black Dog” when performing live. “Tea” is one of their most empty and reverb coated tunes and is delivered as lonesome as the title suggests, with Robert giving a much needed restrained performance on the track. It has some of the moodiest moments on the album while ultimately coming to an exhausted sigh of an ending.
Presence stands alone as a strange, twisting and turning record so taut it could pass military inspection. It’s also their most groove based and driest sounding record. Outside of a few moments involving panning and flanging, it’s their album with the least amount of experimentation engineering wise. They were a band that never ran into the issue of every song sounding this uniform on record, which makes Presence all the more frustrating when holding it up to all their other albums.
All that being said, if you want an album filled with Page riffs galore, this is the one. Not for its sheer variety of them, but how Page and co. can morph and twist the same riff eight ways to Sunday. They weren’t as bludgeoning as the ones on II and IV - no, this was a different beast, much more lean and stressed. On each track there are seemingly more riffs than strings on a guitar, despite some of the riffs being the same the whole song with minute twists and turns throughout. Of course in classic Page fashion, Led Zeppelin’s least heard studio effort holds Page’s best solos. It is equally maddening and inspiring and he never quite wrote like this ever again.
There-in-lies the duality of Presence. Over the course of its forty-five minutes it has moments of forward thinking glory mixed in with lack luster lyrics and riffs that are hypnotic, if not repetitive. Zeppelin were so stubborn towards crafting an album wholly their own that they were willing to die by its strange and befuddling tendencies, right down to the proto-Janes Addiction opening chords of “Achilles Last Stand” to the sputtering, exhausted final notes of “Tea For One”. On Presence, the melodies sung were just the beginning of how Plant would cope with his new singing style. Jones was kept to his bass guitar alone causing him to rest and dig in his heels more-so, further emphasizing Bonzo’s excellent grooves. Page recorded some of his best and tightest playing, both on his minutely detailed riffs and some of his best solos. The lyrics were tortured on delivery by a recovering singer who was as willing to change his recorded image just as frequently as Page did his riff writing. Never before had the group been so content on showing its roughest edges and unfinished sketches with performances so well held together you would’ve thought they were the finished pieces. Even when they weren’t performing seemingly strange engineering and songwriting works of magic, they still managed to act like this was the finished piece.
Presence ultimately sums up the strange existence of Led Zeppelin: never more true was it that you had to own every record by a band. Yet Presence seemed to spit directly in that concepts face and challenge it. The group was almost subsumed by touring, and their studio outputs stood alone as wholly crafted, individually standing efforts of equal shared weight and work ethic, positive or negative. If you’re missing one album, you’re missing a large part of the puzzle for better or for worse. Presence was the ultimate album paradox, a fan favorite and an overall let down, a hyper specific musical gem of its own undertaking and totally not the sequel everyone wanted out of Physical Graffiti. So sparklingly clean, the recording dared you to stare at the highest quality image of a group with dark circles under their eyes, a style of music many would come to cherish in musical generations to follow. They were a band so dead set on playing by their own rules, so willing to dive inward that they almost imploded and turned into a complete photo negative. Frustratingly hard headed, but upon closer inspection, Presence’s repetitive nature acts like an autostereogram photo albeit in album form; you always come back to look one more time at something new. To not revisit Presence is to miss the entire picture of Led Zeppelin. Take it from Jim O’Rourke: “that album is perfection.”