Led Zeppelin- Presence 50th Anniversary- Jimmy Page
With the recording and subsequent late March 1976 release of Presence, their seventh studio album, thus began a five year period when a series of tragedies befell Led Zeppelin, even while guitarist/composer/producer Jimmy Page, singer/ lyricist Robert Plant, bass/keyboard/composer John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham continued to record timeless hard rock. The recorded performances of “Achilles’ Last Stand”, “Nobody’s Fault but Mine”, and “For Your Life” from Presence were so realistic as to be almost palpable, about which the sonic slam startles even now half a century later.
Jimmy Page, the mastermind Presence behind the Led Zeppelin legacy, returned In the Studio to reveal that by the time that the lengthy sold-out tour to support the iconic double album Physical Graffiti wound down in 1975, the Led Zeppelin juggernaut had soared to heights previously unknown by a rock band and had entered, figuratively speaking, the jet stream of the entertainment world. From that altitude the view is breathtaking, but the extremes of speed, temperature, and lack of oxygen make it impossible to survive without aid and the right protection. Just one misstep and the unforgiving immutable laws of Nature kick in, regardless of Led Zeppelin’s Presence atop both US and UK album charts or how many concert tickets they sold. In the case of Led Zeppelin Presence, Robert Plant was still so badly injured from a car crash while on vacation with his family off the coast of Greece that he actually recorded his vocal parts for Presence while seated in a wheelchair.
When Led Zeppelin released their eighth studio album In Through the Out Door in August 1979, we had no way of knowing that it would be their last original studio effort. In Through the Out Door was immediately massively successful, rocketing to #1 sales in only its second week in both the US and UK because of songs “In the Evening”, “Southbound Suarez”, “Fool in the Rain”, and the achingly tender “All My Love”, eventually equaling Led Zeppelin II for career best-seller.
And in spite of overwhelming popularity, about half of the music critics of the day, cruel but consistent, savaged Led Zeppelin upon release of In Through the Out Door in August 1979 for being woefully out of synch with the Punk Rock ethos, which many of those self-anointed gatekeepers saw as a musical laxative for rock’s bloat. Never mind that many of those same punk bands lauded Page & Plant for “Communication Breakdown” from Led Zeppelin 1 a decade earlier for inspiration.
Led Zeppelin guitarist/composer/producer Jimmy Page joins me for a rare classic rock interview here In the Studio to recall the considerable challenges they faced making Presence fifty years on. –Redbeard
