Led Zeppelin - Achilles Last Stand

You're viewing a single thread.

10 comments

I always come back to this track. Something truly magical about it I think. Along with some/plenty of their other tracks, a true perfection of 70s rock.
- Something else for general zep fans, if you haven’t given this album this track is off a listen, it may be worth your time.
  Presence.
  From 1976, basically the twilight of the band, and the last album Page had any real influence on (their last one was a weird Plant and Jones project in part I think cuz page was drugged up).
  Whereas on Presence I think it was the opposite. It’s almost a pure Page album. Guitar driven and rocking.
  Out of all of their albums, I think it might be their most cohesive and consistent.
  
  their last one was a weird Plant and Jones project
  In Through the Out Door is killer! Sure, "All My Love" and "Fool in the Rain" are not as hard as some earlier stuff, but they're excellent songs. "I'm Gonna Crawl" and "In the Evening" are "pretty good" by Zeppelin standards, which translates to "outstanding" by normal band standards. Then you got "Carouselambra", a tour-de-force to show you that they've still got surprises -- there are people out there whose lives were changed by that song. Admittedly, "South Bound Saurez" and "Hot Dog" are mid, but those add up to like 7 minutes on a 42-minute album.
  Anyway, that was why Led Zeppelin was so amazing. They had so much talent that even when half the band was out of commission on drugs, they still put out a first-rate album.
  
  Yeah Presence was a rough patch for the band. Plant had a car wreck in '75 that put him in a wheelchair for awhile, which killed part of the Physical Graffiti tour and put a damper on Presence. Then Plant lost his son a few years later.
  Twilight is a great way to describe it. I think they peaked as a group leading up to the accident in '75. The Earl's Court '75 performance is my favorite because they're so tight, they were lightning captured. It's bittersweet to watch knowing they would never get that back shortly afterward.
  
  Madison Square in 1973. Loosely tight.
  
  I need to give it a spin! I had my Zeppelin period back before Spotify, and as a teenager with limited means (in a forest with no internet) I only managed to get my hands on I-IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti. Which was already a good haul. But it's weird to me that there are still parts of their discography that I simply haven't listened to, despite how important to me they were back in those days.
  Then again, I guess having to play the living hell out of II was why I came to love it so much, rather than having my attention fragmented between all the music in the world as it is nowadays.
  Anyway, thanks for the suggestion! I'll see if I can find the record somewhere.

10 comments