It was an April morning when they told us we should go
As I turn to you, you smiled at me - how could we say no?
With all the fun to have, to live the dreams we always had
Oh, the songs to sing, when we at last return againPresence (1976)
While in Rhodes on August 4th, 1975, Maureen Plant lost control of a rented Austin Mini, and crashed over a precipice into a tree, crumpling the vehicle. When Robert opened his eyes, he was certain that his wife was dead. Maureen survived, but suffered a fractured skull and broken pelvis; Robert with several compound fractures, most prominently in his right ankle that would take several months to heal. The children in the back (including Page's daughter Scarlet) were mostly uninjured. The Greek medical facilities were ill prepared to treat Maureen's condition, and she likely could've have died if not for the significant resources available from Grant and Cole to get the family back to England. There's a great account of the ordeal provided by Richard Cole in
Hammer of the Gods, concluding with Robert having to leave England with only a few hours to spare to avoid a multi-million dollar tax charge, as they had nearly depleted all of the available time they were allowed to be in England during the Earls Court shows. Plant was rushed from the hospital in an ambulance with so much plaster on him holding his broken body in place, that a forklift was used to get him on the plane. Maureen spent several weeks in intensive care, and Plant would not walk for four months after the accident. At the time, there were real concerns that Plant might never walk again.
Before the accident, everything the band touched had turned to gold. Now, coming up to the release of Presence, the band seemed to be faltering. This accident, the heroin problems were worsening for Page, Jones had suffered a broken hand just after Robert's accident and was becoming even more of a recluse, and Bonham was drinking even more while on his tax exile (if that was even possible), mourning the time away from his family.
Presence evolved out of Plant's long rehabilitation, when he was joined by Page in Malibu, not unlike their retreats to Bron-Yr-Aur. However, this time there seemed to be an air of desperation. "It was an album of circumstances ... It was really like a cry of survival" Plant would say. There were no acoustic elements, no keyboards, no mellow moments, no light/dark or loud/soft anthems. It would prove to be their heaviest and darkest album. Page wrote all of the music; Plant the lyrics. Contributions from Bonham and Jones were non-existent, as they didn't even arrive until rehearsals for recording. Plant's lyrics represented the constant travel and solitary life they were leading from the tax exile, and were filled with anguish and pain, also reflected in his vocal delivery... almost a sort of repentance.
After a month of rehearsals, the album was recorded in just eighteen days at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany, with Plant in a wheelchair. This was the fastest recording turnaround time achieved by the band since their debut album. The rushed recording sessions were in part a result of Led Zeppelin having booked the studio immediately prior to The Rolling Stones, who were shortly to record songs for their upcoming album, Black and Blue. Upon their arrival, the Stones were amazed that Zeppelin's album had indeed been completed (both recorded and mixed) in a mere eighteen days. Page had simply stayed awake for two days straight to perform all of the final guitar recordings and overdubs.
The band considered Thanksgiving (as it was finished on the day before Thanksgiving) and Obelisk as the title for the album. But Swan Song wanted a more powerful title, more representative of the presence that the band held in the industry. Both Page and Plant had planned this album's recording session as a return to hard rock, much like their debut album, except at a new level of complexity. It marked a change in the Led Zeppelin sound towards more straightforward, guitar-based jams.
Advanced orders for the album were huge - over a million. Yet the album fell out of #1 after just two weeks, and rapidly disappeared from the charts entirely. Ironically, it would receive good reviews initially, under the pretense that its brilliance was derived from the panic'd conditions under which it was written/recorded/produced. Yet history regards it as their weakest album.
The album was released on March 31 1976, having been delayed by the completion of the album sleeve - boy, they sure did have problems getting their album covers produced!
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Topic: The Led Zeppelin Discography Discussion: v. Everything still turns to gold (Read 55843 times)