Presence

Presence came out of the wreckage of August 1975, when Robert Plant was seriously injured in a car crash on the Greek island of Rhodes and the band's tour collapsed. After writing in Malibu and rehearsing in Hollywood, they went to Musicland Studios in Munich. The Rolling Stones had the same room booked next, and Jimmy Page had to ask them for a few extra days. Recording and mixing took just 18 days, with Keith Harwood engineering. Plant, his leg in plaster, sang from a wheelchair. Those circumstances decided the sound. There are no keyboards at all, and only one acoustic guitar part on the whole record; what remains is Page's layered guitar and the pressure of John Bonham's drums. Six of the seven tracks are Page/Plant compositions, with “Royal Orleans” the only credit to all four. The opening “Achilles Last Stand” runs ten and a half minutes, at the time the band's second-longest studio recording, while “For Your Life” and “Nobody's Fault but Mine” keep a sharp physical edge. It went to number one in both the UK and the US, yet remains their lowest-selling album. Reviews were divided then; as Plant called it, this is a cry of survival, with the pain audible.