By 1975, Led Zeppelin was one of the most popular rock bands in the world, known for such classic tracks as “Stairway to Heaven,” “Whole Lotta Love” and “Kashmir,” and multi-million selling albums Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin IV and Physical Graffiti.
Yet, that same year the band faced adversity that threatened to derail their career. On Aug. 5, 1975, frontman Robert Plant and his wife were seriously injured in a car accident in Rhodes, Greece, which forced the band to scrap the second leg of the tour in support of Physical Graffiti. The singer traveled to Malibu, Calif. to recover and later the other members of the band—guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham--planned to join him at S.I.R. Studios in Hollywood to begin working on new material.
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“It was just after Robert’s car accident,” Jones said in an interview for The Billboard Book of Number One Albums. “It was really very hard to get the group working. We were in Los Angeles, and nobody seemed to want to turn up for rehearsals and for writing sessions.”
Aside from Plant’s accident, this was around the time Page began dabbling and ultimately became addicted to heroin, the band’s manager Richard Cole wrote in his book Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored.
With the L.A. sessions scrapped, the band opted to head to Germany where they regrouped at Musicland Studios in Munich to record their seventh album, known as Presence. “There’s some good stuff on the album, but it was hard going,” Jones added.
The music on the album reflected the difficulties the band was going through at the time, with Zeppelin completely eschewing acoustic guitars on their hardest-rocking album to date. Once the band settled down in the recording studio, they worked at a record pace. It was recorded in a mere 18 days with Page, who also served as producer, putting in 18-to-20 hours a day in the studio. The quick turnaround was a necessity, since the Rolling Stones had the studio booked next to begin work on their album, Black and Blue.
Related: ‘70s Rock Legends Join Forces for Unlikely Collab: ‘Never Thought I’d See the Day When These Two Do a Tune Together!’
“When we entered the studio, we were focused,” Jones said. “Whatever happened, we were all professionals, and when the studio is booked, we tended to settle down and do our thing, but that was probably our hardest album to make.”
Some tracks, such as “For Your Life,” were written in the studio. “Royal Orleans,” named for a French Quarter hotel in New Orleans, was the only song credited to all four members of the band on the album, a departure from the past. Plant and Page shared writing credits on the album’s other six tracks.
Still, recording the album was troublesome with Plant singing most of his vocal tracks seated in a wheelchair. During a take of “Achilles Last Stand,” the singer fell to the ground and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Despite the adversity, the mighty Led Zeppelin couldn’t be stopped. Presence reached the top of the album chart the week of May 1, 1976, in its second week on the chart, giving the band its fifth No. 1 album.
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