Can we talk about why Presence by Led Zeppelin is the best album ever made when you're actually listening to it, but it's easy to forget about when you aren't listening to it?

Wilhelm Worringer, "Abstraction and Empathy", 1908. Abstraction is "to wrest the object of the external world out of its natural context, out of the unending flux of being, to purify it of all its dependence upon life, i.e. of everything about it that was arbitrary, to render it necessary and irrefragable, to approximate it to its absolute value.’’

this is how I hear Presence

otm

when I called the album inhuman & alien & algebraic earlier, I meant that the music is rushing with expression, saying many things, and yet it’s inscrutable until “Tea For One”, whose perfect polycarbonate blues reveals profound human longing. Is that what the rest is expressing? Longing has plasticity, filtered through the drugs, the exhaustion, eight years gone. Or instead simply reaching through that, to try to express something new.

still processing this / trying to respond

but do want to thank you for the initial revive which inspired my re-listening to "presence" and then "station to station" which was a big breakthrough for me because i worship bowie but never really "got" that record until just a few days ago

listening to HOTH now, both "the song remains the same" and "no quarter" seem to anticipate "presence"

you guys this is such a great revive

Regarding this quality of remoteness or abstraction, I think it gets after something essential about Zeppelin which is anticipated not just on HOTH but from the very beginning. There's a prevailing misapprehension among their detractors (but a lot of fans too) that because they trafficked in traditions that are predominantly "expressive" (blues) or more broadly "communicative" (folk) that these qualities are what they, too, wanted to forward. But the mission from the outset was sonic. This is what sets them so far apart from everybody else. On record, anyway, their heaviest, most experimental, most inventive contemporaries—Hendrix or Cream or whatever—are still prioritizing some compact with the listener that has to do with the given trope, whereas with Zeppelin even the most brazen dilletante blues or cod-folk is *not* Freedom Rock. It is rather sculptural, framed, finished. It's sound-qua-sound, art rock.

And while it's true that there were smart business reasons not to release singles, or edit for radio, or put the band's name on the sleeves, or tour with opening acts, I believe this was Page's real motivator in all those choices: it wasn't a statement that they were better than anyone else (although they knew they were) but a category factor. You couldn't just *have* them—any more than you can "have" something screwed onto on pedestal or mounted on a gallery wall.

that's a good point; that Zep's accomplishments stem from their being blues posers.

Accomplishments stem from high quality music from the very first album on...

It is rather sculptural, framed, finished. It's sound-qua-sound, art rock.

this is really getting to something that i've felt for a long time about lz; they really have much less in common with mayall, clapton, et al. than they do with george martin and the beatles. page's studio wizardy has been remarked upon at length, but rarely is it acknowledged as more or less the core of the project -- instead it's more along the lines of, hey, how fortunate they had this dude to bulk up / amplify their sick chops and killer riffs. i don't really buy that.

i think, at its core, what this musical project does is necessitate that performance and sonics are inextricably linked. the arc of the riff and the tone of the guitar that plays it are the same sonic unit, as it were. in that way the organizing principle of a led zeppelin song is not its lyric, or its melody, and rarely is the quality of the songwriting (in the traditional sense) a major concern for me as a listener. rather, what i hear is the effect, the sound, created by the constitute units of riff-tone, drum pattern-sound, etc. -- all of which in turn are essentially the products of a studio process that selects and then isolates specific idioms or gestures them from the earlier, deeply rich socio-cultural contexts of various folk and black popular musics (page, whatever he might say to the contrary, is basically anti-historicist), and it's precisely this process of separation, fetishization, and distillation that is the core of the musical endeavor. since worringer has been quoted, allow me to make the analogy that picasso's cubist paintings are not exactly "in dialogue" with west african folk art objects. i think that in much the same way, led zeppelin deliberately failed to work "in the tradition" -- in fact, if my observations are correct, they were inherently incapable of doing so since their project relied on a specific kind of presentation -- which is what i think hadrian is otm about.

i want to relate this back to "presence" but i don't have time right now !

I have nothing quite as sophisticated as any of the last several posts to say, although they are quite good posts, but whenever I revisit Achilles and really a lot of Zeppelin's work I'm struck by the fact that they are thought of as pure "cock rock" and yet the lyrics (to one of the heaviest songs ever recorded) are actually fairly sweet and not very macho:

Oh, the fun to have
To live the dreams we always had
Oh, the songs to sing
When we at last return again

^ i do like the tenderness of those lyrics

"Hots on for Nowhere" is easily one of Zep's best 10 songs.

― darin (darin), Monday, February 6, 2006 3:55 PM (thirteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally agree.

I'm trying to imagine the people whose first introduction to Zeppelin was this album, and how they'd view the remainder of their catalogue. Would they have preferred the most "Presence"-esque tracks like "The Wanton Song", "Wearing and Tearing", and "Out on the Tiles" as if they were on the record ("Wow - more songs dominated by tight bass-kick-guitar interplay!"), or found them to be far too ornamented, preferring the "real thing" instead? What about the more straight-ahead rockers like "Communication Breakdown", "Hot Dog", or "Rock and Roll" (which are surprisingly scarce in their catalogue - it's wild how many of their "traditional" blues-rock tunes have at least one major time change, key change, or instrumental-based bridge that can almost be its own song - see "Black Dog", "Heartbreaker", "Whole Lotta Love")? I'm guessing they'd be all about the epics like "Kashmir" and "In My Time of Dying", yet find the slower bluesy stuff found on the early records to be a bit boring (except for "Since I've Been Loving You", which stands out from that group with its musical complexity), but who knows?

I'd especially love to hear their perceptions of the more bucolic Fairport Convention-style tracks ("Going to California", "Battle of Evermore", "Bron-yr-Aur") that are about as far from "Presence" tracks as possible, or their more eccentric regular-length songs like "The Ocean", "The Song Remains the Same", or "Down By The Seaside"?

The big question, of course, is how would they have responded to "In Through the Out Door", especially if they didn't hear it until after consuming the rest of their oeuvre?

(Or better yet, what if "ITtOD" was their first Zep!?)

LZ's riff that they use as the intro for "Tea for One" had been around for a while. They used it to open a few different songs live.

I’ve been thinking about that intro riff a lot lately! It’s such a damn shame they couldn’t get an entire song out of it.

I think every garage band has one riff that they think is pretty cool that they never figure out where else to go.

“Soft Enfolding Spreads,” by the Howling Hex, is sort of a song-length mutant offshoot of the “Tea for One” riff.

(Or better yet, what if "ITtOD" was their first Zep!?)

I'd heard the first two albums, but the first Zep thing I bought was Coda because it was in the cassette rack at the local drug store ca. 1984. So I was well-acquainted with the ITTOD outtakes on side two long before I heard Presence which might explain why it never seemed that bizarre to me. It is a less-immediate record than most of their catalogue, certainly - less obvious hooks - but I don't think it's that surprising from the band who previous released stuff like "Four Sticks" and some of the tracks on Physical Graffiti (Sick Again, The Rover, even Trampled Under Foot and Kashmir).

i think, at its core, what this musical project does is necessitate that performance and sonics are inextricably linked. the arc of the riff and the tone of the guitar that plays it are the same sonic unit, as it were. in that way the organizing principle of a led zeppelin song is not its lyric, or its melody, and rarely is the quality of the songwriting (in the traditional sense) a major concern for me as a listener. rather, what i hear is the effect, the sound, created by the constitute units of riff-tone, drum pattern-sound, etc. -- all of which in turn are essentially the products of a studio process

yes yes yes

the "Tea For One" riff is a tweaked and slowed down version of "Walter's Walk" which is a HOTH outtake...he also used to fold it into Dazed and Confused live

"The Ocean" seems to me a predecessor of Presence.

I want to add something about the influence of the abstraction of James Brown on Presence, thinking that his funk was an abstraction from soul, but I don't know enough to say for sure. We all know about "The Crunge", but the latter seems to me such a misstep (chiefly for JPJ's anemic keys) that it can't be a definitive statement of JB's influence. And I'd like to know how the different members of the band appreciated JB: was it mostly one member, like Bonham, or was it Page, etc?

I know they used top play Sex Machine and Licking Stick live....I would imagine the whole band were big fans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd0b42chX5A

I want to add something about the influence of the abstraction of James Brown on Presence, thinking that his funk was an abstraction from soul, but I don't know enough to say for sure.

Funny I was listening to Achilles this very morning and really focusing on the drums & something that people gloss over when they talk abt Bonham's drumming it is so deft, so fleet-of-foot and fonky, everyone just talks about how hard he hits.

W/r/t to Brown, I believe they were all fans but specifically Bonham and JPJ were to the r&b/funk fanatics

jpj tells a story about Clyde Stubblefield and the other JB drummer at the time (Melvin Parker?) at Newport, standing behing Bonham during the Zep soundcheck and gawking at him playing both their parts

John Jabo Starks, I would guess

I know they used to play Sex Machine and Licking Stick live

wait what

They would do this live in 1975, folded into Whole Lotta Love or Dazed and Confused, just sections—"Ain't It Funky Now" too

Is that on any live recordings? I've never heard them play either I don't think.

apparently it's on this one: https://longliveledzeppelin.blogspot.com/2015/09/19750312-led-zeppelin-long-beach-great.html

a Vancouver show too, a handful of '75 boots

I hadn't really read anything about the connection before, but The Crunge always made me assume they were James Brown fans.

it's been made many times -- Page and Plant mentioned it?

(not trying to dis you)

i fuckin love this album and this thread

This, Station to Station and Animals form some kind triptych of 70s anomie/awesomeness.

― 29 facepalms, Friday, May 10, 2019 2:18 PM (ten months ago) bookmarkflaglink

guess what also came out in 1976, that's right aerosmith's rocks

which "hots on for nowhere" kinda exists in the same universe of

The persistent avoidance of For Your Life, the dark center of this album and my favorite song from this release by some distance, renders this otherwise classic ILM thread less potent than it ought to be. Bonham is playing lead here and Plant is singing off him, his vocals are like fills, as the drums start, stop, rush, and swing. Structurally, the song is sneakily complex with five distinct parts—ABABCDCEAB—with the whole descending riff in the “Do it when you wanna” section a master class in tension and release as Bonham unveils a straight 4/4 beat while a chorus of Plants tease and coo over the top about the darkest cocaine hell I could imagine. Run-on sentences do not capture how much I admire this song.

Yes
And the off beat on the Do you Wanna section
Magic

still the greatest ilm thread

this album kinda terrifies me, putting me into a very weird mood right now

always