Presence (album) - Composition

Composition

Six of the seven songs on the album are Page and Plant compositions; the remaining song being credited to all four band members. This can be explained by the fact that the majority of the songs were formulated at Malibu, where Page (but not Bonham and Jones) had initially joined a recuperating Plant. With Plant at less than full fitness, Page took responsibility for the album's completion, and his playing dominates the album's tracks.

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. Whereas their previous albums up to and including the previous year's Physical Graffiti contain electric hard rock anthems balanced with acoustic ballads and intricate arrangements, Presence was seen to include more simplified riffs, and is Led Zeppelin's only studio album that features no keyboards, and with the exception of a rhythm track on "Candy Store Rock", no acoustic guitar. The record stands in sharp contrast to their next album In Through the Out Door, which features keyboards on all tracks and pushes Page's guitar into the background on several songs (most notably on "Carouselambra", where Jones plays the lead synthesiser for most of the song, and Page is not truly heard until four minutes into the song).

The changed stylistic emphasis on this album was a direct result of the troubled circumstances experienced by the band around the time of its recording. As Page said at the time:

I think it was just a reflection of the total anxiety and emotion of that period. There's a hell of a lot of spontaneity about that album. We went in with virtually nothing and everything just came pouring out.

Plant expressed similar views, stating:

It was really like a cry of survival. There won't be another album like it, put it like that. It was a cry from the depths, the only thing that we could do.

In contrast to earlier albums that contained several tracks that the band chose to play live at Led Zeppelin concerts, only two tracks from Presence were played in full on stage while the band was active. "Achilles Last Stand" and "Nobody's Fault but Mine" were added to the setlist for the 1977 tour of the United States and stayed through the band's final concerts in 1980. Some of the guitar solo from "Tea for One" was also incorporated into "Since I've Been Loving You" in these shows, but the actual song was never performed live until the Page and Plant tour of Japan in 1996, where it received three airings backed by an orchestra. "For Your Life" was played in full by Led Zeppelin for the first time at the Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert on 10 December 2007.

The lack of live interpretations of the Presence material is perhaps understandable given that it would be a full year before they would return to the road.