The one guitar solo Jimmy Page says equalled ‘Stairway to Heaven’: “So good
From their inception in 1968 to the curtain coming down in 1980, Led Zeppelin wrote an extensive quantity of material.
While there were some misfires along the way, the vast majority comes under the classic tag, with the British quartet one of the most influential of all time. Together, they took rock music by the lapels, making it more expansive and esoteric than ever before. Each member, frontman Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, brought a vital element to the fold.
One of their best-loved moments is ‘Achilles Last Stand’, a track from the 1976 album Presence. A blend of hard rock and heavy metal clocking in at over ten minutes, it features some of the group’s most searing musicianship from the later stage of their career. Notably, before recording the album, Robert Plant and his wife were involved in a car accident while visiting Rhodes, Greece, where the frontman sustained serious injuries, including a broken ankle.
At the height of their popularity, Led Zeppelin were forced to cancel their major tour of the US that was planned to commence on August 23rd, 1975. Instead of doing the run, Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page started writing material for Presence and recorded at Munich, Germany’s Musicland Studios. Famously, Plant laid down his takes while sitting in a wheelchair.
However, in a twist of terrible irony, Plant was so eager when recording what became ‘Achilles Last Stand’ that he fell and re-injured his ankle, resulting in the song’s title. The title is an acknowledgement of Plant’s broken ankle, which was comedically similar to that of the mythical Greek hero Achilles and a nod to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, which inspired the lyrics via their connection to the myth of the god Atlas holding the sky on his shoulders.
Where John Paul Jones and Robert Plant took the lead on In Through The Out Door, it was John Bonham and Jimmy Page who were the men in charge of 1976’s Presence. It’s perhaps some of Page’s finest work as he unleashes a flurry of incredible grooves and searing riffs. Looking back, however, it is easy to call this LP Bonahm’s triumphant moment as he rages across his kit like a stampede of warhorses. But it is Page who triumphs.
To achieve the immense sound of his guitar on the song, Page overdubbed six guitar tracks. Asked by Rolling Stone in 2007 about how he achieved such layering, he recalled: “It was done in one evening, the whole of the arrangement. To be honest with you, the other guys didn’t know: ‘Has he gone mad? Does he know what he’s doing?’ But at the end of it, the picture became clear. It was like a little vignette, every time something comes around.”
Jimmy Page has a lot of love for the 1976 song. When speaking to Guitar Player that year, he explained that he thinks the guitar solo from it is so good that it equals that on his masterpiece from 1971’s Led Zeppelin IV, ‘Stairway to Heaven’. He said his soloing in ‘Achilles Last Stand’ is “on that level to me”.
Page told the publication: “Presence and my control over all the contributing factors to that LP – the fact that it was done in three weeks, and all the rest of it – is so good for me.
It was just good for everything really, even though it was a very anxious point, and the anxiety shows, group-wise – you know, ‘Is Robert going to walk again from his auto accident in Greece?’ and all this sort of thing. But I guess the solo in ‘Achilles’ Last Stand’ on Presence is in the same tradition as the solo from ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on the fourth LP. It is on that level to me.”
Listen to ‘Achilles Last Stand’ below.
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