"Presence" by Led Zeppelin - question of taste?
 

Would you say that the track Hots On For Nowhere is the best track on the album?

I don't remember exactly what's on that one, but I believe Nobody's Fault But Mine in on there. If so, then no to your question.

1. "Achilles Last Stand" (Page/Plant) – 10:25
2. "For Your Life" (Page/Plant) – 6:20 to 6:24 (differs from album to album)
3. "Royal Orleans" (Bonham/Jones/Page/Plant) – 2:58
4. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (Page/Plant) – 6:27
5. "Candy Store Rock" (Page/Plant) – 4:07
6. "Hots on for Nowhere" (Page/Plant) – 4:43
7. "Tea for One" (Page/Plant) – 9:27

To me, there are no albums past Physical Graffiti

Too bad. In Through The Out Door is one of their best.

I had always heard so much about how crappy Presence and In Through the Out Door were, so for the longest time all I had were their first six excellent albums. I found Presence on sale one day and was really surprised to find that it is a pretty good album. Pretty good, not excellent, but definitely not deserving of the crap it gets.

As was said, that is a matter of taste. I just feel Led Zeppelin got too experimental for their own good, whether because of the drugs or their own egos.

That said, any man who can write the riff to Heartbreaker is an absolute god of guitar.

I love that album as well. I don't think they have any bad albums, including "Coda".

Achilles Last Stand is easily the best on the album. There are others that are alright, but non that match it on the album.

Zep is my all time favorite band and when Presence was first released I listened to it once and put it away. Nothing really grabbed me, wanting me to listen to it over and over again. It was a few years later that I was listening to it and something clicked. Now I love it. Far from their best but still a good, solid album in my opinion. Hey, you just put the best rock album ever, kind hard to follow. Plant had been in a bad car crash and was wearing a leg cast during the recordings but don't know if this had any effect on the final product. Tea For One has become one of my favorite Zep songs. Page's guitar on this song ranks with his best.
As for In Through The Out Door . From what I've read, Page and Plant, the primary creative forces, were there in body but not spirit. Page was strung out on heroin while Plant was still getting over the death of his son. John Paul Jones(the only member who didn't make a deal with Satan for success and thus never had any bad things happen to him :) was more or less in charge although Page is credited as producer. Also JPJ has writing credit on all the songs but one. This is my least favorite Zep album but still good. Apparently it didn't take long for them to get into form, as evident by the great Knebworth performance shortly after. Even a lesser Zep album is better than most of the stuff that gets released.

I found this in a Rolling Stone cover story from July:

"Plant and Page sequestered themselves in Malibu and began writing material that was leaner and more hard-hitting. In November, Led Zeppelin traveled to Munich and recorded Presence. Released in April 1976, Presence conveyed the sense of a band up against bad odds, fighting back. The opening two tracks, "Achilles Last Stand" (about the car accident) and "For Your Life" (about hell and drugs and terror, and about how life inside the band may have been developing), featured the best solos Page would ever play—abstract, desperate, raging. "Presence was pure anxiety and emotion," Page said later. "We didn't know if we'd ever be able to play in the same way again. It might have been a very dramatic change, if the worst had happened to Robert. Presence is our best in terms of uninterrupted emotion."

Over the years, Presence hasn't sold as well as most of the band's catalog. It's more or less the forgotten album; its feelings are too hard, too intense and probably too insular to stay close to for very long. In effect, Led Zeppelin accomplished something akin to Eric Clapton's achievement on Derek and the Dominos' Layla: They forged the spirit and purpose of blues into a new form, without relying on blues scales and structures. Presence is clearly singular in Led Zeppelin's body of work, and it's likely the best album the band ever made.

"It was really like a cry of survival," Plant said. "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."

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/cov...eppelin/page/1
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Well, Mikal Gilmore certainly loves the album.

And this shows why RS has zero credibility. Best of all the Zep albums? Not just ridiculous, but utterly insane.

Hots on for Nowhere is good but I also think that Achilles last stand and nobody's fault buy mine are both better.

Overall a very fine album

Achilles Last Stand is one of Zep's best songs from any albums, and easily the best on Presence.

I like Presence, a great deal, in fact, but I don't feel it's "singular" and their best...

III and Physical Graffiti are tied for that crown, IMO. Ten Years gone is my fave Zep tune...closely followed by Since I've been Lovin You and the Rain Song.

The present day version of "Rolling Stone" is like "Tiger Beat" if the editorial staff were replaced by writers from Democratic Underground.

No kidding. Sympathetic articles about eco-terrorists? Urgh.

Achilles Last Stand is one of my top 3 favorite Zep songs and Presnce is a good album all the way through.

Presence is a hard album, I love it, I even loved the 8 track ;) "For Your Life" is probably my favorite...