The Led Zeppelin Classic Robert Plant Called “Prog Rock Gone Mad”

Led Zeppelin’s debut album was recorded in a mammoth 35 hour burst of recording – as close to their live set as they could imagine. With success came greater studio options, however, and the band quickly became known for mammoth journeys into sound, presaging both heavy metal and prog rock. Take ‘Presence’ cut ‘Achille’s Last Stand’ – a 10-minute rock symphony, Robert Plant once called it “prog rock gone mad”.

With lyrics that reference William Blake, the band’s John Paul Jones on eight-string bass, and a multi-layered song structure, it stands as one of Led Zeppelin’s most ambitious moments.

During the complex studio sessions the band were left tearing their hair out by the demands of Jimmy Page, who was certain the tapestry of sound could be brought into place. At one point, John Paul Jones told him that it “just wouldn’t work…”

“But it did,” the guitarist told Trouser Press. “What I planned to try and get that epic quality into it so it wouldn’t just sound like two sections repeated, was to give the piece a totally new identity by orchestrating the guitars, which is something I’ve been into for quite some time. I knew it had to be jolly good, because the number was so long it just couldn’t afford to be half-baked. It was all down to me how to do this. I had a lot of it mapped out in my mind, anyway, but to make a long story short, I did all the overdubs in one night.”

The heady all-night session saw Jimmy Page lose count of the guitar overdubs laid down to tape, topped off by Robert Plant’s peerless vocal.

The frontman once recalled: “‘Achilles’ Last Stand’ was prog rock gone mad, and it was brilliant. I remember when we wrote it, it was such a beautiful bird to release. The music was stunning, and when we did it live, some nights, it would be unbelievable, and other nights, it would be dreadful. But at least it wasn’t ‘Great Balls of Fire’.”

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Part of their live set towards the final band’s final touring calendar, ‘Achille’s Last Stand’ features in the set list of Led Zeppelin’s mammoth Knebworth extravaganza – performed in front of more than 187,000 people.

Replicating the studio masterpiece onstage proved to be difficult, however. “I don’t dread it, but the one that was testy, to say the least, to try and replicate — or at least to get a mean average of all the guitar parts on the record — was ‘Achilles Last Stand,’” Jimmy Page told Classic Rock.