The tale of Achilles, a familiar narrative, has traversed through generations. The central figure of Homer’s epic saga, The Iliad, Achilles stood as a formidable warrior, impervious to harm due to his mother’s strategic submersion of him into the Styx River during infancy, gripping him solely by his heel. This heel would later prove his vulnerability, pierced by a fateful arrow discharged by the Trojan prince, Paris, culminating in the birth of the phrase ‘Achilles heel’. Nevertheless, for Led Zeppelin‘s iconic vocalist, Robert Plant, this timeless narrative took on an entirely new significance when a brush with mortality transpired while journeying through Greece.
‘Achilles Last Stand’ was inspired by Plant’s travels and by some of the poetry he was reading at the time, including William Blake. The lyric, “Albion remains/sleeping now to rise again”, is a reference to Blake’s engraving The Dance Of Albion. In 1975, Jimmy Page and Plant both went to Morocco and developed material for their next album. Within his guitar playing, Page attempted to replicate the signature flamenco and Moroccan musical traditions.
For Zeppelin fans, the track is regarded as one of their best. It’s filled with otherworldly, psychedelic arrangements, which, with the help of John Bonham’s unforgiving drumming, take on a furious, motoric energy. When creating the track’s huge sound, Page overdubbed six guitar tracks, something that he achieved “in one evening”.
The famously hardworking guitarist confessed: “To be honest with you, the other guys didn’t know [it was done in one evening]: ‘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.”
Creating such an iconic track in such a short space of time was probably a testament to the excitement Page felt when curating the work for Presence. It helped the context of the song to truly resonate. Elsewhere, Plant had gotten himself into a car crash while on holiday in Greece, which caused him to be in a wheelchair, and so the song became an acknowledgement of this alongside the mystic location in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Page takes particular pride in the track. “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,” he told Guitar Player in 1977.
Adding: “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.”
Interestingly, Plant later described ‘Achilles Last Stand’ as “us at our least charming, and most proficient – a Bonzo track where nobody could even believe a human could do it”.