🎸 My Personal Best 25: Led Zeppelin Edition – No.4, “Achilles Last Stand”

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🎸【Led Zeppelin Edition】No.4 is・・・・

My No.4 pick is the 10-minute-and-25-second giant that opens Led Zeppelin’s 1976 album Presence: “Achilles Last Stand.”

For me, Presence has always sounded strangely different from any other Zeppelin record—an unusual kind of hardness.

It’s not about “good” or “bad.” It’s the sensation of a relentlessly “dry” sound taking over your mind. And this song, in particular, is inescapable: once you press play, there’s no getting away from its ferocious drive. Even now—after decades—at odd moments that warhorse-neighing riff suddenly starts looping in my head.

Right here, with the Top 3 in sight, I want to place this “steel epic” the band created under the harshest circumstances.

【Ultra-Short: A Sprint Beyond the Limit】

Shaking off the restraints of the body, it tears across the wasteland of the spirit at full speed. Even with Achilles’ heel—its weakness—laid bare, a soul that has forgotten how to stop records an endless pursuit. It is the band’s most noble, most violent proof of survival—fired in the face of collapse.

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🎥 As always, start with the official YouTube video.

🎬 Official Video Credit (Official Audio)
Song: Achilles Last Stand
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Album: Presence (1976)
Written by: Jimmy Page / Robert Plant
Audio: Remastered (Official Audio)
Two-line note
A 10-minute epic—one of Zeppelin’s longest and most relentless full-throttle runs. Page’s multi-layered guitar orchestration, reportedly stacked dozens of times in a short period, creates a staggering sense of scale.

🎬 Official Video Credit (Live Footage)
Song: Achilles Last Stand
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Live: Live at Knebworth (1979)
Video: Led Zeppelin DVD (2003)
Two-line note
A historic performance at the 1979 Knebworth Festival. It re-builds the studio version’s meticulous structure with the raw dynamism of the stage—an explosion of the band’s true power.

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The Unusual “Dryness” of Presence

If No.5 “Good Times Bad Times” was a vivid declaration of a new era, then the album that contains No.4 “Achilles Last Stand,” Presence, feels almost monochrome—yet it carries an abnormally high-density, heavy “material” presence.

A “Pure Dialogue” Among Four—With the Ornament Stripped Away

The “different image” I always felt while listening to this album may come from its relentless stoicism.

There’s none of the acoustic lyricism or the richly colored keyboard ornamentation found in earlier works. What remains is Page’s multi-tracked guitar, John Paul Jones’s surging bass, John Bonham’s bombardment-like drums, and Robert Plant’s soul-cry—just those four elements, constructed to seal off every possible escape route.

A Will That Never Lets the Speed Drop for Ten Full Minutes

Even in terms of “length,” Presence has a striking character. Of the album’s seven tracks, three run longer than seven minutes.

But the 10 minutes and 25 seconds of “Achilles Last Stand” never feels excessive. It’s the sound of a band in a desperate situation—one where once you start running, you can’t stop; or where the moment you stop, everything collapses. That urgency becomes length, and it becomes speed.

Jimmy Page’s Obsession: The Peak of Guitar Orchestration

To talk about this song, you can’t avoid the near-mad devotion Jimmy Page poured into it.

A “Wall of Sound” Built in a Short Time

At the time, Robert Plant’s serious injuries from a car accident forced him into life in a wheelchair—putting the band’s very survival in danger. In that situation, Page pulled this complex piece together and completed the recording in just a few weeks.

The guitar overdubs here form a meticulously layered structure that deserves the name “guitar orchestra.” Riffs, melodies, harmonies—Les Paul after Les Paul, stacked into a single massive surge. Listening closely in my small apartment room, I felt I could read Page’s unspoken, almost tragic determination beyond those heavy layers of sound.

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Steel Rhythm: A “Warhorse Charge” Powered by Unbreakable Momentum

The greatest reason this ten-minute track never feels long is the abnormal “propulsion” created by John Bonham and John Paul Jones.

John Bonham: A Ground-Shaking Gallop

Every time I hear it, I see a warhorse charging across the open land at full speed. Bonham’s drumming doesn’t merely keep time—it becomes a huge engine that drives the song forward.

Especially striking is the “gallop-like” beat woven by bass drum and snare. It strips away rock’s usual sway and rushes straight toward its destination—carrying, in a sense, even a trace of madness.

John Paul Jones: The Heavy Eight-String Bass That Supports the Sprint

And reinforcing that bombardment without yielding an inch is John Paul Jones’s bass.

Here he uses an eight-string bass to create an even lower, harder sound image than a typical bass line. Because this “steel ballast” resonates perfectly with Page’s layered guitars, the song can accelerate without ever flying apart—and it strikes the listener’s mind with overwhelming mass.

Robert Plant’s Spirit: An Epic Sung from a Wheelchair

During the recording of Presence, Robert Plant faced the microphone while suffering severe injuries from a car accident—seated in a wheelchair.

A “Journey of the Spirit” Beyond Physical Restraint

Deprived of physical freedom, what Plant sang in this track was a journey of the spirit. Lyrics that roam through places like Morocco and Greece become a painfully real escape—yet also an unbreakable search—launched by a soul that could not move.

Invoking Achilles’ heel—his weakness—Plant faces his own fragility and still aims higher. Different from the old high-pitched shouts, his voice here is somehow dry, yet fiercely resilient—turning the band’s extreme circumstances into a proud form of art.

No.4 as a “Destination”: Why This Song Won’t Let Go of Me

Why is this song No.4 among so many classics? Because it is the most pure—and the most brutal—crystal of what Led Zeppelin reached.

What Presence Exposes: The Truth of Four

With both acoustic ornament and keyboard color removed, this song is the result of pushing one question to the limit: How far can we go with only the sound of the four of us? There is no decoration here—only raw talent and obsession throwing sparks for ten minutes straight. That stoic stance may be the true meaning of the album title, Presence.

Closing: At Last, Into the Sanctuary of the Top 3

No.4, “Achilles Last Stand.” When these ten minutes of full-throttle running end, there is nothing left to block our view.

After passing through the “otherness” of Presence, the band reaches an ultimate realm—one that even dissolves the boundaries of rock itself. From here on, three supreme songs await—so great that even the format of a ranking can start to feel meaningless.

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(No.4 “Achilles Last Stand” — End)