Bad luck struck when Plant's car plunged off a cliff on the Greek island of Rhodes. Plant's wife suffered a fractured skull, and a broken leg and pelvis. Plant fractured his elbow and broke his ankle. They were taken to a small local emergency ward. Just how pervasive was Zeppelin's popularity? "I was lying there in some pain," Plant says with understatement, "trying to get cockroaches off the bed and the guy next to me, this drunken soldier, started singing 'The Ocean' from Houses of the Holy."
Plant's accident would thrust the band into their darkest period. For 18 months, it wasn't known if he'd be able to use his leg again. Plant spent a lengthy period of time drinking beer and "tinkering on the village piano." Clearly, Zeppelin needed a new album, and needed to feel their ability to make a great one. The plan was to record fast, to push the limits, to paint themselves in a corner and dare themselves to escape.
Rehearsals for Presence began in Malibu, California. It was an odd sight - Led Zeppelin with Robert Plant in a wheelchair. The band soon moved to Munich for the sessions. Every waking hour was spent in the studio, located in the basement of their hotel.
In 1977, Page described the album with a real fervor. "The general urgency and the pent-up whoa was in all of us. The mechanism was perfectly oiled. We started steaming in rehearsals. We did a lot of old rock and roll numbers just to loosen up a bit. 'For Your Life' was made up in the studio, right on the spot. I particularly enjoyed the guitar playing on the blues things. The solos never had that coloring before. I was so happy about it... especially since I have to warm up to solo. I get nervous about that kind of guitar playing. Really, very insecure about it. But that's the way I can really concentrate. I'm usually at my best when I'm really exhausted or under pressure or both. When you're exhausted all you want to know about is what you have to do. The Golden question is why this was done so fast, and why the others take so long. The fact is that this one, we lived all the way through... under circumstances that were extremely frustrating. We weren't sure about Robert, weren't sure what was going to happen. Everyone managed to pull it all in...it was great."
If each Zeppelin album was, as Jimmy Page says, a concept album detailing the mental state of the band at the time... then this one was a story of anxiety and frenzy and blues and pain. Presence, he says, is the most important Zeppelin album. It's a snapshot of a time when the group was stripped of its legendary power. They were running on pure heart and soul.