june's song of the month

[strider <strider_1892@xxxxxxxxx>]

i know, i know... it's already the 8th and i'm just
now posting this month's song.  sorry about that...  

but here it is.  hopefully it will have been worth the
wait.  i think i could analyze this one to death but
had to stop or it would have been july's song of the
month and june would have gone song-less.

some of you recommended that i post the analysis here.
 so here it is... while i don't think it's one of my
better ones, i'm hoping that you guys can help to
improve upon it and shed some fresh light on the
subject.

if you'd rather visit the site to view it, the address
is:
http://www.geocities.com/strider_1892/songs/achilles.html

so here we go!

STRIDER'S JUNE 2001 SONG:
ACHILLES' LAST STAND 
General Background 

I spent a whole lot of May in my car, driving across
the great state of Pennsylvania, playing my music too
loud on my tempermental speakers and somewhere in
between Wheeling and Lover, I came to the conclusion
that out of all of Led Zeppelin songs, one of their
best driving songs is Achilles Last Stand. That's
actually kind of ironic (in the Alanis Morrisette
definition of the word) because it's a song about
Robert's trip to Greece and the near-tragic car
accident that occurred while he was vacationing there.

It's a great song; it's got this speed and intensity
in the drumming, this urgency and near-frustration in
the guitar line that drives along at breakneck speeds.
At the same time, it's so much more than just your
usual driving song. It's a song about humanity, about
Robert's encounter with fate, and the realization that
even heros have an Achilles heel. Achilles Last Stand
has a story inspired by Homer (no, not Homer Simpson).
It parallels a Greek tragedy and alludes to more
mythology than you can shake a stick at. With Robert
at the helm, the Illiad never sounded so good.

So this month, let's go back to the time where a face
could launch a thousand ships, when soothsayers knew
what was coming, and when heros threw lightening
bolts. Let's take a road trip aboard the S. S.
Cavalier to ancient Greece and discuss Achilles Last
Stand. Put on your seatbelts, kids; it's a wild ride.

Historical Background 

According to Steve "the Lemon" Sauer's On this Day in
Led Zeppelin History, Robert, his wife Maureen, their
two children and Jimmy's daughter Scarlet were on
holiday in Greece. They planned a day out in Rhodes,
and rented a car on the 4th of August, 1975. "[T]he
car, driven by Maureen, skidded on the narrow road and
slammed into a tree."

While Maureen's injuries were the worst ["she went
through a lengthy period of concussions and sustained
a fractured skull, four fractures in her pelvis, and
her leg was broken in several places. She also endured
facial lacerations. She was losing much blood quickly
and needed a certain type that was not available in
Greece" (On this Day in Led Zeppelin History)],
Robert's ankle was severely broken. He was unable to
walk and was confined to a wheelchair for a long time
after the accident.

Literary Background 

I won't go too deep into mythology just now; Homer did
a pretty good job of that already (you can find links
at the bottom of this page if you really want to know
more). But it is important to know a little bit about
the hero Achilles before we begin our journey.
According to legend, Achilles' mother (Thetis) wanted
him to be immortal and therefore dipped him in the
river Styx (it was a river before it was a band... go
figure) which apparantly would have done the trick.
Unfortunately, she held him by his ankle, which did
not get wet, and proved to be his fatal flaw (as all
flaws in Greek mythology prove to be).

It's no coincidence that Robert's muse should have
been Achilles. He chose Achilles because of the
similarities he drew between himself and this Greek
hero. Achilles was god-like, yet not a god. He was
famous for his bravery in battles. His heroic legend
lay before him and stretched across continents long
before he set foot on foreign soil. But Robert also
chose him because Achilles was still a human,
conquered only by being wounded in the ankle. While
Robert's injury didn't end in death, as did Achilles',
he was confined to a wheelchair because of it and was
reminded of his mortality.

Song Analysis 

The song begins out of nowhere with an arpeggiating
guitar. It grows and swells and then is taken over by
the insistant pace of Bonzo's drumming that does not
let up. It's urgent and demands attention. Then Robert
begins the story of his trip to Greece. 

It was an April morning
When they told us we should go.
And as I turn to you, you smiled at me.
How could they say no?
Whoa, the fun to have;
To live the dreams we've always had.
Whoa, the songs to sing
When we at last return again.

When I look at the lyrics and listen to the song, I
like to think of him actually telling this story to a
bunch of friends, maybe around a fireplace in the dead
of winter. He becomes Homer, the blind poet, telling
the tales of great men who travelled far and wide and
struggled against fate and humanity. And as all great
story tellers, he begins at the very beginning, when
he and Maureen decided to travel to Greece to see the
world and find some remote corner of society where he
would be inspired to write great songs and tell
amazing stories. Of course, the great songs and
amazing stories that came out of the adventure were
not as Robert anticipated, but then, as we will find
out, that's the whole point of the song.

And Achilles Last Stand reads just like an adventure
Odysseus would have undertaken. Robert's familiarity
with his subject is, once again, laudable. I'm sure I
could go deeper into the parallels between this song
and Homer's great epic poems, but it's been awhile
since I've read the Illiad and the Odyssey. I'll
update as I learn.

Swept New York a glancing kiss
To those who claim they know.
Below the streets that steam and hiss;
The devil is in his home.
Oh, to sail away,
To sandy lands and other days.
Oh, to touch the dream,
That hides inside and never is seen, yeah.

Anyone who has ever flown internationally out of
LaGuardia will know that it is actually a recreation
of Dante's hell. You leave the seemingly innocent
ticket counter and you walk and walk and walk. You
follow the concentric circles that take you down into
the underbelly of the airport. It gets hotter and
there are more people, all rushing, all carrying their
most prized possessions, yet you keep walking. The
restaurants and deli counters get sketchier and the
coffee stands thin out. There's graffitti on the walls
and nobody really makes eye contact with anyone else.
There are riots (OK, maybe not real riots...) and it's
hot, and, well, you get the picture. It's Dante's
hell, folks. S-C-A-R-Y.

When you actually get on your airplane, it is such a
relief to kiss that place goodbye; to look out the
window after you've finally taken off (I'm sorry, but
how can it be that I'm always 36th in line for take
off? Is that insanity or what??) and watch La Guardia
and Manhattan and New York get smaller and smaller.
You feel as if your adventure has already begun and
you have just defeated an overwhelming enemy by
getting out of the LaGuardia airport. You relax and
look forward to landing somewhere else.

I've read various versions of those lines in this
verse; I don't really know what I hear anymore. I
think that it's what I've written: "Below the streets
that steam and hiss/ Devil is in his home." But I also
hear "Devil is in this hole," only I don't think of
New York as a hole, so I prefer "home." The website
named Achilles Last Stand says that the words are: "To
know the shrieks the seaman hears/ The devil is in his
home." I like that interpretation, mostly because the
reference to "the seaman" recalls the Odyssey, thereby
rounding out the Greek theme to the song. But it
doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense.

Again, in the end of this verse, Robert remembers his
anticipation for adventure. It's like the excitement
Odesseus would have felt before setting sail for a new
horizon: "Oh to touch the dream/ That hides inside and
never is seen." And that's what we all feel and hope
for when we go away on vacation, right? We hope to
find another part of ourselves that we didn't know
existed. We hope to be moved to action, to think
deeper and feel more global. We want to go home and
tell everybody all about it. But the things that make
it an adventure are the things we can never plan for.

Into the sun, the south and north,
Lies a burst of hope.
The shackles of commitments fell
In pieces on the ground.
Oh, to ride the wind,
To tread the air above the din.
Whoa, to laugh aloud,
With dancing lights above crowd, yeah.

It's difficult to analyze a song when the lyrics
aren't too clear. I don't know exactly what I hear and
half the time make up gobbledygook lyrics that sound
OK but really make no sense and are quite amusing when
I think about them. The above is an amalgamation of
the lyrics from the website Achilles Last Stand and
The Led Zeppelin Website. I don't know that I
necessarily hear these lines in this way, because I
can't make any real sense of them, so I'm open to
other suggestions, alternative lyrics, or new
gobbledygook ones that will serve as entertainment on
my next car trip.

I can make sense of the third and fourth lines,
however. They are an allusion to the prehistoric
landmark of Rhodes, the destruction of which is
parallel to Achilles' downfall and Robert's accident.
Rhodes is famous for it's Colossus, one of the seven
wonders of the world. The Colossus was a huge bronze
statue constructed in around 282BC to honor the god
Helios. It stood at the harbor and was enormous. When
the earthquake of 226BC (remember that one? No? Me
neither.) hit Rhodes, the statue broke at its weakest
point, the knee. For a long time the Colossus lay "in
pieces on the ground" in the harbor at Rhodes.

Fate and mother nature toppled this enormous statue
because of its weak point. Fate and a crafty archer
felled Achilles because of his one fatal flaw. Fate's
a strong thing. It sees past bronze and strength and
fame. Fate found Robert on Rhodes.

To seek the man whose pointing hand
The giant step unfolds.
With guidance from the curving path
That churns up into stone.
If one bell should ring
In celebration for a king.
So fast the heart should beat
As proud the head with heavy feet, yeah.


According to On this Day in Led Zeppelin History,
Robert took this trip to Greece to find the road less
travelled. "'I'd been there before with my wife,
Maureen, and I'd started to touch beyond the usual
clip-cloppity, 'This way mister, this way mister,'
kinds of places,' he said" (On this Day in Led
Zeppelin History). Like most tourist, he had visions
of finding places that no one had seen; he was
"seek[ing]the man whose pointing hand/ The giant step
unfolds."

The roads in Greece are very winding and curving. They
are beautiful but dangerous. The farther off the main
highway you get, the more perilous they become. He
found that the roads on this remote part of Rhodes
were like this: dangerously winding. And instead of
finding "the giant step" that nobody has taken, his
car crashed against the dangerously narrow and rocky
roadway. Robert's description of the accident is
vague; he says only that the "curving path/ ...churns
up into stone." But that is enough to convey the
image. The defeat is the important part of the song,
not the accident itself. Instead of finding that
solitude and inspiration, he found pain and terror.

Robert's speaks of his pain throughtout this song. He
doesn't dwell on the physical anguish, but alludes to
his mortality, to the fact that he could not walk
after the accident. In the previous verse, he wishes
to "ride the wind/ To tread the air above the din." In
this verse he mentions "heavy feet" in association
with pride (one of the seven deadly sins, might I
add). 

I bet my degree in English literature that the lines,
"If one bell should ring/ A celebration for a king" is
a reference to some piece of literature but for the
life of me I can't remember what. If anyone out there
knows, give me a hint. Until then, I'll keep looking.

Days went by and you and I
Made an eternal summer's glow.
As far away and distant
Our mutual time to grow.
Oh the sweet refrain
Soothes the soul and calms the pain:
Oh Albion remains, sleeping now to rise again. 

So Maureen was airlifted to London and Robert, because
of his tax exile, had to stay in Jersey. What was
meant to be a summer spent together, was a summer
spent alone, wounded in a hospital or recouperating in
a wheelchair. Robert has said of the tax exile
situation that it was "very sad . . . to have to leave
one's own country for the sake of money. The
government in England is almost saying, 'Well, never
mind, they'll come back you know, they're English and
they'll come home.' And they're damn right the number
of times we have come so close to getting on a plane
and going home. The spirit of Albion is really
embedded in everybody's soul" (On this Day in Led
Zeppelin History).

His only comfort is in the refrain "Albion remains,
sleeping now to rise again." Just as Albion, the
legendary England from the days of King Arthur is only
sleeping and will eventually return, so he will walk
again, he will see his wife again, he will travel
again.


I love the guitar line in the section between this
verse and the next. The bass, the guitar in the
background, the keyboard, the music itself
progressively climbs the scale. Above that is this
amazing guitar line going the other way, down the
scale. It's dischordant and painful... but in a good
way. It makes the music of the song so deep and
interesting. It holds it together with it's threat to
blow it all apart.

Wondering and wandering.
What place to rest the search?
The mighty arms of Atlas
Hold the heavens from the earth.

In the end, Robert takes us back to Homer who taught
the world about the heart of a hero, the soul of a
wanderer. You can go to the ends of the earth and hear
the song of the Sirens, you can travel through Scylla
and Charybdis and survive, fate can shoot you in your
weak spot with an arrow you never expected. And in the
end, the will of the traveller forces him on, tells
him to keep "wondering and wandering" and to continue
the search. In the end, our destiny is out of our
hands.

When I went to Greece back in the early Spring of
1997, I had my fair share of hardships. While my
problems don't even come close to Robert's, it was a
trying trip. El Nino was wreaking havoc in Europe and
it was freezing cold the entire six weeks I was there.
It actually hailed on Naxos while I was there; there's
not too much to do on some of those Grecian islands
besides hang out on the beach. Hail doesn't really
allow for sunbathing. The cold weather caused all
sorts of chaos with transportation and I found myself
sitting in more coffee shops than I anticipated.

I nicknamed that trip the "You Can't Always Get What
You Want" trip. Because sometimes you go places, in
search of a great time, a suntan, and some cute native
boys, and instead, it snows. Sometimes you take on an
adventure only to be defeated, incapacitated for
awhile. Sometimes you've got big plans, but fate has
even bigger plans for you, plans you can't foresee.
It's how you deal with fate that makes the trip
worthwhile. It's that you can't always get what you
want, you can't always sing the songs you planned on
writing, you can't always find what you were looking
for. But if you try sometimes, you find you get what
you need. You get to know yourself a whole lot more.
You wrap yourself in another language, encircled by
smoke rings and warm cups of coffee. You take the back
roads because the main road is closed. You see parts
of the world no tourist has seen. You get reminded
that you are only human. You write an amazing song
that you never imagine you'd write.

Other Commentaries 

If you have any additional comments or viewpoints on
That's the Way, please write me at
strider_1892@xxxxxxxxxx Thanks for reading!

- -strider