John Paul Jones then establish a driving hard rock rhythm that persists throughout the song. After the long introductory riff is played four times, Plant begins singing. His vocal sections are broken up by brief instrumental passages, and Page adds the first of several overdubbed guitar parts. At 3:42, the song shifts, and Page plays his first solo. In addition to a change in tempo, the section includes breaks and a switch to 5/4 time, with the rest notated in 4/4 time in the key of E minor with a moderately-fast tempo of 146 beats per minute. When the vocals return, Page adds more guitars. After a brief slide-guitar part, Plant begins an Eastern-influenced scat-style vocal. At 8:25, Page plays a second solo with more overdubbed parts; a minute and a half later, the song winds down with chords echoing the opening. After extensive rehearsals in Los Angeles, Led Zeppelin went to Munich to record Presence at Musicland Studios. They recorded the basic tracks for "Achilles Last Stand" during early sessions on 12 November 1975. For the first time during a recording, Jones plays an eight-string bass guitar with a pick. He said that it added more mid-range presence during Page's high-register guitar solos; although Page objected at first, he soon recognized the effectiveness of Jones' innovation. Jones also uses a heavy metal gallop, a rhythmic figure in which an eighth note is followed by two sixteenth notes. To balance the sound, a second bass line was recorded; Popoff describes it as "a more traditional bass track, more elliptical and rife with pregnant pauses, simultaneously lying across the gallop and wholly independent of it." Without the rest of the group, Page recorded all the guitar overdubs in one evening: "There must be half a dozen going at once. I knew that every guitar overdub had to be very important, very strong within itself to identify each section." The recording for Presence was completed on 27 November 1975, 15 days after the group laid down the basic tracks for "Achilles Last Stand". Page produced the album, with Keith Harwood providing the audio engineering. Release and performance Swan Song Records released Led Zeppelin's seventh studio album Presence on 31 March 1976, with "Achilles Last Stand" its opening track. Although the album initially sold well, it was ultimately not a great success for the group. There was no tour to support the album,