Remember Zeptember

In this issue:

• John Bonham: 30 Years Gone but Not Forgotten

• Latest Edition of TBL Now Available

John Bonham: 30 Years Gone but Never Forgotten

A flailing John Bonham behind his drum kit during a Led Zeppelin performance, circa 1973. Bonham is rightly considered one of, or perhaps THE, greatest drummers in the history of rock’n’roll. Promotional postcard created by Atlantic Records from The Frank Reddon Collection, courtesy of Enzepplopedia Archives.

John Henry Bonham was born on May 31, 1948. He seemed destined to play drums from the start. As a very young child, he banged away on his mum’s pots and pans. He even stretched wires across old bath salt cans to add to his kit!

After he left school, he went into the building trade with his father but always played drums on the side. In 1966, he gigged in the Band of Joy, with future Led Zeppelin band-mate, Robert Plant.

For more details about those early days, see our web pages of Bonham and Plant.

By August of 1968, Jimmy Page had recruited the line-up for his new group, Led Zeppelin: Page on guitar, Bonham on drums, Plant as vocalist and John Paul Jones on bass guitar and keyboards. Jones was committed to some studio session work for American singer, PJ Proby before he could go on tour. He enlisted his new band-mates’ help to play on that album as session musicians. It was a great opportunity for Led Zeppelin’s new members to earn some extra cash, as well as get to know each other musically.

On one track in particular, called George Wallace is Rolling in this Morning, John Bonham and Jimmy Page steal the show away from vocalist PJ Proby, as Page rips off a white-hot solo with Bonham in percussive pursuit!

This John Henry Bonham bootleg contains tracks from PJ Proby’s Three Week Hero album that the members of Led Zeppelin played on. Among the songs from Proby’s album on this one are Jim’s Blues and George Wallace is Rolling in this Morning. The boot also showcases other session contributions from Bonzo, including for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Rockestra Theme. There’s a who’s who of early rockers featured on this bootleg! David Gilmour, Paul McCartney, Screaming Lord Sutch, Kenney Jones, Pete Townshend, Roy Wood, Noel Redding, PJ Proby, Ronnie Laine, Hank Marvin and, of course, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. Photo courtesy of L.A. Reddon. Used with permission, Enzepplopedia Publishing, Inc.

Page’s former band, The Yardbirds, had dissolved but still had a contractual obligation to a short Scandinavian tour in September. He and manager, Peter Grant, decided to have the soon-to-be Led Zeppelin line-up perform as The New Yardbirds, to take advantage of the popularity of the “old” Yardbirds.

Jimmy had been impressed with the band’s chemistry from the start, at their first rehearsal in London, in August 1968. This Scandinavian tour would show him what his new band could do. Their first-ever public performance was at Gladsaxe Teen Club in Copenhagen, Denmark on September 7.

As The New Yardbirds played that fall in Scandinavia, Jimmy Page felt that John Bonham was over playing. When Bonzo didn’t let his volume subside, Page was not impressed and asked Peter Grant to have a word with the new guy and let it be known that he’d be gone if he didn’t tone it down!

Obviously, détente was reached because Bonham continued playing with Led Zeppelin from 1968 until his untimely death in 1980.

Over the years, there have been many excellent drummers on the rock scene: Keith Moon (The Who), Ginger Baker (Cream), Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones), Ringo Starr (The Beatles). Yet among all that talent, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin is considered to be one of – if not arguably THE - greatest of all time. What made his playing so special?

He was a physically strong percussionist. As Jimmy Page discovered to his initial chagrin, Bonzo could bludgeon the drums to create a thunderstorm of sound. Phil Daum, who attended one of Zeppelin’s earliest North American concerts (at Vancouver, British Columbia’s Pacific Auditorium on December 28, 1968) told me that he was quite a distance from the stage (and there to see Vanilla Fudge!) but when John Bonham hit the skins for the first time, “Immediately, it was like a tidal wave hit you! It blew me away instantly. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen and heard start up. I and everybody else in the place were so amazed. Who were these guys, anyway?”.

The next instant, you could barely hear him. His control of the dynamics was absolute. According to a professional percussionist whose house band opened for Zeppelin at the Fillmore West on many occasions, Duane Temme, “Bonham could increase and abate his volume at will. He was a very intuitive drummer.”

Like Jones and Plant, Bonham shared Jimmy Page’s vision of what the group could be. That united goal would allow the considerable talents of all four band members to shine individually yet make the group itself greater than the sum of those individual parts.

The main role of any drummer is to keep time and maintain the rhythm for the rest of the band. While Page and Plant were most influenced by world music, the blues and early rock’n’roll, Bonham and John Paul Jones were both enamoured of soul and Motown. This allowed the two to “lock in” and blend together beautifully to provide a rock-solid rhythm section for Page and Plant to improvise on top of. The leads had no worries because they could trust JPJ and Bonzo to back them up.

Their swing/soul band influence also allowed the bottom-end pair of them to improvise on their own. Rather than just keep strict time, Bonham would throw in ornamental frills and fills that complemented what the others were doing.

Soul and swing may have been his first loves, but John Bonham had a command of all genres including rock and blues. He could lay down solid, yet highly inventive, tracks even taking on a lead position at times! This, more than any other trait, defines him as an innovative percussionist capable of tremendous improvisation. The early bootleg recordings from Led Zeppelin’s First U.S. and Canadian Tour of 1968-’69 are proof. The four members communicated almost telepathically, to create staggering results.

Bonham’s drum solos were among the highlights of those early (and later) Led Zeppelin concerts. On that First Tour, he performed Pat’s Delight, in tribute to his wife. The song ran about 6 minutes in concert. Just as Jimmy Page visually and sonically stunned early audiences by bowing his guitar, Bonham thrilled them by playing the skins with his bare hands. He would do this as Pat’s Delight evolved into his trademark solo, Moby Dick, which was recorded on the 1969 official release of Led Zeppelin II.

To get a sense of Bonham’s incredible ability, watch his Moby Dick solo from the film, The Song Remains The Same. You’ll see how exciting and ferociously talented he was, when playing with his bare hands…not to mention when he was using his drumsticks. His sound was so huge, Jimmy Page has been quoted as saying he’d come off-stage and his ears would be singing from the merciless thwacking of Bonham’s drumming.

Along with Led Zeppelin’s music, Bonham’s individual talents blossomed, expanded and evolved over the years while recording and touring with the band. By the late 1970s, his drum solo, Moby Dick, would often go on for a half hour or longer. By that time, he had added synthesized drum effects, keeping up with the technology of the day, for even spacier, innovative percussion effects.

Of all the great rock’n’roll drummers, John Bonham is still one of the most studied, emulated and revered. His playing on Led Zeppelin’s albums, is as fresh and exciting as the day it was recorded.

How the West Was Won – a 2003 audio recording engineered by Eddie Kramer – demonstrates just how spectacular John Bonham truly was in concert.

Do you remember where you were the day you learned the sad news of John Bonham’s passing? I sure do.

I was in my high school math class when Kerry, the kid in front of me, asked, “Did you hear? John Bonham died.” This was about one o’clock in the afternoon. I was in shock and couldn’t believe it. I’d been getting more and more into Zeppelin in the late 1970s and was finally going to have my chance to see the band at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium on November 4, 1980. I’d really been looking forward to it.

Although I didn’t feel up to it, I went home and then to my after-school job at a local dairy factory. I was working in the back, washing equipment, listening to 97 Rock, the local radio station from Buffalo, New York, where I had hoped to see Bonham perform with Led Zeppelin in a couple months’ time.

All evening, the tributes poured in and the station played Zeppelin’s music all night. So many of the songs I’ve loved all these years take me back to that horrible day and night of September 25, 1980.

Everybody knew that Led Zeppelin would never be the same without Bonzo but we all wondered what the band would do. Finally, in December, Led Zeppelin announced that the group wasn’t Led Zeppelin without him and it officially came to an end.

Incredibly, 30 years have passed since then. The recorded legacy of Led Zeppelin, both official and bootleg, shows a body of work that is absolutely brilliant. John Bonham was a huge part of that with innovative playing that continues to delight millions even today.

John’s son, Jason Bonham, has kept up the family tradition. On December 10, 2007, he appeared with surviving members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones for an historic rock reunion at the O2 Arena in London, England. How entirely appropriate that the talented son of John Bonham should be sitting behind the drum kit as his father once did. No doubt John Bonham would have been proud to have had his talented son conjure up the past magic that was Led Zeppelin live.

In further tribute to his Dad, and with the blessing of the latter’s band-mates, Jason is now taking his “Led Zeppelin Experience” on tour to critical and popular acclaim.

RIP John Bonham and may your song always remain the same.

The Essential Zep Read: Tangible, Collectible, Re-readable! 40,000 word packed edition featuring:

• Jimmy Page: The Visual Autobiography – Exclusive preview Robert Plant & The Band of Joy - Extensive coverage of the BoJ tour and album
• John Bonham Remembered by Jason Bonham. 30 years gone plus the fans’ reaction –Gary Davies and Dave Lewis reflect on the impact and aftermath of September 25, 1980
• Black Country Communion - Keeping The Faith with Glenn, Joe & Jason –exclusive interviews with today’s hottest rock supergroup
• Zep Summer of ’70 Tour Log - Tracking the Zep concert trail of 40 years ago from Iceland to Milwaukee
• Plus Latest John Paul Jones News - Nick Kent Interview Part 2, CD reviews, latest news and more.

Order your copy of Led Zeppelin history at Tight But Loose!

Until next month - "ROCKtober" - thanks for reading!

Reminders

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