The John Bonham beat Dave Grohl didn’t believe was human: “It can’t be”
It’s not too often that you can describe a musician with one word, then call him the complete opposite of that word one sentence later and still compliment him both times. That’s the ballet of fanboy linguistics that Dave Grohl pulled off a while back while listing off his all-time favourite John Bonham beats.
Grohl, to be fair, does a marvellous job—perhaps only as an accomplished drummer/songwriter could—of trying to give a sense of colour and character to Bonham’s playing, which operates on a primal wavelength not always translatable to the spoken word. Just about every rock drummer since 1969 has taken at least one stylistic string from Bonzo’s bow, whether they otherwise considered themselves a Led Zeppelin fan or not. Grohl, as a Zeppelin fan, a drummer, and a Bonham worshipper, took a whole quiver-full.
“John Bonham is the greatest rock drummer of all time,” Grohl proclaimed in Mojo. “Bonham played directly from the heart. His drumming was by no means perfect, but when he hit a groove it was so deep it was like a heartbeat. He had this manic sense of cacophony, but he also had the ultimate feel. He could swing, he could get on top, or he could pull back.”
Bonham is known best for his power and a tad less for his precision, but as Grohl notes, having the rhythm of a heartbeat means just that—dependability with an undercurrent of vulnerability, prone to react to external emotional stimuli while still keeping the blood moving.
On the classic Led Zeppelin track ‘When the Levee Breaks’, for example, which begins with arguably the hardest-hitting, coolest sounding drum beat in rock history, Bonham’s playing is “purely human”, according to Grohl. “So fuckin’ smooth, man! It’s pure chocolate fuckin’ sex. This is the best groove of all time—better than any James Brown track.”
Just moments before discussing ‘When the Levee Breaks’, though, Grohl had offered his thoughts about Bonham’s playing on a later track, ‘Achilles Last Stand’, taken from 1976’s Presence LP. And this time, rather than equating Bonzo to something “human” in its purest form, he flips that idea upside down, almost questioning whether an actual human could even produce this sort of sound.
“This song has some fireworks, and it’s a good example of Bonham’s reckless side,” Grohl said of ‘Achilles’. “You can tell he’s taking chances as the tape rolls. There’s an amazing kick-drum pattern that propels the track. There’s one fill right after the first verse that just doesn’t sound humanly possible.”
And thus we have the cymbal-smashing paradox of John Bonham laid out in its clearest terms: he is the personified heartbeat of flesh-and-blood man, and yet also something akin to a Bladerunner android, more human than human—too good to be a realistic aspirational figure for the world’s young drummers.
The argument has often been made that the magic of the Bonham Sound owes less to John Bonham himself and more to a secret mix of clever studio techniques—microphone placement, mixing tricks, and the like. Dave Grohl, who’s well-versed in all those production tactics, isn’t having it. For him, it’s clear that Bonham’s brilliance came from the man himself. “Every producer and drummer in the world has tried to recapture the John Bonham sound, but it’s impossible,” he said. “Drums are an acoustic instrument and how they sound depends on how you touch them.”
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