John Bonham’s legendary response to being told he was “unrecordable”
Led Zeppelin wouldn’t work were it not for every single member playing their part. They’re truly a band that relied on one another more than any other musical outfit.
You needed Jimmy Page, as it was his experience as a session musician and his versatile approach to music that made Led Zeppelin move through multiple goddamn genres rather than just sticking to one specific sound. You then needed Robert Plant, who had a voice dynamic enough that he could straddle these various genres simply.
Then, if we divert our gaze towards the band’s rhythm section, John Paul Jones was deeply important as his level-headed approach to bass meant that the often chaotic style of Led Zeppelin was kept under some level of control. Finally, you had John Bonham, someone who took the rule book of drumming, ripped it up and then put it back together again, all in one swift movement.
Ever since he was a kid, it was clear to John Bonham’s parents that their son was going to be a prolific drummer. He would frequently bang pots and pans together, turning anything in his house that could be a percussive instrument into one. His parents conceded to his ambition, buying him his first drum kit when he was 15, a kit which Bonham said wasn’t quite up to scratch. “It was almost prehistoric,” he recalled, “Most of it was rust”.
It could well have been the case that the rust which covered his first drum kit helped to develop John Bonham’s aggressive playing style. He may have had to hit the kit a little bit harder in order to get a half-decent sound out of it, as one of the constants that followed Bonham’s playing style was how loud he was.
A family friend and neighbour, Garry Allcock, helped him develop his playing style from a young age and was surprised at just how hard Bonham hit the drums when he played them. “I never gave him lessons as such – I didn’t teach him at all – but we’d sit in the front room with sticks and a practice pad and I’d show him a few things,” Allcock recalled. “It was just a case of: do you know this one?”
He continued, “I remember him playing on one of my snare drums and me saying, ‘For Christ-sakes, John, take it steady!’ I thought he was going to knock it through the floorboards. He certainly hit hard.”
This aggression trickled down into his playing until he wound up recording songs in the studio. One of the pre-Led Zeppelin bands he played with was an outfit called A Way Of Life. Bonham was working with them in 1965, and they liked his drumming so much they asked him to be their permanent percussionist and brought him into the studio to help record some songs.
Bonham headed into Zella Studios with the band, where they had Johnny Haynes helping them record everything. When it came to laying down Bonham’s drums, Haynes hated how loud he used to play and described him as “unrecordable”.
Of course, the power of hindsight tells us that the aggressive and loud playing style of Bonham was something he became synonymous with. It’s a good job he ignored the criticism of Haynes, as if he started pulling back on his playing style, that balancing act that was Led Zeppelin would likely have never taken off. When Led Zeppelin released their first gold record, Bonham decided to send it back to Haynes, with a simple yet effective note that read: “Thanks for the advice”.
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