‘For Your Life’: The song Led Zeppelin never performed with John Bonham
There is an old rock and roll joke, popularised by This Is Spinal Tap, that all drummers are expendable and replaceable. For many bands, that joke likely rings true. After all, if the songs are being written by the blokes playing guitar and singing at the front of the stage, who is going to notice a different person sitting behind the sticks, way in the back? For other bands, though, their drummers formed an integral part of their inherent sound. Led Zeppelin, for instance, could not have existed without the pioneering sounds of John Bonham.
When the Redditch-born drummer auditioned to join the ranks of Jimmy Page’s newly established band in the late 1960s, it became immediately clear that the sound of Led Zeppelin rested heavily on his distinctive playing style. Gaining a reputation for his awe-inspiringly fast, powerful sound, Bonham helped to carve out the sound of hard rock and metal drumming, inspiring countless future artists in the process.
Across all of Led Zeppelin’s records, along with their countless now-iconic live performances, Bonham’s drumming stood out as a noticeable highlight. Throughout the tenure of the band, Bonzo rose to become one of the world’s very best rock and roll drummers, and even when Jimmy Page’s songwriting took a turn for the worse, Bonham managed to add something of value to Zeppelin’s records.
So essential was Bonham to the inherent sound of Led Zeppelin that, when the drummer sadly passed away in September 1980, the group disbanded for good. While other bands might attempt to cast a new drummer and carry on with their plans of world domination, Zeppelin understood that Bonham was too integral to their sound to be replaced by anybody else. Never mind the fact that few, if any, rock drummers would be strong enough to step into his vacant shoes.
Despite repeated calls for reunion tours, Led Zeppelin has performed only a handful of times since the death of Bonham. At Live Aid in 1985, the band were joined by Phil Collins and Chic’s Tony Thompson on drums in Bonham’s absence, and the results were as disastrous as you would expect. So, in subsequent performances, Jason Bonham, son of John, took on the mantle of being Zeppelin’s drummer.
Perhaps the most notable post-Bonham Led Zeppelin performance occurred in 2007 at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, paying tribute to the record executive who signed the band back in the 1970s. Jason Bonham played with the band during that legendary reunion concert, during which he managed to pay faithful homage to his own father, even taking on a track which his old man had never performed live before.
Taken from 1976’s Presence, ‘For Your Life’ was reportedly written about an acquaintance of Robert Plant who became overly reliant on drugs. The song itself is not exactly a stand-out track from the underwhelming album, which is perhaps why the band never performed the song during their live performances. The song’s distinctive drumbeat never got the opportunity to be blasted out live by John Bonham, but the song did feature in the setlist of the band’s 2007 reunion in London.
So, while Bonham’s iconic playing style can certainly not be replicated, his son has managed to pay respect to that drumming aptitude on multiple occasions, even boldly going where his father never did. The band’s few reunion shows have always been incredibly successful, but a full-scale tour will likely never happen. At the end of the day, you cannot have Led Zeppelin without John Bonham.
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