The Led Zeppelin song Dave Grohl said no drummer will ever match
It is fair to say that Dave Grohl is a big fan of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. In 2010, the Foo Fighters frontman narrated a BBC Radio 6 documentary on Bonham, and he later wrote the forward for the 2021 book Beast: John Bonham And The Rise Of Led Zeppelin.
He has consistently called Bonham the greatest rock drummer of all time in interviews over the years, stating that “no one gets close to him”. In a 2005 edition of Mojo dedicated entirely to the late Led Zeppelin drummer, Grohl set out his ten favourite songs that showcase the full extent of the legendary drummer’s talents behind the kit.
Ranking ‘Achilles’ Last Stand’ from Led Zeppelin’s seventh album Presence in top spot, Grohl’s enthusiasm for Bonham’s playing was clear, as he wrote that “this song has some fireworks, and it’s a good example of Bonham’s reckless side. You can tell he’s taking chances as the tape rolls. There’s an amazing kick-drum pattern that propels the track. And there’s one fill right after the first verse that just doesn’t sound humanly possible”.
Other cuts that made the list included ‘Kashmir’ (“Bonham knew when to step up and shine. I love the way he lays the snare in there. It’s a straight backbeat throughout the song until he pulls off a signature kick-drum triplet”), ‘When the Levee Breaks’ (“That is a straight groove. It’s incredible to have a rock drummer that powerful, that crazy, that bad-ass, but with a groove so smooth”) and ‘Since I Been Loving You’ (“The swing in that song – it’s just so sad and beautiful. The drumming, it breaks my heart. It’s such passionate, feel playing”).
As well as name-checking the How the West Was Won live version of ‘Immigrant Song’, ‘Poor Tom’, ‘Trampled Underfoot’, ‘No Quarter’ and ‘The Wanton Song’, Grohl ranked ‘Moby Dick’, from 1969’s Led Zeppelin II, in tenth spot.
“What can I say? Fucking ‘Moby Dick’, man! You’ll never find another drummer willing to play a solo with his bare hands. I’ve tried and it hurts. You’d have to drink a bottle of vodka just to think about doing that.” Perhaps not the most appropriate analogy, as Bonham was found to have drunk around 40 shots – or between 1 and 1.5 litres – of vodka in the hours before his death from pulmonary aspiration, but even still, Bonham must have had a higher pain threshold than to play the drums with his hands. It was said that he would regularly slice his hands open on his high hat and cymbals when playing the song in concert and would continue to perform the solo with bleeding fingers.
Echoing the thoughts of anyone who’s ever heard a drummer get carried away and go off on an extended solo in concert, Grohl added in his Mojo list that “drum solos are usually just wank, crap, but the one in ‘Moby Dick’ is the greatest drum solo of all time.”
Grohl is not the only other rock drummer impressed with Bonham’s work on Moby Dick. Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain has said that, “John’s style was cutting edge. John was really the pioneer of the fast right foot, where he put a lot of doubles and played around with triplets on his bass drum and he does that a lot through ‘Moby Dick’. What astounded me was the speed and the way he would group the triplet around with the four-note group on the top of it.”
Needing such a combination of innovation, creativity and such a high pain threshold, it is no wonder that you don’t hear drumming like John Bonham’s every day.
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