Audio from the disastrous Led Zeppelin concert as John Bonham collapses
On June 27th, 1980, Led Zeppelin performed the shortest set of their entire career. John Bonham was to blame. The drummer collapsed after just three songs while performing with his bandmates at the Messezentrum Halle in Nuremberg, German. Here, you can listen to the footage of that 16-minute concert, which includes the moment Bonham lost control.
Led Zeppelin opened with ‘Train Kept a-Rollin’, an amped-up rock ‘n’ roller that had Bonham struggling to keep up. They then went into ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, which is when things started to unravel. Bonham, who had been seen crashing into his cymbals earlier that day, kept on falling behind the beat, much to the annoyance of Page.
Eventually, the guitarist was forced to address the issue: “There’s two of us tonight who aren’t feeling at all well,” he explained. A bit of stomach trouble, so we’re gonna do our best, whatever, as usual.” And with that, Led Zeppelin dived headfirst into a cover of Back Dog, and Page commented: “The next number sort of reflects how I’m feeling, and possibly the other member. It’s called ‘Black Dog’.”
By this point, Bonham was all over the place. He managed to keep it together until the very end of the track, at which point Page delivered a soaring solo intending to weave it into the intro of the following song, ‘In The Evening’ from In Through The Out Door. Sadly, it was at that moment that Bonham collapsed.
There was a pause while the rest of the band attempted to revive the drummer. Plant could see the audience was growing restless: “If you could, uh, just hold it a minute – no need to go crazy, pushing around. Hang on a tick.” He then proceeded to blame the delay on “a slight technical problem,” the problem being that Bonham – or so it is claimed – had eaten no less than 27 bananas earlier that day. “We just have a minute problem,” he continued. “So if you can wait patiently, we’d be very grateful. Hang on.”
The sad truth is that the whole banana electrolyte problem was almost certainly a cover-up story. Several witnesses recalled seeing Bonham stumble into the venue looking very drunk indeed. It’s perhaps even more telling that, just three months later, John Bonham died after consuming over 40 shots of vodka and choking on his own vomit. The signs were there.
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