The musician John Bonham always wanted to drum with: “He is just like me”
Some drummers are great at following the rules, but then you have others who take the rule book, rip it up and rewrite it in their own image. John Bonham was an example of the latter.
Everything had to fall into place for Led Zeppelin to be the cultural phenomenon that they eventually became. The first thing that needed to happen was that Jimmy Page needed to work as a session musician for a number of years. By working with different artists in the studio and dabbling in various genres, he was subject to the different styles and sounds that he would implement into Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin appealed to fans of rock music because of how well they managed to expand a genre that they were already in love with. There was no doubt that rock ‘n’ roll was doing well, but Led Zeppelin took that style and injected various other forms of music in a bid to make it something more exciting. It pricked the ears of anyone in range to hear, as songs took unexpected turns, leading to a sound as unpredictable as it was exciting.
Of course, it wasn’t enough for Jimmy Page to just be a fan of different styles of making music, but he needed to find band members who were capable of playing such music. These weren’t easy to come across, but he found them through a combination of chance, recommendations, and searches in the form of John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and John Bonham.
Each member brought their own unique edge to Led Zeppelin, which meant that the band had a real individuality. Every single person within Led Zeppelin was a true master at their instrument, and when they came together, they complemented one another as opposed to causing friction, which you often see when supergroups put their heads together.
While each member of Led Zeppelin was incredibly important to the sound of the band, there is no escaping the fact that the rhythm section was deeply impactful, given that they held the chaos together. It’s all well and good having Jimmy Page say that he wants to write an eight-minute song with five different genres involved, but you needed Bonham on the drums, seamlessly blurring the lines between these genres. He did what very few drummers were able to achieve with his unique approach to rhythm, and it ushered Led Zeppelin into the history books.
It’s for this reason that the band decided to stop playing once Bonham passed away. It didn’t feel right to keep the music playing when a large contributing factor towards it was no longer here. The only exceptions were a couple of reunion gigs Zeppelin did in aid of various charitable causes and memorials. One reunion had Phil Collins on drums, which didn’t work out well, but we’ll move past that. The reunion that was celebrated as a success had John Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham, on drums.
Jason is a drummer in his own right and has celebrated a fair amount of success as a result; however, for one night only, he channelled the essence of his Dad to give the public one more glimpse of Led Zeppelin. It was something that his Dad would have no doubt been deeply proud of, and as if a son picking up the sticks on behalf of his deceased parent isn’t a tear-jerker enough, the fact that the two never got to play live together, despite John saying how much he wanted to, is enough to really get the waterworks going.
“My son Jason – he plays, you know. I’ve got him a little Japanese drum kit, made to scale. It’s got a 14-inch bass drum. He’s got his mother’s looks, but in character, he is just like me,” John Bonham once said, concluding, “He’s always drumming, even when we go out in the car, he takes his sticks to bash on the seats. Before the end of Led Zeppelin, I’m going to have him on stage with us a the Albert Hall.”
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