Phil Collins’ favourite song by Led Zeppelin: “A standing ovation”
Phil Collins knows more than a thing or two about Led Zeppelin. After all, he was an honorary member of the band for a brief Live Aid reunion that he won’t have forgotten—the world certainly hasn’t, ascribing it as perhaps the most disastrous comeback in rock ‘n’ roll history.
Collins had big shoes to fill, and Jimmy Page thought he took up the late John Bonham’s mantle about as well as David Moyes stepping in for Sir Alex Fergusson, “Robert told me Phil Collins wanted to play with us. I told him that was all right if he knows the numbers,” he said. “But at the end of the day, he didn’t know anything. We played ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ and he was just there bashing away cluelessly and grinning. I thought that was really a joke.”
Collins felt this joke unfurling in real time, but he insists he wasn’t the punchline. “If I could have walked off, I would have done,” the drummer explained. “It was a disaster, really. Robert wasn’t match-fit with his voice and Jimmy was out of it, dribbling. It wasn’t my fault it was crap.” All in all, the whole thing was a horrible ordeal, so it says a lot that Collins still loves the band’s music and isn’t too scarred to hail its most sensational moments.
In fact, he was inspired to become in a drummer in the first place thanks to John Bonham. “Now, when I was growing up – obviously, growing up as a drummer – there were quite a few drummers that caught my fancy over the years. Ringo to Charlie Watts to Ginger Baker to Keith Moon. But one of the finest, I think, drummers I’ve ever heard, and the first drummer I ever gave a standing ovation to was John Bonham,” he said when selecting his favourite tracks for iTunes.
For the former Genesis man, the stand-out moment where Bonham perfectly came together with his bandmates was the stirring blues epic, ‘When The Levee Breaks’. He went even further on another occasion and claimed, “It’s probably one of the best drum recordings ever made in pop music.” The power of the beat might catch the ear, but Collins says it has got it all: ”It’s just groove, sound, attitude.”
That sound in question is borne from Bonham placing his drums in the stairway of the grand old building where they were recording. This gave his beat a cavernous wallop that cuts right through the mix. But perhaps more importantly than that, it also mystically honours the history of the song. ‘When The Levee Breaks’ is an old blues anthem, and the echoey nature of the recording sounds like the track’s past howling from within the new interpretation.
It makes for a profound recording that still softens the blow of a disastrous moment in Collins’ lauded career. In his view, he wouldn’t have been on the stage to flop in 1985 without it, and there are two ways to look at that. Thankfully, the cheery drummer chooses to see the bright side of it.
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