‘Rockestra Theme’: The song that almost caused a lawsuit between John Bonham and Paul McCartney
Rock and roll has never been known to be the nicest genre in the world. As much as fans love singing along to the lyrics of their favourite songs, there’s almost a 50/50 chance that some of their favourite rockers from yesteryear haven’t been the most upstanding members of society behind the scenes. While Paul McCartney was the exception to the rule in many respects, that didn’t mean that he didn’t have some of the biggest names coming for his ass when he did them wrong.
Then again, McCartney always seemed to be cordial with the people that he worked with. There were a handful of times where he could do som shitty things like recording Beatles songs by himself, by that was always more of a case of him having the right feel for the song than deliberately wanting to step on anyone’s toes when he went to the studio. Once he went solo, though, he needed to learn the meaning of collaboration a lot quicker.
It was still understood that Wings was McCartney’s band, and most of the branding never let people forget it, but after albums like Wild Life, Band on the Run showed him to be more open to working with other songwriters, with Denny Laine getting his first writing credit on one of their albums with ‘No Words’.
But when you’re sitting next to one of the greatest songwriters of all time, it can get a bit hard trying to collaborate. As much as Wings at the Speed of Sound may be the definitive Wings because of everyone’s involvement, you can’t help but wonder if it would have been better had Macca penned all the tunes and known better than to give his bandmates something that they weren’t capable of doing.
When working on the album, McCartney did strike up a friendship with John Bonham, who played drums on a demo of the song ‘Beware My Love’. So by the time McCartney had the idea of making an entire orchestra of rock musicians together for one track, he knew that Bonzo would have to lead the charge.
Despite ‘Rockestra Theme’ having enough star power to make ‘We Are the World’ look tame, McCartney remembered Bonzo having a problem with all of the cameras in the studio at the time, saying, “I asked the fellow who was going to film if he could film it like they film wildlife. If everyone notices the cameras and lights, they all freeze up and won’t talk naturally, and they all get embarrassed. So they put all the cameras behind a big wall, and no one could see the cameras, and a lot of them didn’t even know it was being filmed. John Bonham had no idea it was filmed… in fact, he is suing us!’”
While Bonham never seemed to pursue any feasible form of legal action, it hardly really mattered. McCartney got what he needed out of the footage, and looking at all of them working together on the final product, it’s easy to hear the pure joy coming out of everyone from Pete Townshend to David Gilmour as they look at their heroes standing shoulder to shoulder with them during every take.
If anything, seeing Bonham in this state makes him even more endearing to fans. Peter Grant always liked to keep a certain mystique around Led Zeppelin whenever they weren’t onstage, but it’s nice to know that many of them could be insecure the same way any other musician could.
