The best drum recording ever made, according to Phil Collins: “Something to behold”
After a childhood stage acting career in the mid-1960s, Phil Collins took up drumming full-time, making his early trails on the musical map with his school friend Ronnie Caryl in Flaming Youth. Still, he only broke through to global acclaim in July 1970, when he joined Genesis.
During his early years with Genesis, Collins joined the contemporaneous prog-rock wave, as led by bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. While he had been a huge fan of The Beatles and the band’s affable drummer, Ringo Starr, the 1970s were all about Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and Keith Moon of The Who.
Collins’ favourite drummers are the crème de la crème of the instrument and feature names that make it on every list of this kind that’s worth its salt. Even after the former Genesis man graduated to the front of the stage from the drumkit, he remained the drummer in the studio, and Collins’ switch to becoming a singer was a happy accident.
Collins was most attracted to Moon and Bonham’s explosive power, which gave a sturdy backbone to highly influential classic rock songs of the late 1960s and ‘70s. In 1978, Collins was prepared to drop out of Genesis to replace the recently deceased Moon in The Who. He allegedly made an offer to bandleader Pete Townshend, but Kenney Jones had already been offered the position.
Although Led Zeppelin surged onto the scene in 1969 with their stellar debut album, Collins had been aware of Bonham for some time before. “I saw John Bonham play at the Marquee Club with Tim Rose, who was an American singer, and he did this hit version of ‘Morning Dew’,” Collins said on BBC Radio 6 in 2016. “He was on tour and had this guy John Bonham on drums. I went to see Tim Rose, but when I saw Bonham, I had never seen anything like it.”
Continuing, Collins piled the praise onto one of his all-time favourites. “He had the best bass drum of anybody I’ve ever seen, and I became a convert there and then,” he added. “So I started to follow him wherever he was going to be playing in a band. Next time I saw him was with Led Zeppelin, when they were still called The New Yardbirds. The early Led Zeppelin was something to behold because nobody was doing that.”
Picking out ‘When the Levee Breaks’ from Led Zeppelin’s 1971 masterpiece fourth album as a personal favourite on the Celebrity Playlist Podcast, Collins hailed Bonham’s drumming prowess. “This track that I’ve chosen from Led Zeppelin just puts it all into perspective. It’s just groove, sound, attitude,” Collins praised. “It’s probably one of the best drum recordings ever made in pop music.”
Following Bonham’s tragic death in 1980, aged just 32, Led Zeppelin decided to disband. The group’s iconic frontman, Robert Plant, set off on a solo career in the 1980s and invited Collins to play during some of his early live shows.
In a 2023 interview with Vulture, Plant recalled Collins’ deep adoration for Bonham. “He came on tour with me and basically said, ‘Robert, the guy that sat behind you for all those years was my hero,’” the singer remembered. “That was it. He said, ‘Anything I can do to help you to get back into fighting shape again, I’m here.’ That was at the time when ‘In the Air Tonight’ came out. Yet he was still mixing and working with me while kicking off a particularly impressive and successful time.”
The impact of John Bonham on almost every single rock drummer the world has known since Bonzo burst onto the scene makes him an immeasurable talent. But what is often forgotten, as the thunderous boom of his performances rings loudest throughout his career, is his unique ear for what sounded good. Aided by Jimmy Page, Bonham would become the sound of a drumming generation.
Watch Phil Collins perform with the surviving members of Led Zeppelin at Live Aid 1985 below.
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