The 1970s pop album that John Bonham adored: “He loved that kind of vibe”
Led Zeppelin were never meant to play one style of rock music for the rest of their lives. The whole point behind the group was to have Jimmy Page move outside the confines of the usual rock and roll format, and if that meant having Eastern scales in their songs or stretching things out for eight minutes at a time, that was exactly what they were going to do. But as much as they loved learning from other exotic musical cultures, it always came back to the moments when John Bonham laid into the groove.
Because as much as the band have been classified as heavy metal, Bonzo is probably the best example of them not fitting neatly into that box. Sure, a lot of drummers may have cited him as an influence in the past, but listening to the way that he laid into the groove, he was far more interested in creating the kind of grooves that you would hear on the greatest records by people like James Brown.
It’s not by accident that a lot of his biggest inspirations were jazz drummers as well. The glory days of jazz drummers had turned every song into an endurance test half the time, but when it came time to rein things in and play softly, Bonham’s take on the famed ‘Purdie shuffle’ on ‘Fool in the Rain’ is one of the best examples of restraint from someone known for being a wild animal behind the kit.
And when it came to laying down a rhythm, no genre was kinder than R&B. Though the genre was still getting birthed by the time that Ray Charles had come along, the playing field had opened up considerably by the time Zeppelin came along, and when not beating the snot out of his kit, Bonham seemed far more interested in what bands like Hall and Oates were doing by the time he passed away.
Although the soul crooners were probably the last band people would think of when looking at Zeppelin, there’s a lot of groove hidden between their classic albums. As much as they might have liked to play it smooth every time they went in the studio, the kind of pocket on a track like ‘She’s Gone’ is still one of the best ways for people to get into a groove for the first time even if they don’t consider themselves percussionists.
While Bonham didn’t have long to capitalise on his soul influences, his son, Jason, remembered Hall and Oates playing a big part in his old man’s personal music library, saying, “It’s a funk feel, and nobody ever got that. All of his favourite music was in more of a folk and funk thing. I remember he loved the Hall and Oates album, Abandoned Luncheonette, with ‘She’s Gone’ on it. He loved that kind of vibe.”
Regardless of how many times people like to wax poetic about how fierce he could be on a song like ‘Immigrant Song’, Bonham even found time to make that tune funky as well. He still had that massive bottom end to his sound, but since he’s following Page’s guitar part throughout the majority of the song, it all comes back to him having those syncopated hits whenever he pounds the kick drum.
But that style of drumming is what all percussionists should do at least once in their lives. Anyone can spend their life trying to make the most complicated rhythm that anyone has ever heard, but the best kinds of grooves are the ones that seem to flow naturally rather than ones that have to be beaten into someone.
