The one song John Bonham always wanted to play
There’s no sense in anyone trying to put themselves in direct competition with John Bonham behind the drum kit.
As much as people like to talk up the merit of everyone from Jimmy Page to Robert Plant in Led Zeppelin, there’s some distinct power that comes from listening to Bonzo play that has never been matched by anyone before or since. And while Bonham left every aspiring drummer with a playbook on how to sound, he did have a few missed opportunities by the time he passed away as well.
If the band had decided to completely call it a day after Physical Graffiti, though, Bonham would have been already considered a god. He had taken the basis of traditional rock and roll and blues players and turned into an absolute animal every single time he played, but when he knew that there was a lot more work to be done when they got to the last third of their career as well.
While it’s almost tragic going back to Zeppelin’s final records knowing that the end was near, Bonham was already looking to switch things up. The fact that he could power the band through every second of ‘Achilles Last Stand’ was bound to lead to great things in the future, and even when laying back into a groove on songs like ‘Fool in the Rain’, Bonham was already adopting the famous ‘Purdie Shuffle’ from around that same time as well.
But a drummer of his stature is going to want to think a little bigger than the traditional rock and roll music. There are plenty of avenues for a drummer to go down that weren’t the simple 4/4 rhythm, but if Bonham was going to make a major change to his career, he knew that he was going to need a lot more drums to do it.
An artist like Neil Peart may have fully realised Bonham’s idea of having every single percussion instrument he could at his fingertips, but what he wanted extended into the classical music realm. It’s not exactly out of left field for him to be thinking along those lines, but the thought of putting Bonzo in charge of Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’ would have been one of the most insane feats that any drummer has pulled off.
Nevertheless, Bonham was determined to make the kind of epic classical extravaganza in whatever way he could, saying, “My ambition is to record the ‘1812 Overture’. I would over-dub all the rhythm sections – the bells, cannons and timps. I’ll do it one day.” Then again, the person helping the drummer might want to know what they’re getting into before they start giving him access to everything.
There are already a lot of moving parts to a piece like that, but the idea of putting Bonham in charge of cannons being used as percussion instruments. It could have easily been a work of genius under the right set of circumstances, but had the drummer had one too many beers in him that day, chances are there could have been some dangerous situations if the cannons weren’t positioned the right way.
It’s tragic that Bonham never got to see out his dream, but it’s not like he was going to give up trying new things, either. He wanted to make sure he covered every base he could, and looking at where he took drums, chances are we would have been in for a new musical vocabulary had he not been taken away so young.
