Bibek Acharya
The late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham preferred to let his artistry do the talking rather than his mouth. During interviews, he was often a man of few words, with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant adopting the role of the band’s mouthpiece in the press. Therefore, it’s often hard to know the real Bonham rather than the depiction of the drummer that was created.
Bonham was an imposing drummer who was portrayed as a cartoonish, larger-than-life figure who existed in a different universe from everybody else. Yet, even Bonham was a multifaceted character who couldn’t be put into a 2D box, and there was an abundance of heart and soul that had much more to him than initially met the eye.
On the surface, he was a drumming machine made in a lab. Bonham’s powerhouse technique and eloquent precision behind the drum kit made him an all-time great. He was also seen as a wildcard, both on and off the stage, with Dave Grohl once remarking, “John Bonham played the drums like someone who didn’t know what was going to happen next—like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. No one has come close to that since, and I don’t think anybody ever will. I think he will forever be the greatest drummer of all time.”
However, behind the veneer presented to the public, Bonham expressed emotion like the rest of us, as his music taste proves. Few souls knew him more than Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, and since his death, he has supplied countless nuggets of information about the drummer that show him in a different light.
If fans believed everything they heard about Bonham, they’d think he’d be incapable of sitting still long enough to listen to music, let alone possess a taste as genre-spanning as the one he had. Nevertheless, in Thunder Of Drums, Jones revealed the four artists Bonham listened to the most, “Bonzo had very broad listening tastes. When we weren’t listening to James Brown or Otis Redding, he might be listening to Joni Mitchell or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Bonzo was a great lover of songs.”
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Laurel Canyon-drenched sounds had little in common with Led Zeppelin’s hard-rocking flamboyance, but they hammered to another world. Perhaps his wide-spanning palette helped him become the quicksilver drummer who was the beating heart of Led Zeppelin and helped him create his tirelessly incalculable approach, which kept audiences on their feet.
While Bonham sadly died before elaborating on his love of these artists, he once said of his drumming, “I don’t consider that I’m particularly influenced by anyone or anything.” Therefore, it makes sense that he’d prefer to listen to artists like Otis Redding or Joni Mitchell as he wasn’t seeking inspiration from another drummer. Instead, he likely preferred to enjoy pure songwriting full of rich portions of soul.
Bonham may have channelled a different strain of energy through his drumming than Mitchell did with her lyricism, but the destination was still visceral. For that reason, he built a reputation comparable to that of a handful of people who have ever picked up a pair of drumsticks, and his place in history is unquestionable. These comments from Jones show a glimpse behind the curtain, proving Bonham was a true music fan despite not admiring any other drummer and being a one-of-one from that perspective. Stylistically, all four acts differed from Led Zeppelin, but as long as a song touched Bonham emotionally, the genre didn’t matter.
