John Bonham: one bass drum pedal, a stairwell and When the Levee Breaks | Highway to Hell

Why fans still care

JOHN BONHAM hit hard, but it’s the groove people remember. Drummers still argue about how he got those bass drum triplets out of one pedal, and still try to copy the sound he got at the bottom of a stairwell in Hampshire. In 2016 Rolling Stone put him at number one on its list of the greatest drummers. Dave Grohl, Lars Ulrich and Tommy Lee all name him when they talk about where their own playing came from.

Early life

He was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, on 31 May 1948. At five he was hitting whatever was in the kitchen, including a coffee tin. He had a snare drum at ten and a full kit at 15.

Career chapters

1. Mid-1960sthe Crawling King Snakes, where he first plays with Robert Plant, then Band of Joy
2. Mid-1968drummer for Tim Rose
3. July 1968Jimmy Page and Peter Grant come to see him play
4. October 1968records the first Led Zeppelin album at Olympic Studios
5. 1969Led Zeppelin II, with Moby Dick
6. 1971Led Zeppelin IV, with When the Levee Breaks
7. 1975Physical Graffiti
8. October 1978one of three drummers on Paul McCartney’s Rockestra session
9. 1979In Through the Out Door, the band’s eighth UK number one album in a row
10. 1980Led Zeppelin ends

The Midlands years

He came up through the Midlands band scene. In the Crawling King Snakes he and Robert Plant played together for the first time, and the pair moved on to Band of Joy. By mid-1968 he was drumming for the American singer Tim Rose.

Joining Led Zeppelin 1968

Plant was the one who told Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 5, about him. Page and manager Peter Grant went to a Tim Rose show in July 1968, and Page later remembered it as a small London club. Bonham had offers from Joe Cocker and Chris Farlowe on the table. He chose the new band, because he liked its music more. That October they cut the first album at Olympic Studios in Barnes with Glyn Johns, in about 30 hours all up.

The big records 1969 to 1979

Led Zeppelin II came out in 1969 with Moby Dick, his drum feature. Live it often ran to about 20 minutes. He worked congas and a big gong into the solo as well. From Led Zeppelin II to In Through the Out Door in 1979 the band had eight UK number one albums in a row. Whole Lotta Love was their only Billboard top 10 single. In October 1978 he sat in at Abbey Road for Paul McCartney’s Rockestra session with Kenney Jones and Steve Holly, three drummers at once.

The end of the band 1980

In September 1980 the band was rehearsing for a North American tour. Bonham died that year, and in December Led Zeppelin announced they would not carry on as they were.

Craft, sound and style

One pedal, not two

The triplets on Good Times Bad Times come from a single bass drum pedal. Page put it simply: not two bass drums, one foot. Plenty of people still hear a double pedal on that record.

The Ludwig kit

Carmine Appice put him onto Ludwig drums, and he stayed with them. Modern Drummer’s 1984 tribute issue lists the set-up: - 14x26 bass drum, played with a Speed King pedal and a wood or hard felt beater - 12x15 rack tom, first on a snare stand and later on the bass drum rail - 16x16 and 16x18 floor toms - 6.5x14 Supra-Phonic snare - Paiste cymbals, a 22 or 24 inch medium ride with 18 and 20 inch crashes

Shure, working out how to get his sound, says he left his drums “alive”. He let the overtones ring, with felt under the bass drum batter head and a muffling ring on the front.

Feel and dynamics

Shure calls him “essentially an R&B drummer playing in a hard rock band”. Ulrich hears him sitting a little behind the beat on When the Levee Breaks. Tommy Lee picks out the heavy foot, the laid-back snare and how sparingly he used his cymbals. For Page, his dynamics were the key to the band he wanted to build.

The stairwell

For When the Levee Breaks the kit went at the foot of the stairs at Headley Grange, with two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones above it.

Stories people still tell

1. The burning gong.

   John Paul Jones said Bonham’s roadie Mick Hinton set the gong alight “more or less every night”, with lighter fuel.

Legacy

Led Zeppelin were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Who’s Who number 22, of Aerosmith. The Recording Academy gave the band its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Led Zeppelin IV is now 24 times Platinum in the US. Grohl got so hooked on Bonham’s playing that he had the Zeppelin symbol tattooed on his arm.