RIP John Bonham


Remembering John Bonham today on the 37th anniversary of his passing. I'm posting this since there is a current discussion about him in the Forum.

http://loudwire.com/led-zeppelin-john-bonham-dies-anniversary/

He and Buddy Rich were my main influences as a drummer.
128x128lowrider57

Didja hear the story about Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan?

It was 1973, and Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the world. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, along with LZ manager Peter Grant, went to a party in Los Angeles. Page and Plant saw Dylan there, and wanted to meet him, but were too intimidated to approach him. So they sent Peter Grant over to talk to Bob. Here was their exchange:

Grant: "Hi, I'm Peter Grant, I manage Led Zeppelin, and"

Dylan: "Hey, I didn't come here and tell you MY problems."

bdp24...

Hahahaha!  Man, I hope that's true. To this day I still can't watch The Song Remains The Same - makes my skin crawl. One of the worst rock films possible and not the band's finest effort at all. For their best live effort it's How The West Was Won. Kickass great stuff. 

I wish I kept all my Rolling Stone magazines to review how poorly it and the American press in general treated the band. I read EVERY music magazine in those days, Melody Maker, Creem, Crawdaddy, and maybe a few others I can't recall now.  

I was recuperating from my first of two knee operations when WNEW FM debuted Zep IV one early afternoon.  No cell phone. No email. No social media.  My friends were still in school and there I was sticking a ruler inside my leg cast to ease the itching, listening to Led Zep IV on a transistor radio in the hospital. 
I called my friends IMMEDIATELY, most of the time getting their mothers, telling them to call me as soon as they got home. I remember thinking, listening to Stairway for the first time ever, that it must have been 30 minutes long. (Had that same impression the first time I heard We Won't Get Fooled Again). ALL of my friends came to the hospital that afternoon. 

That, and the time my second oldest brother came home and tossed Zep 1 on our family's console stereo (it was a Magnavox, tubed!) represent my best two personal Zep stories. Being reminded that Bonham died 37 years ago not only serves to mark some pivotal moments in my life, it made me think about all the times that Zep was the soundtrack to them. The Stones, The Who, Zep,  Joni Mitchell, Zappa, The Mothers, The Band, and so many more...

Almost makes me feel like Martin Scorcese shoulda been filming me and my friends. 




Dylan toured with The Band the following year (’74), and if you want to hear a Rock ’n’ Roll drummer who plays the music the way it should be played, listen to Levon Helm on those recordings. No gratuitous, narcissistic, immature, amusical showing off. Rather, tasteful adult accompaniment played by a mature musician. Though Jagger sang "It’s the singer, not the song", that it not correct. It IS the song; the best musicians know that, and play accordingly---in service to the song, for the greater good of the music.

Of course, playing Led Zeppelin "songs" (;-) is an entirely different proposition that playing Dylan songs. There is no way Helm could have played in LZ, or Bonham in The Band. The fact that Bonham’s playing is essential to LZ, that it is in fact representative of everything they were about, says it all. If you know what I mean.

My High School bandmates and myself loved The Yardbirds. The first three albums, that is. That band (and a few others) became the model for how to play. First with Eric Clapton's playing setting the tone, then Jeff Beck's. When the fourth album (Little Games) came out, we said to each other "WTF happened?!". It was TERRIBLE. I assume you know Jimmy Page was the lead guitarist on album four. He shortly thereafter formed LZ.

When Eric Clapton said, in The Last Waltz, that "Music had been going in the wrong direction for a long time. When I heard Music From Big Pink, I thought, well, someone has finally gone and done it right", it is exactly and precisely Led Zeppelin, and Bonham's playing, that he is calling "wrong". Of course, that's just Clapton's opinion; you are entitled to your own.

Clapton is certainly entitled to his opinion about what was "wrong" about where music was heading, after all, he is "god."

I continue to be amazed at how utterly good The Band was. "Life Is A Carnival" is in my will, to be played at my wake.  LOUDLY.  Even whilst dead I'll probably hear something new in it. I do every time. (Wow, wotta cool idea for another thread.)