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Mon 14 September 2026 19:00, UK
While many bands would soldier on after losing a member, attempting to make the best of a bad situation by moving on into a new era, there’s a good reason as to why Led Zeppelin chose to call it quits after the death of John Bonham.
Fans would probably have forgiven the band had they carried on with another drummer, but to put it simply, there was nobody out there capable of playing the drums exactly like ‘Bonzo’ had done since 1968. From being able to thrash out thumping beats to launching into hellraising solos as though he was vying to grab the centre of attention, Bonham was a truly unstoppable force as a drummer, and to have replaced him as part of the band then and there would probably have been a disservice to them overall, in as much as they’d have to settle for someone not up to the same standard.
In Through the Out Door was the last official album that the band worked on together, with Coda being released two years after they’d disbanded, cobbled together from outtakes and live recordings, and that’s all there will ever be. Yes, it’s perhaps a sour note to leave things on, given how these are regularly perceived as being the weakest records in their catalogue, but in the same regard, it’s probably for the best that they chose to quit while ahead.
However, that doesn’t mean that Led Zeppelin have become any less popular over the years, and there’s always been demand for them to reform, even if only for live performances. In fact, the band did so on four separate occasions for one-off performances, and in 2007, questions were asked as to who would be the best selection to fill the role of the animalistic Bonham on the tubs.
The thing is, who on earth would be capable of such a job? There were plenty of options out there, especially given how the three remaining members had worked with a number of elite musicians in the period after they broke up, but John Paul Jones always knew there was only one viable option.
In a 2008 interview with Q Magazine, Jones was asked why the band hadn’t asked his recent collaborator and close friend in Dave Grohl, given how he is both a self-confessed Led Zeppelin superfan and a more-than-competent drummer. “I love Dave and I enjoyed playing on that Foo Fighters album,” Jones said, referencing the fact that he appeared on their 2005 album, In Your Honour. However, he immediately caveated this by stating that the only person who felt qualified enough was Bonham’s son, Jason.
“Jason was our first choice,” he continued, “He’s fun to have around. In the ’80s, we didn’t want to draw him into all that Zeppelin stuff. We thought he should have his own career. But he’s in his 40s now. Plus, he knows all the songs. Really knows them. He’s always saying things like, ‘Do you wanna play this like the version you did it in ‘75?’”
Further reading: From The Vault
Having recruited a number of different drummers to play with the band for all of their previous reunions, including Phil Collins at Live Aid in 1985, Jason Bonham was later brought on board on three separate occasions in 1988, 1995 and 2007 to play the parts his father had contributed, and if truth be told, nobody else could do the job better than him.
It was probably for the best to keep it in the family, and with Bonham Jr following in his father’s footsteps and having grown up around the material, he was far more appropriate than Grohl was, even if he himself knew the songs intimately. The likelihood of one more Led Zeppelin reunion isn’t exactly on or off the cards, but surely Bonham would be enthusiastic about filling his father’s shoes once more should the opportunity arise, and Grohl would surely understand that.
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