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Tue 16 December 2025 0:30, UK
It would be easy to slap a big, fat rock on John Bonham’s influences.
The fact is, rock as Led Zeppelin unleashed to the world didn’t exist before their eponymous debut in 1969. From the moment the collapsing Hindenburg airship exploded toward the end of the counterculture, classic rock was almost afforded its eternal template, the peacocking, arena-filling bluster heralding the 1970s’ guitar gyrating heyday, while also strutting into perilously close to the self-parody targeted from the punk generations by the decade’s close.
Yet, feet were always tethered to the ground by an intrepid sonic terrain, ensuring Led Zeppelin would ultimately stand as lauded heroes of rock’s mystical chapter. Always offering a rich and exotic realm of escapism glowing potently across their holy album run, the aural unveil on each cut could flash a love of the blues, Celtic folklore, old R&B, splashes of psychedelia, and hefty bludgeons of proto heavy metal.
However, when quizzed on his direct influences, drummer John Bonham was strangely coy about dropping any explicit genres or routine namechecks as to the figures that towered in his estimation. According to his brother Mick’s book on the Led Zeppelin drummer, Bonham admired the powerhouse heft of Keith Moon, Ginger Baker’s feral abandon, and was otherwise a student of the jazz tradition’s litany of big band percussionists.
Bonham did highlight one movement from his pop youth that pointed the way to the kit more than any other. “I don’t consider that I’m particularly influenced by anyone or anything,” he reportedly confessed. “But when I started playing, I was influenced by early soul. It was just that feel, that sound.”
Never one to overly intellectualise, Bonham’s raw, instinctive groove feels plucked from the ether when listening to Led Zeppelin at their best. But amid his heavy pummel, a love of James Brown and the Motown canon guided Bonham’s technique, conjuring power without ever merely smashing the skins with heft.
Rather, Bonham would flex just as dextrous a drumming style as the soundtrack he was laying his beats to, from his rhythmic complexity so essential to the soul hits he loved, funky syncopation, and softer uses of the snare echoing the Stax hits of the day.
While never totally breaking out the soul standards as they did their artful blues imaginings, Bonham’s lean into the world of soul and funk just added another essential creative ingredient to Led Zeppelin’s special brew. Motivated by an electric instinct for his instrument, such flashes shine better amid the creative charge of what he brought to the group.
“I’ve always been obsessed with drums,” Bonham stated. “They fascinate me. Any other instrument – nothing. I play acoustic guitar a bit. But it’s always been drums first and foremost. I don’t reckon on this Jack-of-all-trades thing. I thing that feeling is a lot more important than technique. It’s all very well doing a triple paradiddle – but who’s going to know you’ve done it? If you play technically you sound like everybody else. It’s being original that counts.”
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