Credit: Far Out / Album Cover / Jason Bonham
Tue 13 October 2026 17:00, UK
John Bonham was more than just a drummer.
Calling someone a drummer implies that they hold a sound together. For many people, drumming means keeping time, acting as the glue that ensures a track doesn’t fall apart completely, and maybe chucking in a couple of drum fills every now and then. Bonham did all of that, but the way he went about it was unlike that of any other musician on the face of the earth.
He tore up the rule book and rewrote it so that the principles remained the same but the means by which people could play the drums were different. It’s hard to believe that there was a chance he might never have become the drummer for Led Zeppelin had it not been for Jimmy Page taking his search for bandmates out of London. His exciting style fitted Led Zeppelin perfectly, as he refused to sit within the same one style of playing and was happy to move around genres while still keeping hold of what made songs great.
He was so important to the inner workings of the band that when he died in 1980, Led Zeppelin decided to call it a day. They could have replaced him, as they were a huge band and people would have bitten their hands off for the opportunity to join, but it wouldn’t have been the same without Bonham.
“When we lost John, we agreed unanimously that that was that,” said Robert Plant. “I had to go and find out if I really want to do it. Did I want to do it, or did I just want to sit back there like a croupier at a gambling thing, and just kind of rake [the money] in? Or, did I want to actually continue this kind of gig of finding out where I’m going? I wanted to take all the trappings away, because I’d lost my best mate.”
It turns out that being a great drummer is something you pass down through generations. Aside from a handful of reunions, the band have stayed apart. The most celebrated came in 2007, when Bonham’s son, Jason, took his father’s place behind the kit as if reading from the same rewritten rule book that he had made popular.
When working out how to play these songs and do justice to some of the classic tracks his father and his bandmates made, he spoke to Plant about the Led Zeppelin songs that speak to him the most. When reflecting on those conversations, Jason spoke about how Plant’s relationship with these tracks was very different from that of fans. A lot of the time, songs aren’t reflections of creative moments, but very specific instances in time. For instance, when Robert Plant listens to the album Presence, he remembers being in a wheelchair and recovering from a car accident.
Jason said, “He goes, ‘What you have to remember is sometimes some of these songs bring back a time in my life that wasn’t great. I was in a wheelchair after almost dying in a car crash at the time. So, I was in pain’.”
Further reading: From The Vault
While some of those songs might bring back bad memories, Plant told Jason that there were some songs on the record that meant a lot to him. “His favourite was… ‘Tea for One’, he still loves, and ‘Achilles [Last Stand].’ He said, ‘If I ever play somebody something from Led Zeppelin… This is it. Listen to this, this is what we had’,” said Jason.
“He’s very proud of that. So that was a wonderful thing to have.”
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