Pageia Obscura: Bringin' in Bonzo

John Bonham

After Jimmy had invited Robert Plant to join his band The New Yardbirds, the next step was to find a drummer. Jimmy already had a list of drummers that he had in mind for the group including Procul Harum's B.J. Wilson, and session drummers Chris Cattini and Anysley Dunbar. However, Plant suggested that Jimmy check out his mate, and former band-member from the Black Country of England, so Jimmy took him up on the tip.

At the time, John Bonham was playing for American singer, Tim Rose, and was earning a pretty steady living for the first time in his life. Page caught Bonham playing at the North London Country Club, and was blown away by the sheer power and raw ability of the drummer. "I wasn't ready for John Bonham, I must say," Page said, "He was beyond the realms of anything I could possibly imagine." "When I saw what a thrasher he was, I knew he'd be incredible."

Tim Rose, John Bonham's Pre-Led Zeppelin band leader

Bonham didn't need Jimmy Page, he had steady work, and was fielding offers from Chris Farlowe and Joe Cocker. On top of that his wife was adamantly opposed to her husband working with Robert Plant, "Every time you do anything with him you come back at five in the morning with half a crown!" she pleaded. However much Bonham didn't need Page, Page needed Bonham that much worse. After hearing the drummer he phoned his manager, Peter Grant, who was in San Francisco at the time, and exclaimed, "I saw a drummer last night and this guy plays so good and so loud we must get him!"

John Bonham didn't have a phone in his house so in order to contact the drummer Jimmy Page left him eight different messages at his local pub "Three Men in a Boat; Peter Grant left forty messages for him. Finally after much trepidation, and a little extra money to be the group's driver kicked in to sweeten the deal, Bonham phoned Peter Grant and accepted the offer to join the New Yardbirds.

Bonham and Page, instant chemistry

John Bonham would later remark about why he decided to join Page's new group, "It wasn't a question of who had the best prospects, but also which music was going to be right. When I first got offered the job, I thought the Yardbirds were finished, because in England they had been forgotten. Still I thought, 'Well, I've got nothing anyway so anything is really better than nothing.' I knew that Jimmy was a good guitarist and that Robert was a good singer, so even if we didn't have any success, at least it would be a pleasure to play in a good group....So I decided I liked their music better than Cocker's or Farlowe's."

The world at large was introduced to Bonham, and what he could do on the opening track of Led Zeppelin's first album "Good Times, Bad Times" which Page would later remark on, "The most stunning thing about the track, of course, is Bonzo's amazing kick drum. It's superhuman when you realize he was not playing with double kick. That's one kick drum! That's when people started understanding what he was all about." Bonham learned a technique of using two sixteenth note triplets on a single kick drum while at the same time playing quarter notes on the high hat. Bonham thought he was imitating Carmine Appice from Vanilla Fudge, but didn't realize that Appice was using two kick drums, while Bonzo only used one.

Bonham and Page

And so it was, John Bonham became the third member of what would become Led Zeppelin. Even in that early period before the fame, Bonham was known to be a hot commodity, but with his new band he took off and became one of the most influential drummers of all time, and regarded by many to be the best. Jimmy Page had a secret weapon to go along with his dynamic lead singer that would add power and weight to a group that Page imagined as being the heaviest around. Bonham made that dream a possibility.

Bonham put the Lead in Led Zeppelin

Sidenote: John Bonham was given the nickname of Bonzo from Robert Plant who took it from an English comic strip dog.