John Bonham
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“And that's for breakfast!”
~ John Bonham on consuming half a ham roll and about 64.3 litres of vodka
John Henry Bonham was the drummer for Led Zeppelin, famous for being the only drummer to have used baseball bats instead of drumsticks. He was born in 1964. "He loved drumming even as a kid," says his mother, "We gave him his first drum set before he was born. We had a doctor surgically implant it into my stomach, along with little Johnny's first bottle of Gin."
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[edit] Formation of Led Zeppelin
John Bonham first met Jimmy Page at 10, on their school playground in Nebraska. Page was at the time the guitar player for the Yardbirds, an obscure band featuring Page on guitar, and several common sparrows on the other instruments (Page didn't have many friends). Page stuck with the Yardbirds until tragedy struck. "I bought a bird feeder, but forgot to take it out of its glass case," says Page, "and they all slammed into it. It was heartbreaking, yet strangely amusing." Meanwhile, Bonham had formed his own band in the attic of his home, a band called "Terry Webb and the Spiders". Band members included Bonham, several pieces of lint, a cardboard cutout Bonham made and named Terry, and several dead spiders and other insects. Bonham was already getting a reputation as a loud drummer; he had received phone calls from as far away as Idaho asking him to stop playing. This highly appealed to Jimmy Page: "I wanted my next band after the Yardbirds to appeal to a young audience. The only way to make sure that no old people are listening to your music is to make it so loud that nobody over 25 could listen to it for more than four seconds without getting a headache." It was for this reason that Page recruited Bonham into the band as the drummer. They recruited Robert Plant for lead vocals, and produced their first album, "Robert Plant Screaming and Shrieking for 45 Minutes".
[edit] Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin quickly finished recording their first album, creatively called "Led Zeppelin". It became a massive hit almost immediately, one of the only albums in world history to sell over a million copies before the band even existed. Bonham's drumming style was extremely unique, as evidenced on songs like "Misty Mountain Hop", "Misty Mountain Chop", "Misty Mountain Glop", and the smash hit "LOOK! THIS SONG HAS EPIC LYRICS ABOUT VIKINGS!!! ISN'T THAT COOL??".
Bonham's drumming was so loud, the only way the rest of the band could keep him from drowning them out was having the band play in one room of the studio, and Bonham play drums in another building, usually on the other side of whatever city they were in. Bonham usually played with Baseball bats, because whenever he tried playing with regular drumsticks, they exploded. Sometimes, he played with his hands, his feet, his head, or, in several songs, his penis. His drum set filled up an entire floor of the recording studio, and he often incorporated timpani, gongs, and congas. He even hit his own head with his baseball bats occasionally, because it produced a "lovely, echoing, clangy sound." His most memorable drum solo was played during the song Moby Dick, found on the bands second album, called "Led Zeppelin 2". To achieve the sound of the solo, Bonham played briefly on tom-toms, then chucked his drum set down a staircase. "It was the most lovely thing I ever heard," says a fan of Zeppelin, "seeing Moby Dick played live really touched me. It brought tears to my eyes. Of course, that could have been because it was so loud my eardrums exploded, but...still. It was totally awesome." When playing it live, how long the drum solo was varied, depending on how much time Bonham's band mates spent in the bathroom. He sometimes threw it off the stage, but other times he shot it, threw it out a window, ran over it with a monster truck, or starting hitting the audience with it (a genuine crowd pleaser).
On the band's next album, "Led Zeppelin 3", Bonham went for an entirely different drumming style, which he called "not playing drums at all except for a few songs." "This style was extremely, *BURP*, difficult to pull off, you know," said Bonham in a press releise about the album, "Sometimes I had to drink soda, or worse, beer. And I had to do some very difficult lounging." Bonham's new drumming style, "not playing", became a major phenomenon, and fans say it was on that album that Bonham did his best stylistic performances. "The way he sits in silence doing nothing in most of those songs is so...melancholy!" said a typical music fan on Bonham's revolutionary performance.
[edit] The Party Years
Led Zeppelin was infamous for its wild partying, especially while on tours. The band would often rent entire cities, and have sex with absolutely everyone in sight. "Yes, after we were through with Chicago, there weren't any virgins left in it. At all. Even pigeons were involved in the partying," recalls Jimmy Page, "and one time we rented the entire continent of Australia. It was one hell of a night." All of the band members indulged in this partying, and Bonham was no exception. One of the most infamous tales of Led Zeppelin's indulgence while partying is the "mudshark" incident, in which band members were staying in a hotel that allowed people to fish from the hotel window. According to legend, Robert Plant caught a small mudshark, and band members sexually stimulated a young groupie with it. When asked about it years later, Plant said "Oh yes. I remember that. It was actually an eel, not a mudshark. But anyway, that wasn't even close to the wildest thing we did. You think the mudshark story is crazy, you should hear about what we did on the In Through the Out Door tour--it involves an Orca."
It was another incident involving Bonham that inspired a song called "Royal Orleans" on one of their last albums, "Led Zeppelin 45". While renting New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana on a concert tour, in the middle of a mass orgy involving several hundred fans, Bonham met a woman he found rather attractive, and he invited her to his hotel(not a hotel room). Led Zeppelin usually rented five individual hotels, one for each member, and one for their equipment. But upon returning to his hotel, Bonham discovered that the woman was actually a transvestite. He was traumatized, and immediately strangled the transvestite. Other band members found this incident so comical they wrote a song based on the incident, which included subtle references to the incident in its lyrics: "When you take your pick dude, be careful how you choose it", "He kissed her whiskers, left and right", and "JOHN BONHAM ALMOST SHAGGED A TRANSVESTITE HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!"
[edit] Battle with Keith Moon
Towards the end of Bonham's life, he decided to declare a drumming battle between himself and Keith Moon, the equally maniacal drummer for the UK band, The Who. They met in a stadium in London, setting up their respective drum sets a few hundred yards apart, and starting madly alternating drum solos to see who could play loudest. The battle got so loud that Neil Peart heard it in Canada and quickly flew over to join. The battle was called off, however, after several nearby buildings collapsed. Moon, Peart and Bonham were hospitalized for several weeks afterwards.
[edit] Death
In September of 1980, Bonham was picked up by a band assistant to attend rehearsals for the upcoming American tour, which would be their first tour since the previous week. During the ride, Bonham asked to stop for breakfast, where he ate a waffle smothered in "Mike's Hard Maple Syrup." He then downed forty cups of Irish coffee. He died of alcohol asphyxiation the next morning. It took the band four days to notice that he had died: "Yeah, we embarked on the American tour, and just put Bonham's body at his drum set and let him sit there. We just figured he had gone back to the "not playing" style he had used on the third album. It was only when a 22 year old female groupie starting making out with him and he failed to get an erection that we really started to worry."
[edit] Lost solo album
In early August of 2004, Led Zeppelin experts discovered a lost solo album that Bonham had written and recorded entirely on his own. It consisted of five songs: "John Bonham Hitting a Snare Drum," "John Bonham Hitting a Bass Drum," "John Bonham Hitting a Triangle," "John Bonham Hitting a Cowbell," and "John Bonham Hitting Another Snare Drum." Each of the songs was only a second long, so to flesh the album out, the recording studio added a 55 minute introduction by famed director, self-declared book critic, and now self-appointed music critic Peter Bogdanovich. 50 minutes of the introduction consisted of Bogdanovich talking about his own films. Only several seconds of the last five minutes were devoted to Bonham: "Who...*siiiiiigh*...how, uh, who is this Bonham person again? A kazoo player? I uh...don't apple..approach, erm...approve. Of kazoos. Actually, I like them quite a bit. Would you like to hear me play?" The final segment of the introduction featured Bogdanovich playing his kazoo, and yodeling loudly. "John Bonham Hitting a Bass Drum" was released as a single, but unfortunately it was released in the same year as the cult favorite "Ringo Starr Hitting a Cymbal", which completely overshadowed Bonham's single. It has sold 4 copies to date.
[edit] Rebirth?
Rumours abound that Bonham is not truly dead. One plausible theory is that the Japanese are creating a Robot Bonham. If completed, this would be one of the most awesome things ever. Fans are concerned however, that the robot would be used to defend Japan from Godzilla and Hillary Clinton and would not have the time to drum. Another theory is that Bonham can never die, as he constantly travel's faster than the speed of light and is in existance everywhere. Lastly, some think that Bonham has actually become Darth Bonham, due to the machinations of the insidious Darth Phil Collins. In this case, his son Jason Bonham, will be needed in order to rescue him, make a movie about it and use the profits to purchase a copious amount of Canadian beer.
