John Bonham is both a beloved and mythic rock n roll figure who died way too young. Very few rock drummers have inspired the devotion and worship that Bonham has has. With worship and devotion comes debate, and the particulars and nuances of what makes John Bonham ‘Bonham‘ are often fierce topics for dissection and disagreement. “What was he playing?” and “How did he play it?” discussions get played out in the places that drummers gather world over. Reputations are staked and lines get drawn in the sand while people tear into the Bonham performances of record and assert their opinions on what they think is being done. Just go to YouTube and pick any random Led Zeppelin Drum tutorial then follow the comment strings and threads to verify. The debates can carry over into other threads and other videos and give birth to response videos and more comments and debates – it’s all fantastically dialogic.
Is there ever a final word?; almost never; and as a Zeppelin fan, or as a drummer researching Bonham’s playing style, you are left to paint a picture of what Bonham was doing that makes sense to you using all these various opinions like a giant selective colour palette. You’ll find your colours that seem to fit together and paint the picture as you see it from them.
That said there are good and bad drum tutorials and play-a-longs out there and this article is about my favorite one, and about my favorite John Bonham YouTube drummer: Bonzoleum
His drum tutorial for Stairway to Heaven is my favorite drum tutorial and the best one I found for the song while researching for the drum programing in the original Stairway Project. He’s entertaining, but passionate and instructive. Willing to admit he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, everything he says, does, and plays just makes you feel that he’s got it all right. He also seems like a hell of a nice guy.
And in a theme you’ll see develop on this website, it appears that today Bonzoleum is playing through some physical challenges that makes his drumming altogether more amazing and his story very real and compelling. My biggest takeaway here was the importance of the grace note or ghost notes on the snare. Note too how there’s a discussion about the time signature and time issues in the transitional section before the guitar solo (as discussed here). Bonzoleum mentions the tempo crescendo, the imperfectness of time when you get 4 musicians playing in unison together (and Bonham’s unique behind the beat feel) and his own confusion and difficulty with the time signature as he struggles to make it work. You’ll also see in an inserted comment box done after the initial recording where he accepts that the part remains in 4/4 time and thanks another YouTube drummer for the help. That’s the dialogic element here and it’s also what makes Bonzoleum great. He’s not here to tell you how to do it – he’s here to share how he thinks it’s done and is happy to learn or be shown himself if it expands his understanding of Bonzo’s style. Feel free to search out who that drummer was that Bonzoleum references and see if you can snake your way through the several video threads (over years of discussion) to see how this gets played out. And be prepared for “The Fill”. We’ll look at the fill in depth in future posts and videos, but the fill looms large with any Stairway drum discussion.
