Since this summer I've been listening mostly to classic rock and especially Led Zeppelin, it seems quite natural to me to dedicate this post to one of my all-time favorite drummers. John Henry Bonham.
If John lived today, he could sue most of us, drummers, for copyrights. Few things can be said about his playing. Great ideas, great execution, superb sound, huge groove, eye-catching showmanship, emotionmeter reaching limits etc. And as if these qualities weren't enough, Bonham played drums for, probably, the best rock 'n roll band of all time.
On the "Led Zeppelin IV" album, (aka ZOSO), none of the band members names appears on the sleeve notes. All we get instead is 4 symbols.
Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, Robert Plant. Dave Grohl has three tattoos of John Bonham's symbol on his body. Soon, I'll have mine tattooed below my armpit.
But enough with the talking, let's open the presents.
Here are 23 of John Bonham's original isolated drum tracks. You can download them for free and study them as much as you can, after you get over the initial goosebumps.
Here you can listen to the famous John Bonham "Fool in the Rain" half time shuffle groove, which along with the Bernard Purdie shuffle and the Jeff Porcaro shuffle is mandatory for every drummer's vocabulary.
Here you can watch a part of one of his famous "Moby Dick" drum solos.
John Bonham's sound is for me his most admired virtue. If you want to learn some of his secrets, from the equipment he used to his tuning technique you should definitely watch the following video. His drum-tech, Jeff Ocheltree, who by the way makes great snare drums and is also Danny Carrey's drum-tech, gives us a private tour to his studio setup. Enjoy.
Yours, Serafeim
PS. The title of the post is a high rated youtube comment in one of John Bonham's videos.
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