The only genre John Bonham was ever influenced by: “I’ll get that sound too”

No one wakes up having the chops of being the best musician in the world. It takes a lot of practice before people are even close to reaching the levels of their rock and roll heroes, but every now and again, there are those musicians who have put in all the hours to the point where they seem like more beast than man. And compared to the rest of Led Zeppelin, John Bonham was practically a rabid wildebeest that happened to be let loose every time they put on a show.

The vision for Zeppelin may have begun in the mind of Jimmy Page, but Bonham was the one who really gave the band their heart. He was far from the most subtle drummer in the world, but whenever listening to them in action, he always knew how to either lay into a groove or pound the living daylights out of his drum when the time called for it. By the standard definition of drummer, though, Bonzo was far different from his peers.

It’s important for every percussionist to lock in with the bass player so that everything sounds right, but Bonham was one to listen to what Page was doing. He knew that the guitar riff was where all the power was, so if he managed to play the same hits that Page was when working on ‘Immigrant Song’, the track would be far thicker than anything else in rock and roll.

But the last thing anyone should have called them was heavy metal. A lot of heavy metal bands would have been nowhere without Bonham’s raw muscle, but he was never looking to bash his drums without a purpose. He understood what it meant to lay down a groove, and that came from listening to the biggest names in soul music when he picked up two sticks for the first time.

“When I started playing, I was most impressed by those early soul records. I like the feel and the sound they achieved.” -John Bonham

Although Zeppelin went in a much different direction, Bonham was convinced that the early soul records were his ticket to being a successful musician, saying, “When I started playing, I was most impressed by those early soul records. I like the feel and the sound they achieved. I suppose I said to myself, I’ll get that sound too.” And when you listen to the records he listened to in his spare time, there’s no reason to think he wasn’t putting his money where his mouth was.

A lot of Zeppelin’s greatest songs are based on tunes that are a little bit more groovy than normal, and listening to a track like ‘A Fool in the Rain’, Bonham was taking his cues from what he heard from artists like Bernard Purdie. And it’s not like that subtle approach to drumming was easy, either.

Most drummers would get a little bit uneasy around shuffles, but listening to everyone from Sam and Dave to Ray Charles, there’s a reason why everything settles into a groove so quickly. Everything is based on feel to them, and even when Bonham was listening to some of his peers like Black Sabbath, it makes sense that he would gravitate to the kind of guitar riffs that had a bit more of a groove to them.

Zeppelin were not ones to break out the horns and do a massive show-stopping James Brown number every time they played, but listening to Bonham, he was the one bringing the funk out of the group. There were many avenues that Zeppelin were bound to go down during their career, but had they survived into the 1980s, there’s a chance that fans would have had the luxury of hearing the band expand on the kind of sounds that ‘The Crunge’ only hinted at.