“You cheeky little bastard!”: The only drummer John Bonham saw as his equal

Redditch’s roaring beatmaker, John Bonham, is considered one of the all-time greats in rock and roll’s rich history. His distinctive style and technical skill helped define the sound of Led Zeppelin throughout the late 1960s and ’70s before his untimely death in 1980. Like most of the greats, Bonham was largely self-taught, but his natural talent and unbound curiosity helped him become one of the most influential drummers of his generation.

Bonham’s approach to the drums was noted for a combination of explosive power, precision, and groove. He would complement his quaking bass drum with complex and choppy fills and could drop jaws with his ability to switch seamlessly between different time signatures.

With Robert Plant’s towering presence front and centre and Jimmy Page, one of the greatest guitarists of all time, to his left, Bonham’s un-eclipsed presence and undying legacy speak volumes.

You’ll encounter a range of responses when asking different people, informed and otherwise, to name the best drummer of all time. A large contingent will smugly posit that the best is some unknown jazz player lost to the genre’s nebulous nature, or perhaps cut straight to the point and name the eminent jazz percussionist Buddy Rich.

While it’s difficult to compare the technical, intricate prowess of jazz drummers and the more volatile, creatively unbound approach enjoyed in rock music, several drummers managed to marry the best of both worlds. Hence, discerning rock drummers asked to pick their favourite drummers will invariably name one of the titans of the classic rock heyday, such as Mitch Mitchell, Ginger Baker or John Bonham.

While appearing as guests on Amazon’s motoring show, The Grand Tour, in 2018, Stewart Copeland of The Police and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, two masters in their own right, agreed that Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix’s drummer, was the best of all time.

“Well, that’s the travesty right there,” Copeland interjected when the host, Jeremy Clarkson, explained who Mitchell was. “This great towering… this monument of drums, was Jimi Hendrix’s drummer!”

“Well, how would you describe him?” a perplexed Clarkson asked. “Well, Jimi was Mitch’s guitarist,” Copeland asserted.

The pair then agreed on a hierarchy in which Cream’s Ginger Baker ranked in close second place. In a 2022 interview with Far Out, we asked Copeland about the impact of Bonham. In response, he name-checked this holy trinity of rock drummers.

“I’m more inspired by him now than I was growing up,” Copeland said. “It was all Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell then, and Bonham came later. I liked the fact that Ginger used his tom-toms a lot. He was playing more of his drums than the others, as was Mitch Mitchell, who was probably the most inspiring out of all of them.”

Sadly, these three legendary drummers are no longer with us. Perhaps a heavenly drum-off has determined an overall champion, but at least we know what Baker and Bonham thought the answer was.

The rivalry and respect between John Bonham and Ginger Baker
In his memoir, Hellraiser: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer, Baker recalled that Bonham felt they shared a position on the drumming throne. Alas, the title of the ever-humble Baker’s autobiography says it all.

“John Bonham once made a statement that there were only two drummers in British rock ‘n’ roll: himself and Ginger Baker,” Baker wrote. “My reaction to this was: ‘You cheeky little bastard!’”

Baker, of course, was the legendary drummer best known for his work with Cream, a groundbreaking musician whose style fused technical prowess with raw power and innovation. Baker’s drumming was deeply rooted in jazz, which might explain why Bonham was so enamoured with him, and he brought a polyrhythmic complexity and improvisational spirit to rock music that was unprecedented at the time. His use of double bass drums, long solos, and African rhythms helped redefine what a rock drummer could be, elevating percussion to the forefront of a band’s sound.

Of course, Baker’s relationship with Led Zeppelin’s Bonham was complex, marked by mutual admiration, competitive tension, and moments of open hostility. Both drummers were towering figures in rock music, but their contrasting personalities and styles often put them at odds.