John Bonham

ya know what I realized, if like Vic Firth or Pro Mark made Bonham sized sticks and marketed them as those I think those would be highly profitable, I know I'd buy them.
 
1. Zep's over-rated.
2. Bonzo is MORE talented than page or plant put together.
3. Most of Zep's songs were plagarized... google it if you don't believe me or just listen to the
small faces "You need lovin'" for one blatent example and you will see who plant tries to
sound like, but sounds like a ridiculous parady of.
4. Plant was real creepy looking, still is. He gives me the willies.
 
you are entitled to your opinions of course. a lot of bands in those days were expert cover bands. ever read a rolling stones anthology? so i don't think you should judge them too harshly.
bonzo had a different talent topage and plant so i don't see how you could make that sort of statement. all 4 members of the band were immensely talented...just the ego's were different. it was the done thing for the singer to wolf the share of the lime light and page was a success before zep so he was also up there. bonzo and jones stood back and let their musicianship do the talking.
i also truly admire robert plant. he is a unique guy. creepy looking? alice cooper is creepy looking. looks have nothing to do with it. do me a favour and look up robert'ssolo projects post zep. he is a superb musician. 29 palms, ship of fools, what you trying to do to my heart?

j
 
MunsieMan said:
In my opion one of the greatest drummers of all time, Fool In The Rain, When The Levee Breaks, Poor Tom all great grooves. Moby Dick...out of this world and Good Times Bad Times with all the triplets and his lightning fast foot. And D'yer Maker the very first Zeppelin song i could play. One thing i loved about John Bonham is that all his drums seem to fit in the song. Any other comments on John Bonham


p.s. My first post :)

yeah! I totally agree with you man!!! My all time favorite drummer, and the Led Zeppelin songs are really fun to play! :)
 
Im still getting bog'd down trying to replicate his sound. The most annoying thing is that reading sources telling me he tuned both heads tight and then I apply this to my heads and they sound like hitting a glass. I love the sound from his Maple Kit from the DVD in the Royal Albert hall, so deep and powerful. Another example is the intro to "Thank you" absoloute gorgeous sound. I have a Tama Rockstar custom and although the drums are not as big as Bonzo's I want to get a similar sound instead of this glassy sound. I currently have EC2's on the batter and Pinstripes reso (thought I'd give it ago instead of the crappy tama stock reso). Im eventually gonna get Emporers or Aquarians Response 2 heads for batter and amassadors for reso. Rant finished.........so yea any feedback :p
 
To try and cop Bonham's sound, which many people try to do, you have to know a few things. One, his style of playing and the way he struck the drum was an important part of his sound. The sizes of his drums and what they were made of (maple on his most famous recordings) are also of extreme importance. A 26" bass drum with both heads intact with felt strips for muffling like he had sounds NOTHING like a 22" kick with a hole in the front head and blankets for muffling. His toms were tuned similar to his snare drum in that the bottom skin was tuned pretty high while the top skin was tuned to a medium tension. He used 14" 16" and 18" toms for the majority of his career, so he had some leeway on being able to tune them a bit higher without losing some balls. Finally, head selection is also key. On his kit, he played coated emperors on all batter heads with coated ambassadors on the bottom of his toms and the front of his bass drum. Ambassador snare side. The resonant head should be a single ply for maximum resonance. The rest of his sound was just the skill he had both in tuning his drums and playing. It was truly an awesome sound and one that many drummers try to copy but seldom do.
 
For all you Bonham fans...

We all know of Bonham's amazing power and feel. Ah, gives me chills thinking what a drummer he was. But at first bonham was known as the Loud Studio Drummer...

. In 1964, Bonham joined his first band, Terry Webb and the Spiders, meeting his future wife Pat Phillips at a dance in Kidderminster. He also played in other Birmingham bands such as The Blue Star Trio and The Senators, who released a moderately successful single "She's a Mod". Bonham enjoyed the experience and decided to take up drumming full-time. Two years later, he joined "A Way of Life" however the band soon became inactive. In desperation for a regular income, he joined a blues group called Crawling King Snakes whose lead singer was a young Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin's lead singer). During this period, Bonham developed a reputation of being the loudest drummer in England, often breaking drumheads and being asked by clubs to stop playing. Asked to leave one Birmingham studio because he was too loud for the owner, he was told that there was no future for a drummer as loud as him. Ten years later, the owner received a note reading "Thanks for the career advice..."; and accompanied by a Led Zeppelin gold record. By 1967, A Way of Life asked Bonham to return to their group, during this period Plant kept in constant contact with Bonham and when he decided to form Band Of Joy, Bonham was first choice as drummer. The band recorded a number of demos but no album. In 1968 American singer Tim Rose toured Britain and invited Band of Joy to open his concerts. When Rose returned for another tour months later, Bonham was formally invited by the singer to drum for his band which gave him a regular income.

I just thought I had to share this for all of those drummer out there that get bashed for theyr stile of playing. Bonham could've payed attention to them and changed his stile, but that wasn't him. He just had to wait for the right time. Just remember to have the feel and groove, but most importantly the music in you... Ah, bonham what an amazing example and drummer for us all.

But now for the goodies! :)
(Later on I'll see if I can put up some other ones. Oh, and some of these might not have been used in the actual record.)
 

Attachments

  • All Of My Love - Outtake.mp3
    2.4 MB · Views: 630
  • All Of My Love - Outtake 2.mp3
    679.6 KB · Views: 682
  • Another GREAT Bonham Groove!.mp3
    2.1 MB · Views: 661
  • The Softer Side Of John.mp3
    822.1 KB · Views: 749
  • Bonham Playing Around - Outtake.mp3
    1.2 MB · Views: 723
Bonzo..The reason I started playing drums seriously in the first place..I started playing on cardboard boxes in my parents bedroom..pie pans nailed to broom handles for cymbals..we were poor..that was in 1965..in 1969 after playing snare drum in school for 2 years I herad Led Zep I..WOW..I wasnt able to afford my own kit so I played on a few friends until 1976 when I was in the Navy and bought a Ludwig Blue Vistalite 8 piece kit..still have it today..I immediately started learning Zep songs and realized right away that I had an offbeat rhythm..Bonhams style of playing came quite easy for cause of that but man he was fast and I remember when I was trying to learn Moby Dick the live version I kept smacking my left wrist really hard with the right stick..I developed a knot the size of a golf ball from hitting so hard and so many times but I eventually got the whole solo down and loved every second of learning it including the pain.. AS for his sound if you tune the resionant heads a couple complete turns higher that the batter head which is set at medium tension then the drums really come to life..Acrylic drums are a little touchy to tune but are by far the best sounding drums I have ever played.. Years ago I took all the bottom heads off all my toms and things really opened up.. I loved John Bonham and I miss him greatly.. Like I said he has been my inspiration for 40 years of drumming..whenever I feel my head swelling a little and get a little cocky..I play Moby Dick Live and I humbly bow in retreat..Yeh I'm good..Real good..But Bonham if he was still alive would still kick my ass..then smile and say..try that!!!
 
Hey, a while back someone posted a question about Bonham's HH riding on Heartbreaker from Zeppelin II. At the time I think the general agreement was that the skip/ghost notes we're hearing were a studio effect.

I was wondering if maybe those could in fact be genuine ghost notes, possibly even in the snare (to give the different timbre we were hearing). I'm thinking about something along the lines of some super basic Clyde Stubblefield who at the same time this Zeppelin recording was made was pulling off some very cool ghosting.

Just wondering if anyone thinks you could play the general groove in the hands something like following and come up with a sound fairly close to the original:


HH:|x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
_S:|-g--xg---g--xg--|
___|1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + |


Leaving the stick close to the head after the backbeat so it connects as a ghost is something I think I hear Clyde do alot and I hear it in some of Bonham's stuff too (like on "When the Levee Breaks" where he also uses ghost attacks in the bass). I've been working hard on "I Got the Feeling" where Clyde employs his ghosting technique extensively, so maybe I'm just extending it to this "Heartbreaker" groove. However, I would imagine that Bonham would have listened to Clyde quite a bit too and employed some of the things the other guys of the time were doing around him.

Just as an aside: If you listen to Dread Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker (At the End of Lonely Street)" you'll hear the same ride pattern as above with the ghost notes:


HH:|xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-|
___|1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + |


The other thing I was thinking was that is doesn't seem characteristic of Bonham to use a studio effect to give his drumming the sound of additional technique or a sound he can't come up with on his own. His stuff isn't layered upon layers like Page's stuff was and I think if he had the opportunity to add studio effects to his playing, he generally declined. I don't know for sure, though.

Anyway, this is probably a little geeky for some people, but I get into the little embellishments that people do. I think it's like a subtle spice people use to make their cooking special or different and also gives me more options to consider in my own playing.

Any thoughts?
 
Any one have tips on his triplet fills in stairway to heaven?
 
cdrums21 said:
To try and cop Bonham's sound, which many people try to do, you have to know a few things. One, his style of playing and the way he struck the drum was an important part of his sound. The sizes of his drums and what they were made of (maple on his most famous recordings) are also of extreme importance. A 26" bass drum with both heads intact with felt strips for muffling like he had sounds NOTHING like a 22" kick with a hole in the front head and blankets for muffling. His toms were tuned similar to his snare drum in that the bottom skin was tuned pretty high while the top skin was tuned to a medium tension. He used 14" 16" and 18" toms for the majority of his career, so he had some leeway on being able to tune them a bit higher without losing some balls. Finally, head selection is also key. On his kit, he played coated emperors on all batter heads with coated ambassadors on the bottom of his toms and the front of his bass drum. Ambassador snare side. The resonant head should be a single ply for maximum resonance. The rest of his sound was just the skill he had both in tuning his drums and playing. It was truly an awesome sound and one that many drummers try to copy but seldom do.

you basically repeated every single thing in this video

http://www.drummerworld.com/Videos/johnbonhamtech1.html
 
bonham990 said:
Any one have tips on his triplet fills in stairway to heaven?
I've been working on my trips between hand and feet (where the first is in the left or right and the last two are in the bass drum), and I haven't found any great secret yet. I'm also not very consistent with pulling them out until they get going. I need to keep working on them and do as part of my daily warmup.

I did find that playing the bass with my the ball of foot (as opposed to flat footed) works best and the attack being made using the foot moving like a pendulum from the ankle as well as a little leg movement up and down. It also seems like using the rebound from the drum head helps, so keeping the foot and leg firm but relaxed (like we do our hands when playing the snare) makes a difference. Also making sure that the beater comes up while the hand is playing the first of the triplet articulations helps tremendously and is ready for it's attack. The beater's readiness can be assisted by using the rebound as much as possible when a string of bass notes are being played. When I started this effort of improving my bass, I noticed that I was leaving the beater on the head of the drum and not raising it in time to make its first attack (oddly, this was never a problem when I was just playing singles between the bass and hands - it only krept up when I went to a single in the right or left and a double in the bass drum).

This is one technique I really want. For me, it's hard to play any of Bonham's ideas true to form without the bass drum integrated and coordinated into my playing and working as well as another hand. I think that my hands (like everyone's) are more naturally coordinated together and to get them to work in sync with either of my feet is simply going to take some work. Integrating the HH as another voice and having it as smooth and readily available as any hand would be is another project I have in my mind to be working on soon.

Anyone else have some ideas on this topic?
 
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Re: Achilles Last stand w/ timpini solo

Most of us knew. Unfortunately there also seems to be an imaginary link.
 
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