Whole Lotta Led: Our Flight With Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin was grounded in 1978. The band virtually vanished from the spotlight. Rumors of a break up ran rampant and no new material had been released in over three years. Due to the tragic death of his son, Robert Plant felt the need to reflect and soul search with his family. His family was his light. He was given breathing space by the group to decide his next move. Would the song remain the same?

The press wrote about Page’s bad karma and of a Zeppelin curse. Were the misfortunes due to his dabbling in the black arts? Page emphatically denied the reports by stating: “All I or we have attempted to do is to go out and really have a good time and please people at the same time ... I can’t think of anything better than doing what you really want to do and seeing just a mass of smiles. That’s utopia ... I just don’t see how there could be a bad karma or whatever.” About Led Zeppelin’s future, Page said “that there was no question of splitting up.”

Despite their inactivity, Zeppelin, as well as the group members, achieved an almost complete sweep of the awards in Creem magazine’s annual readers poll. If the band were to split up, I thought Van Halen would become the next Led Zeppelin. Emerging from the West Coast, their self-titled debut album put the swagger back into rock and also gave the world a new guitar hero in Eddie Van Halen.

When Robert Plant walked off the Oakland stage in 1977, life would not be the same. After losing his son, he reportedly considered a career change in teaching kindergarten and was accepted as a student teacher. Plant explained: “One day everything had been fantastic, and the next everything was as devastatingly wrong as you could possibly imagine. As a family unit on the way out of all that—or in the way around it—I thought going away on tour and being the other guy just ain’t worth it. I’d realized that kids were infinitely more important than the footlights and dry ice and dodgy cocaine with someone you don’t know.”

Jerry Prochnicky also considered a change—a change of location. He was trying to forget about someone, and not doing a good job at it. Was this love or was this confusion? He made up his mind to make a new start. The West has always been the hope of continental America. If you can’t make it where you are at, go to California. So he did, with an aching in his heart. Like Jimmy Page, he’s also “still searching for an angel with a broken wing.”

Plant had his angels in wife Maureen and daughter Carmen. And he still had his best friend since he was a teenager in John Bonham. Bonham persuaded Plant to face the music again. So in May, Zeppelin started working as a group with rehearsals at Clearwater Castle on the Welsh border. It had been ten months since they last played together. Things looked more hopeful for future recording and live dates. The question was, with past tragedy and present expectations weighing them down, would Zeppelin be able to get their heavy load off the ground?

In July, Plant appeared in public for the first time since his son’s death, sitting in with local bands around his home. The following month Plant ventured onstage during a Dr. Feelgood concert in Spain. Slowly, he was easing back into the public life.

I was easing into a new slow paced lifestyle of my own. During my time at San Diego State I’d lived in an apartment off University Avenue. After I graduated in 1977, I decided I’d had enough of city life and moved just south of Oceanside. I bought a condo in the little coastal town of Encinitas. Life was lived at a much slower pace there. I really got into the area’s surfing scene—there were many places to find great waves, and at this time it wasn’t that crowded. There was the reef at Swamis, near the Self-Realization Temple, and some large beach breaks at Bekins and Grandview. It was a laid back, relaxing change from the city life I’d lived near San Diego State for four years. And when I wanted to get into some excitement, there was always the concert scene in San Diego or Los Angeles.

On June 2, Bob Dylan’s Street Legal tour arrived at the Universal Amphitheater in Hollywood. I got in there with my camera and took pictures of his new band, which included a horn section, a violinist, a flutist, and female backup singers. Once again Dylan followed his own creative muse, transformed his music, and reinvented himself. Gone were the days of The Band’s impeccable yet furious playing, or the multi-talented Rolling Thunder Revue. His new musical format had the jazzy, big band feel of a Las Vegas spectacle. Like his change from acoustic to electric in 1965, fans either embraced the change or hated it. Shortly after this tour Dylan would shock fans again by converting to Christianity. Like Zeppelin, Dylan always broke new musical ground and did whatever he wished, apologized to no one for it, and just kept on going no matter what critics said.

Many artists in ’78 explored new music forms, and David Bowie was one who really stood out. In going for a completely different sound from his previous outings with space-rock and soul, Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno from the progressive Roxy Music. The resulting tour for the Low album was incredible. Although there was great rock and roll, like “Hang Onto Yourself,” other songs like “Heroes” and “Warzawa” had a huge move toward a synthesized keyboard sound. There was definite change in the air.

Other shows at the San Diego Arena that year showed me how some bands had borrowed from Zeppelin’s lessons in light and shade. The best example was Heart during their Dog and Butterfly tour. Much of the band’s music emanated from Zeppelin’s inspiration. “Mistral Wind” had the slow, menacing buildup of “No Quarter”; “Barracuda” attacked with the same driving force as “Song Remains the Same,” and “Love Alive” reflected the acoustic Renaissance style of “Going To California.” Even lead guitarist Roger Fisher went so far as to imitate Jimmy Page by prancing around the stage in pants that had a dragon design. Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson were brilliant songwriters and performers, but they paid tribute to Zeppelin by doing their songs like “Battle of Evermore,” “The Rover,” and “Rock and Roll” onstage. It was evident as the 70s were ending that Zeppelin by now was a major influence for many upcoming rock bands. History would repeat itself, for this trend lives on today with new bands that owe a huge debt to Zeppelin.

By November, 1978, Zeppelin was based in London rehearsing for their ninth album, In Through the Out Door. As Page explained the title, “That’s the hardest way to get back in.” Tax laws meant that the album, like Presence, would have to be recorded outside the U.K. So the band lifted off to Sweden for Abba’s state of the art Polar Studios. The Swedish nights were long and dark, with the sessions somber compared with what had gone before. With Plant affected by his son’s death and Page semi-detached, John Paul Jones took artistic control and was credited with six of the seven songs. Whereas Presence was a guitar-oriented album, there would be a dominance of keyboards and synthesizer on the new album.

After the Polar sessions, Plant returned to the bosom of his family, where Maureen was pregnant again. The new year marked a son for Robert Plant, christened Logan Romero. And the best news in 1979 for English fans was that Zeppelin would headline the Knebworth Festival on August 4. It would mark the first time in four years that Zeppelin played live in the U.K. Some other artists on the bill were Todd Rundgren’s Utopia and Fairport Convention. The show became a highly anticipated event, and two months before the concert all available tickets sold out. Another date on August 11 was added, with the New Barbarians taking Fairport Convention’s place on the bill. The total attendance for both shows was estimated to be over 400,000. What a spectacle of an outdoor show. This was a far cry from the band playing heavy blues in small clubs.

By the same token, Zeppelin owed a huge debt to the early bluesmen, especially the Delta-style players. John Lee Hooker, creator of the boogie sound, was honored by Zeppelin when the band jammed during “Boogie Chillen.” Hooker influenced many artists, from John Mayall and Canned Heat to ZZ Top. He was one of my all-time blues heroes and in February I photographed and interviewed him for The Daily Aztec. Like Jimmy Page, Hooker believed that blues is a music form that can be drawn from again and again. Being honest music, it moved the listener. Hooker pointed out that even jazz players use it: “Cannonball Adderley once told me that a good jazz player’s got to be able to play some blues. Blues is parallel with jazz, structure-wise ... from inside, like jazz, not out ... The blues says it like it is. It’s the roots.”

Hooker told me that he enjoyed visiting England during the ‘60s Folk-Blues Festivals because audiences really appreciated quality music. And although he’d never changed, he pointed out that today’s music scene had. Hooker noted: “I’ve always played just what I wanted to. It’d seem like there’s not a lot happening in music now because everybody’s on a big money trip. But blues never went out ... there’s a lot of fly-by-night groups who’ll have a hit single overnight. They they’ll hit the ground just as fast, like an earthquake hit ‘em.”

Hooker was right about how making a lot of money had become a big part of the music scene. By 1979, rock shows in Southern California were making big bucks and had become more intense, wild, and unbelievable than ever. In April, I returned to Los Angeles for what was the hugest music event that year. It was a gigantic two-day rock extravaganza held at the L.A. Coliseum called the World Music Festival. There was a wide assortment of performers that epitomized the widely changing American music scene—Cheap Trick, Toto, Eddie Money, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith and Van Halen. It was totally nuts. I liked the concert scene, but what went on up there was too much for me.

I squeezed my way into the crowd near the stage for two exhausting nights to get pictures. Cheap Trick’s vocalist Robin Zander seemed to be an imitation of early Robert Plant. Aerosmith was caught up in the 70s drug craziness—especially vocalist Steven Tyler. The band played a sloppy set at best, with Tyler’s slurred words barely audible over Joe Perry’s ear-shattering guitar work. During Van Halen’s performance, I tried to keep my balance as I nearly got crushed in the swaying, surging mob. This local L.A. band had grown incredibly popular in three years. For many, Van Halen was the next big thing in rock music. Young, half-crazed girls screamed and shoved their way past me as David Lee Roth leaped through the air and did splits. New guitar god Eddie Van Halen held his instrument high and pulverized the strings with his trademark lightning-fast riffs. I thought the excitement was way overblown. But it was also obvious that the popularity of these bands had filled the void left by Zeppelin’s touring absence.

Knebworth was to be a new beginning. The music scene in 1979 was filled with punkers and new wave music, and Led Zeppelin was looked upon by some as “dinosaurs” of corporate music. But the group was far from being extinct. Before the show, Bonham watched his eleven-year-old son, Jason, sit in on drums during the sound check. “He can play ‘Trampled Underfoot’ perfectly,” Bonham said. This was the first time that he ever saw Led Zeppelin from the audience. Very few people were allowed in the closed-off backstage enclosure that housed the dressing room trailers. The band seemed nervous. Plant was with his wife, Maureen, and daughter, Carmen. His six-month-old baby boy Logan was at home with his grandparents. Jimmy Page flew in by helicopter to the site, located north of London, a half-hour before the show with his wife, Charlotte.

Knebworth was Britain’s largest outdoor venue, sitting in a panorama of parks and stately homes. It had natural amphitheater-like surroundings. In the cold and dark of the evening, the degree of fanaticism from the monstrous crowd seemed unequaled. The atmosphere was thick with anticipation. It was not the same as Earl’s Court, but the feeling of an impending event was unmistakable. Fans camped out in tents with “Knebworth ’79” painted on the sides. People cooked meals over campfires, watched fire eaters and jugglers, and ran around campgrounds in the dark playing with glow-in-the-dark frisbees. This show was to become Zeppelin’s English comeback. The ’70s had been their decade, and the band was closing it out in style. Showco had brought across from the States the biggest system they had ever assembled—100,000 watts of sound and 600,000 watts of light. The band appeared dwarfed by huge video screens at the back of the stage which provided giant images of the group in action. There were lasers, dry ice, spotlights—the works.

The band played erratically but forcefully for over three hours. Fires burned eerily in the audience as Zeppelin dived into “The Song Remains the Same,” “Celebration Day” and “Black Dog” and “In the Evening.” If one watches the Knebworth segment on the Led Zeppelin 2003 DVD release, it’s obvious that the band hadn’t lost its sheer power. Just turn it up on a good system with box speakers. “Rock and Roll” was overpowering, and the crowd, ecstatic to see Zeppelin again, sang along about it being a lonely time. The sheer majesty of “Kashmir” jumped right out—a torrent of volume that surrounded everyone, then dragged them right in. “Achilles Last Stand” was intense as it gets—Page’s riffs never sounded better—he hung his head in concentration, sweat dripping off his hanging hair. Bonham’s drum rolls sounded like machine gun bursts, going perfectly with Page’s notes. At the end, it’s clear that Page really had a blast during “Whole Lotta Love,” shuffling his feet and dancing around. There was an energy that went back and forth from the stage to the audience. The sheer size of the crowd meant that the cheering wasn’t coordinated but sounded like the swelling of surf on a beach. At the end of “Whole Lotta Love,” Plant looked teary-eyed and said, “Thanks for the eleven years!” Fans proclaimed the show a complete triumph. Despite the success of Knebworth, Zeppelin’s glory days were now largely behind them. This was because it wasn’t the same band that had stepped onstage ten years before. Plant likened Knebworth to a blind date—you didn’t know if you would see her again. After Knebworth, there would follow another lengthy period of stage absence. Time, it seemed, was running out for them.

In November 1979 Zeppelin released their last studio LP, In Through the Out Door, in the midst of an industry recession that had already caused the commercial deaths of many other “dinosaurs.” The album sold a phenomenal four million copies! Whereas John Paul Jones was underused on Presence, he was overused on In Through The Out Door. Although he was an excellent musician, Jones functioned best behind Page, not in front of him. The record sounded almost frail in comparison to the sonic roar of “Achilles Last Stand.” Instead, Zep fans heard pop hits like “Fool In The Rain” and “All My Love.” For Jerry, the best number on the album was “In The Evening” because it had the only great guitar riff on the entire album.

For many fans, including Jerry and me, the first two albums were what Zeppelin was about. Was it closing time? I was looking forward to the next album, as was Jimmy Page: “John Bonham and I had discussions and we were very serious that the next Led Zeppelin album would be riff-heavy and really smoky. In Through the Out Door was us starting to sound a little too polished.”

Despite the contrast to the more blues-based sound of earlier albums, the new record continued the growth of Zeppelin and pushed the band into different musical styles. Punk and New Wave music had come to the forefront during Zeppelin’s absence from the music scene. The song “Wearing and Tearing” was recorded for the album, but didn’t really fit in with the blues feel. Jimmy Page called it the beginning of an “energetic punk type thing.” He believed that the new album was the beginning of a transitional stage for Zeppelin. But instead, In Through the Out Door would be Zeppelin’s actual swan song, the final chapter in the band’s odyssey. Like the first album, it was different from anything that had gone before.

The album’s cover became an extension of the music’s experimental feel. The cover was again designed by Hipgnosis. There were six variations of the basic cover that showed a scene of a bar, each seen through the eyes of the different people in the photo. It looked like the last watering hole. There was a man in a white suit burning a piece of paper—was it a phone number of a love gone wrong? Was he drinking away his sorrows, learning to forget? Whereas Presence was plastered with black obelisks, In Through the Out Door was plastered with Schlitz bottles. Buyers didn’t know which of the six covers they were purchasing, since the new LP was packaged in a brown paper bag with only the band’s name and album title on it. Peter Grant said the album could be put in a brown paper bag and it would still top the charts—which it did, and he was right.

When I first bought the record, I anticipated some new, heavy Zeppelin moments to be unveiled. The cover reminded me of some 1940s gangster movie set. Then as I listened to the record back at my condo, I realized that the band had gone in a whole new direction. No time was wasted on setting the album’s tone. “In The Evening” opened with a droning, Indian-like, backwards guitar effect bleeding back and forth across the channels. It was a classic Zeppelin orchestrated guitar rumble. Page explained: “That’s me, with the bar really super-heavily depressed at the start of the solo. I just held the bar down and let it come up real fast.” Page utilized ideas from his ill-fated Lucifer Rising soundtrack for the song’s intro. For me, after the monumental opener, the rest of the songs went downhill.

“South Bound Suarez” had a honky tonk piano intro and conjured up a New Orleans barroom feel. The lyrics told of having a good old time and dancing your cares away—but Page’s guitar didn’t shine with intensity. Instead it sounded strained. No heavy riffs here. “Fool in the Rain” was Jones’ track, the Brazilian feel being a lurking presence. The congas, whistles and steel drums threw a new spin on Zeppelin’s sound. It may have been an effective radio single but it sounded way too commercial. “Hot Dog” seemed like Zeppelin was playing at a country square dance, a sound that came off as idiotic at best. “Carouselambra” conjured up a complex merry-go-round of sound. It was a mix of techno and electric guitars that marked a new step forward for Zeppelin. Fueled by keyboards, the heavily synthesized barrage of sound was a little too long, clocking in at ten minutes. This song sounded interesting to me—there was an intense wall of sound. “All My Love” was Plant’s song, a celebration of life, death and rebirth. Page’s precision acoustic work here sounded better than most of the other guitar work on the album. It also became a successful single—but it sacrificed the classic heavy blues sound in order to sound like a Beatles pop tune. Page’s riffs sounded muddled. “I’m Gonna Crawl” shined from Plant’s stormy singing and a haunting melody that dragged me completely in. It was a grand blues that I thought was a great way to end the album. But I thought the new record was really uneven. It was a keyboard marathon and John Paul Jones was awesome. But what happened to the rock and roll? Where were Page’s riffs?

This album became Jones’ album due to the fact that he was behind many of the musical arrangements. Unlike Zeppelin’s other albums, In Through the Out Door suffered from less than crystal clear production. On a positive note, Bonham’s drumming was more complex and rhythmically varied here than it had ever been. You could hear him loud and clear. But his drumming couldn’t make up for the other shortcomings.

There could have been a lot more to the album, but some other songs were ditched. It was later revealed that three hot rockers—“Ozone Baby,” “Darlene,” and “Wearing and Tearing” were recorded during the Polar Studios sessions. But oddly, they weren’t issued until the posthumous Coda release three years later. Had they been included, or substituted for the ten minute “Carouselambra,” In Through the Out Door would have been much more of a Zeppelin album for me. But as it turned out, the album was characterized by a feeling of melancholy that never really lifted. The music was foreboding, as if it proclaimed that the end of Led Zeppelin was not far off.

Though the album wasn’t hard-hitting enough for many fans, the reviewers mostly liked it. Rolling Stone had positive and negative remarks about the album, using Bonham’s drumming as the focal point: “Hearing John Bonham play the drums is the aural equivalent of watching Clint Eastwood club eight bad guys over the head with a two-by-four while driving a derailed locomotive through their hideout. Either you are horrified by all that blood on the floor, or you wish you could do it yourself.” Creem magazine was more generous and said the new album was “a departure from Zeppelin’s standard orientation in favor of different musical styles” with the keyboards, but that Zeppelin’s overall style was still there.

While I was living in Encinitas, I got more involved in selling my photography. I began to have pictures of blues and rock artists published in local newspapers, and I also branched out in selling to collectors. There were some swap meets I sold at in San Diego, and then by 1979 I’d gotten really involved in selling once a month outdoors in Hollywood. The place was a parking lot beside the Capitol Records building near Hollywood and Vine. It started out as a small affair but quickly grew into a large underground music event, completely by word of mouth. Sellers started arriving earlier and earlier to get a selling space, and what originally began as a daytime meet turned into an all-nighter.

Hundreds of music freaks from all over Southern California flooded the little lot, and the meet had to move across the street to a larger parking area. The crowd was a cross-section of an entire music subculture—hippie throwbacks, heavy metal fans, and punkers wearing spiked collars and leashes. And there were a lot of record collectors wearing miners’ hats with lights on top so records could be examined closely in the dark. Mystery records with mystery origins showed up each month. If a strange vehicle that had new, unseen records pulled up, collectors swarmed over the find like killer bees at an unguarded picnic. There were loads of music items—bootleg records, vintage albums, tapes, buttons, posters, and photos. I had my 70s concert photos on ten particle board displays, everything I’d taken of artists from Aerosmith and Blondie to the Who and Zeppelin.

Anyone could show up and anything could happen. On a few occasions around midnight, I spotted Ray Manzarek walking down one of the selling aisles. I left my stand and was able to talk to him about his touring days with the Doors and what he was doing nowadays with music. Another time, David Lee Roth showed up and tried to pick up Betsy, a New York photographer who was working with me that night. She was selling her pictures of hotshot guitarist Michael Shencker of UFO and lots of other bands. Roth had his arm in a cast and he was drunk. Betsy liked rock stars, but mostly through a camera’s lens. She turned Roth down.

It was at this meet that I first ran across Norwood Price, selling his Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, Who, and Zeppelin photos, taped up on cardboard displays. I was amazed at his pictures from so many 60s concerts. We traded photos and shared stories about the Zeppelin Rose Palace show that we’d both seen. I also met Jerry Prochnicky for the first time there, and we talked about the Doors concerts we’d been fortunate enough to attend. A friendship based on our love for music was started, and we decided to keep in touch.

Not everything was so friendly, though. People didn’t always come to buy or make friends—they also came to steal. Over the months, I noticed that too many of my Zeppelin photos were disappearing. Sticky fingers indeed. Once after I’d set up to sell, I left some friends at my photo displays to check out what else was around. I ran across a teenager with something I recognized—one of my 8 × 10s of Jimmy Page holding up his double neck.

“Where’d you get the Page photo?” I asked. He pointed in the direction of my picture stand. “Did you get a good deal on it?” I went on. He shrugged. “Well, you stole it! I haven’t sold any of those yet!” I yelled. I grabbed at the picture, and he backed away, clutching it next to some Zeppelin bootleg records he also had. That got me really mad, and I shoved him backwards and threw him off balance. Then I snatched everything out of his arms. “You probably ripped these off, too—so here they go.” I flung the records across the street. They spun upwards in the air, like bootleg Zeppelin frisbees. One of them smacked into the edge of the Capitol building, where it spun out of control, downwards end over end, and crashed. The thief swore at me and ran off toward where his records landed. I never saw him again.

In January of 1980, Zeppelin was rewarded with a variety of titles from magazine polls. The Knebworth performance was chosen as the best gig of the year in the Record Mirror. The next month, Zeppelin received various awards from Circus magazine. In Creem magazine, the band was chosen by readers as the best in many categories. It was clear that Zeppelin was still winning over hearts and souls in America.

The year 1980 would begin full of hope for the band. This brought the promise of Led Zeppelin’s U.S. return. But first the band planned to tour Europe in the summer and play smaller venues in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Austria. This time around, there would be no lasers or video screens, just a stripped-down PA system to try to recapture the spirit of the early 70s tours. Also, Page’s dragon suits were retired to the closet. Under the slogan “Tour Over Europe 1980” with a skyward-looking air warden as the logo, the band was set to rock and roll.

Led Zeppelin—the dinosaurs of rock? Not on this tour. It would turn out to be a resounding, sell-out success. Zeppelin still ruled. The warm-up series of concerts produced reports that Page was all over the stage like a madman possessed: duck walking, gyrating, leaping about, and creating crashing open chords that rang as if howling from a long tunnel. And Plant was in fine form, with Jones and Bonham playing with a vengeance. These shows, despite some rocky evenings, were Led Zeppelin rediscovering themselves after an uncertain period. They began their set with the first song they had ever played together, “The Train Kept A-Rollin.’” The other songs were from every stage of their career, including three from the last album.

Nearly all the shows were ecstatically received and the musicians seemed genuinely pleased to be back in action. Bonham seemed fine during his last days on the road. He picked up little dolls that he had collected from every country on the tour for his daughter, Zoe. The image of Bonham the wild man was far from that. He was a family man at heart.

The last date of the tour was in Berlin on July 7, 1980. Jimmy Page even spoke to the crowd, saying, “Nice to see you. Nice to be seen, I can tell you that.” But after that, Plant handled most of the introductions: “This tour is still the first one in a long while—sixteen towns in twenty-one days ... This song is for Showco Sound. A song for Texas—‘Hot Dog.’” Another introduction was “something for all the road crew.” Then Zep played “Trampled Underfoot.” The blues were pounded out with “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” the place shook with “Kashmir,” and the last songs included “Rock and Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love.” Then afterward, Plant said, “We’ve had a wonderful tour.” What no one in the band knew was that it would be the last tour, and the show in Berlin would be the last one ever. Ironically, the Yardbirds played their last show exactly twelve years before, to the day.

After the tour Plant, Jones, and Bonham took separate vacation breaks with their families. Page moved into his newly purchased home in Windsor, north of London. In September, Peter Grant announced a U.S. tour to be named “Led Zeppelin: The Eighties, Part One.” Could it really be? The band was coming—initially it was set to play nineteen dates in October and November covering the Northwest and Midwest in America and return to the U.S. for a west coast tour in 1981. By the fall, the band was once again in rehearsals. Jimmy Page was raring to go. But John Bonham felt tentative about going back to America. He appeared to be less than fit. The Oakland incident of ’77 was still in the back of his mind and the prospects of leaving his family again for a long tour overseas made him worry. He was drinking to excess and taking Motival, a drug to reduce anxiety.

According to reports, Bonham started drinking at a pub near his home on September 24 and never let up. From there he went to a Windsor studio for a Zeppelin rehearsal, during which he drank more. Bonham proceeded to Page’s house and continued to drink for several hours. A roadie put Bonham to bed just after midnight. He would never wake up again. The forty shots of vodka in twelve hours had taken their ultimate toll.

By the morning of the 26th, newspapers around the world were carrying the news of John Bonham’s death. The cause of death was said to have been pulmonary edema—waterlogging of the lungs, caused by inhaling vomit. The coroner ruled the death accidental. When I first heard the news, it came over the radio while I was returning home to Encinitas from doing darkroom work. I was terribly saddened—his death reminded me of my dad, a highly creative watercolor artist who also died an accidental alcohol-related death. I’d always admired Bonham’s power and precision—how he’d contributed so much to the Zeppelin sound. I thought, “What is going to happen now? How in the world will they ever replace him?”

Jerry also heard the news on the FM dial. One Zeppelin tune after another was played. In good times this exposure would have signaled an upcoming tour or the release of a new album. But this was a bad time. Bonham was dead! Jerry recalled: “I couldn’t believe it; wouldn’t believe it. I was kind of numb. It was the same kind of sadness when I heard the news of Jim Morrison dying in July of 1971. I also thought about what Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonzo’s wife and children were going through. I could only imagine what they felt.”

Robert Plant said of John Bonham’s death that it “was one of the most flattening, heartbreaking parts of my life. I had a great warm big-hearted friend I haven’t got anymore. It was so final.”

By the morning of the 26th, newspapers around the world carried the news: “John Bonham, 32, the Drummer of Led Zeppelin, Is Found Dead.” If newspapers were reporting it, then Jerry knew it must be true. Although he stopped listening to Zeppelin for a short while to ease the pain, he now hears the music with new appreciation for the world’s greatest drummer. Twenty-five years gone, both Jerry and I still have a sense of deep sorrow.

On October 10, John Henry Bonham was laid to rest at St. Michael’s Church at Rushock, England. He was survived by his wife and two children. Bonham’s final resting place is in a very beautiful setting. It is one that makes a distinct, lasting impression.

Victoria Oliver took the two-hour drive from her home to visit Bonham’s gravesite. She recalled the day: “The village is very remote with houses scattered amongst woodland and fields. The roads are just wide enough for one car and due to the remoteness, there are very few signs ... The church stands in a small churchyard surrounded by a stone wall and an arched gate. I was surprised by the small number of graves there ... John Bonham’s grave is at the back of the church and can easily be spotted by its size. It is a double-width grave and the grass is cut regularly. On our visit there were twenty-four drumsticks, a pair of sunglasses, a toy van, an empty tequila bottle with a rolled up piece of paper inside (I assume it was a message), a guitar pin badge and a piece of wood on the gravestone. The views from the church are wonderful, just miles of woodlands and fields with the occasional house. It is a very open space and is very peaceful. We then went back and had a look inside the church, which is a lovely, quaint village church. We had a look in the visitor’s book, which is full of messages to John: ‘Rest in peace ... You will always be in my heart ... See you in the next world.’”

Everyone wants a life of peace and fulfillment. So what brings these things, anyway—is it extreme riches, sex, or worldwide fame? That’s surely what Zeppelin got, but tragedy stepped in. What we value most, what we believe in determines how our lives end up. Plant sang about getting ready to meet Jesus in “In My Time of Dying.” This spiritual is about how we enter the afterlife with Christ’s help. Jesus said that “I am the way, the truth and the life.” This means that if we believe in Christ, and live for him, then He points the direction to God, his claims are real, and His divine life is joined to ours, in this life and the afterlife. If what Christ said is true, then any security and peace—on this earth and in our time of dying—is only as secure as our trust in God.

John Bonham was no saint. He got sucked into the Twilight Zone world of rock and roll, where craziness was the norm. Different people in the entertainment world had their own impressions of him.

Dave Pegg, Fairport Convention’s bass player, saw Bonham’s drinking as a result of growing up in a drinking society. Pegg noted: “Lots of times when I met up with him in America we’d go out. He was very fond of his glass of ale ... I think being away from home does it to people. Some of us tend to crack more easily than others.”

Vanilla Fudge’s drummer Carmen Appice also knew Bonham. He thought that Bonzo was “basically a good guy, until he got drunk. Once Bonzo got drunk, he lost control of what he was doing. He drank all the time. English people drink all the time. That’s one of their social habits.”

Phil Carson saw a much gentler version. “John was a really nice person: very warm-hearted person ... a very quick wit. People don’t realize he was a very funny man, in a British sense of humor. It doesn’t always translate everywhere across the world, but the British do have a certain style of humor and John was right up there with the greatest in his speed of wit. It was a dry humor. He had a very fast mind, which expressed itself in his playing, too. At home, John was very much a family man.”

Bonham took his inspiration for his playing from many different sources, including Carmine Appice. Bonham took many of his most famous fills from Appice’s playing. Appice recognized the emulation and the similarity between Bonzo’s playing on “Good Times Bad Times” and Vanilla Fudge’s “That’s What Makes a Man.”

Bonzo saw himself as an artist, a musician—not just some barbarian who crawled out of the forest with a club and pounded wildly away on animal skins. His drumming was powerful but also very precise, and he worked hard to improve his musical skill. His perfectionism in his music was evident to all who watched him play. He set a standard for aspiring drummers.

Drummer Dave Mattacks knew that Bonham’s sound was rare. “What made John unique was that not only did he play properly, but he had the power. And that’s what made that drum sound so huge.” Bonham loved playing his drums, being the animal in the background that controlled the tempo.

Eddie Kramer, the engineer for some Zeppelin albums, remembered recording sessions with the band and the pure enjoyment Bonham showed for his music. “I’ll tell you what comes to mind about John: determination, a tremendous amount of guts, willingness to please, great personal satisfaction in having mastered a difficult fill or passage ... In Stargroves I can remember watching his face during playbacks. When we’d get a great take his face would light up just like a child’s face ... we had so much fun making those records.”

Page said, “He was the ultimate rock and roll drummer. That’s all there is to it.”

Jones said, “He was the best drummer I’ve ever played with, bar none. But again, it wasn’t done just to make himself look good, it was done to make us all look good. The band benefited incalculably.”

Plant remarked, “No one could ever have taken over John’s job. Never, ever! Impossible. When he drummed he was right there with either my voice or whatever Pagey was doing ... The band didn’t exist the minute Bonzo had gone.”

Page, Plant and Jones went away to think things over. Headlines read ZEP TO SPLIT? and WHAT NOW FOR LED ZEPPELIN? In the ensuing weeks, there was much speculation dished out by the press about the possibility of replacing Bonham. Recording industry spokesmen and insiders all predicted that Led Zeppelin would return with a new drummer. But the media and industry moguls predicted wrongly. The tactics of the Who, the Rolling Stones and countless other bands would not be followed by the remaining members of Led Zeppelin.

The remaining members decided that they would not relaunch Led Zeppelin. They told Peter Grant that there was no desire on their part to carry on. Grant felt exactly the same way.

On December 4, 1980, Zeppelin released the following statement to the press: “We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were.”