I know that John Bonham is not an underrated or neglected part of drum history. Hell, if you play the drums and you don't know who John Bonham is I don't need to tell you you're an idiot, I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough. I'm not writing about John Bonham on here to talk about his influence or importance, that's been discussed to exhaustion in every god damn drum magazine and forum in existence. I'm here to tell you that John Bonham the drummer may have died at 32, but John Bonham the artist was just an infant, barely two years old when he was taken from us, and that's the biggest tragedy. Let me explain.
In Through The Out Door is my favorite Led Zeppelin album. I'm sure that's some sort of blasphemy somewhere, but fuck you I think about this stuff a lot more than most other people do. You see, this is the first album where Led Zeppelin had really stepped out from under the safety blanket of the blues and really made something innovative stylistically. They had proven they could wail on the last seven records, but the songs on In Through... have a certain maturity to them, all the power and energy of the previous albums but much more focused thematically, concentrating of feel and dynamic more than virtuosic playing.
A big part of this can be attributed to Page and Bonham becoming unreliable due to their various addictions, and the writing responsibility falling mostly onto John Paul Jones and Robert Plant, who had always had input but never this much. The previous songs had mostly always relied on riffs, with everything else coming to life around them. Until now Bonham had been used to the freedom of Page's parts. Page was a master of creating space for his band mates to work their way into, it's one of the best parts about his playing. As a drummer, when you play along to guitar riffs, there is usually quite a few pockets of space where you can throw in little frills and fills, which Bonham had been doing quite well up to this point. Once Jones took the reigns writing parts for In Through The Out Door, the songs became very bass-prominent and it sort of lasso'd in John's playing. Jones has a great ability to keep things grounded, but his playing is very thick. Bonham couldn't start throwing in drum flourishes everywhere because there was simply no room for them.
This could have killed his inspiration, but instead Bonham used this musical confinement to hone his skills under duress. By this point he had really carved out his own niche, and he worked within the limitations set by Jones while still holding onto his style. The result is an album full of really interesting rhythms, played with the ferocity and skill of his previous material. When he does get a little room he makes it count, working in fills as extensions of his rhythms. There's parts in Carouselambra that are just out of this world, better than anything he had laid down before.
It's not that Bonham hadn't done anything impressive before this point, but this was the first time he was forced to change his approach, and instead of throwing in the cards he really shaped it into something unique. It's like throwing a painter a lump of clay and saying, "there, what can you do with that?" He always had his own style, but this was the first glimpse of personality to come from his playing. He died shortly after this album was released, and it's the only glimpse we have into where his drumming would have progressed.
I can't help but wonder what kind of drummer he would would have been on the next three records the way I wonder what Albert Camus' books would have been like if he hadn't died in that car crash. Sometimes it's best not to think of these things.
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