John Bonham

by Mick Bonham

  Clad in Donkey jacket, jeans and wellies, I strode off down the drive and headed home in the knowledge that someone would come and pick me up and take me back to work. Four miles down the road this idea seemed to be wearing a little thin, but the next day there was John on the phone asking why I wasn’t at work and laughing about the events of the previous day.

  “We were doing some dates in Texas and Bonzo and I ended up in a rather rough looking bar,” John Paul Jones recalls, of an incident which sheds much light on John’s fondness for life back home on the farm. “Bonzo was in high spirits so I was trying to keep a low profile behind him. As we made our way through the bar the place went quiet and everybody’s interest seemed focused on us. A few long hair clichés were aimed at us, so Bonzo started to give as good as he got. At this I wanted to get out of the place but Bonzo ordered more drinks. The atmosphere was turning nasty and it looked like we might end up in trouble, but as only Bonzo could, he turned and asked ‘Okay, what sort of cattle do you boys raise around here?’ The whole atmosphere changed and within minutes everyone had gathered round and were talking about Longhorns and Steers and there in the middle was Bonzo talking about his Herefords and what feeds were the best. He had this amazing knack of getting out of sticky situations and could talk his way out of anything.”

  Returning back to work, we finally finished off the house towards the end of 1974. There was some good news for Swan Song as well at this time, as Bad Company’s self-titled debut album had hit the Number One slot in the States.

  Eventually a new manager did take over at the farm, but it would never seem the same again. And with the completion of the house came the completion of my work, so for me it was on the road again. The last two years had been a lot of fun, working with Jacko and John and hearing about the progress of the band first-hand from stories that John told us. Now it was back to the real world of following the band through the music papers.

  Chapter 17

  MAY DAZE

  “Bonham’s solo: it’s a tight, densely-packed cross-weave of intersecting rhythms which includes an astounding number of variations without ever losing its basic beat. It just keeps on coming, and it’s cohesive enough to stand up as a piece of music, and simultaneously varied enough to keep the listener from nodding out. Many light years away it is from the usual random collection of redundant percussion exercises.

  It goes into three sections: drums with sticks, drums with hands, and a rather attenuated electronic drum exercise before a return to the main theme with the sticks.”

  Charles Shaar Murray’s, review of Zeppelin at Earls Court 1975

  On 11 January 1975, Led Zeppelin would finally perform as a band again in Rotterdam, their first gigs since July ’73. With another gig the following night in Brussels, these two dates would act as a warm up for their forthcoming American tour. As it was with most of the previous tours of the States, the sceptics were busy saying that Zep couldn’t do it again and wouldn’t do as well this time. And yet again they were proved wrong when all 700,000 concert tickets had been sold before they arrived for their first show in Minneapolis on 18 January. This tour would see them perform 37 shows with an entourage of 44 and three large truck loads of equipment, which included a 70,000 watt PA system and a 310,000 watt lighting rig.

  Tickets had been in such demand that rioting had occurred at many venues, the worst of which was at The Boston Garden, resulting in the band being banned from appearing there. After a short break in March they carried on through Texas, ending the tour with three nights at The Forum in Los Angeles. Here John bought another car for his collection, a Ford Sedan built to hot rod specifications, and decided to try it out racing up and down Sunset Trip.

  “He had just bought this new motor and was doing about 90mph up and down the strip,” recalls John Paul Jones. “He was going mad, and you know what the police are like over there about speeding. Anyway, it wasn’t long before the Highway Patrol pulled him over and they jump out of the car, with guns already out. At this, John jumps out of his car shouting ‘Hold on, hold on!’ One of the officers briskly asked John, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ to which he replied, ‘Well look, I’ve just come back from The Forum where we just played a blinding gig and I’ve got this brand new car’. And then he says, ‘Come and have a look at it’ and opens the bonnet. The cops are looking at him and he says, ‘Come on, come and have a look at this. You have a look at the bloody size of the engine’. I’m watching all this from the Hyatt House Hotel and it’s gone from an emergency situation to them all looking under the hood discussing brake horsepower. The next thing the police are leaving telling Bonzo to go steady next time and him offering them tickets for the next show. It was amazing, but he got away with it again.”

  During the latter half of the tour, Led Zeppelin’s sixth album, ‘Physical Graffiti’ had been released in America and had already shifted one million in advance orders. It went on to top the charts around the world and they became the first rock band to have all their albums in the Billboard Top 200 at the same time.

  Also during January, on the other side of the Atlantic, Lin and I were discussing some important dates of our own. We had been together for six years and we decided to get married on 13 September and were busy arranging everything; the church, reception and honeymoon. Since finishing work at Old Hyde I had hardly seen John, so on Jacko’s birthday, John and Mathew came over and we took Jacko out on a pub-crawl. As the night wore on John told us about the gigs they were due to do at Earls Court in London, and that extra nights had been added due to ticket demand. As we left the Conservative Club a little after 1.00am, John gave us some tickets for the show on 23 May before Matt took him home and Jacko and I wobbled back to the flat.

  It seems crazy that in some of the previous years Led Zeppelin could hardly get any media coverage in this country, and yet now, with the build up to the Earls Court dates, every paper was carrying articles about them. Even The Observer!

  Come 23 May Jacko, Debbie and myself, along with a good friend of mine, Roger Haymes, set off to see for ourselves how the band had progressed since we had last seen them at Trentham Gardens. As soon as the band walked on stage, to rapturous applause, we were in awe. Showco had shipped in the PA system and light show that was used on their American tour, and above the stage was a huge video screen showing close up views of the band as they went about their business. For three and a half hours we were treated to rock music from a band that you just knew were glad to be home. Every enthusiastic move by the band was highlighted in a show that was second to none. Laser beams fired above the heads of the audience gave the effect of flaming arrows when they reflected off a mirror ball, filling the vast hall with snowflakes and stars, You didn’t need chemicals that night to scorch your brain.

  While John was in full flight during ‘Moby Dick’, Jacko was up and dancing in the aisles with the best of them. And as everyone looked on quizzically at this older person in a suit he just kept telling everyone, “That’s my boy”. As I watched Jacko watching John I realised that there’s nothing more contented than the face of a father watching a son (or daughter) achieve their ambitions.

  After the show we were to meet up with John and the other members of the band backstage for a drink. A large caravan had been towed in to act as a dressing room and drinks dispensary, so we knew where we were headed. As we arrived John came over and hugged everybody, asking us what we wanted to drink. A crew member disappeared into the van for the drinks. Beers for us, of course, but only coke for little Debbie. I had to laugh when I heard a voice in the van shout, “Not that you fucking idiot, it’s for John’s little sister. Coca Cola stupid!”

  About two weeks later, on 10 June, Pat gave birth to a baby girl called Zoe. John phoned us to tell us the news and arranged to come over to the Conservative Club to celebrate that night. Jacko and I arrived at 8.00pm and waited for John. By 9.00pm there was still no sign of him so we carried on with our own celebration. At 10.30pm the stewardess c
ame over to say that John was on the phone. It appeared that he had popped in at The New Inn for a quick one but it had ended up a party and he wanted Jacko and me to pop over. There was no way we could go as neither of us were in a fit state to drive and at that time there were no garages open to even get petrol.

  At 11.15pm John rang again, this time in a terrible temper, and gave me a real bollocking for not going over, but as I tried to explain what the problem was the phone went dead. Jacko and I headed home, but shortly after midnight a heavy battering at the door told me John had arrived. As I opened the door he burst in and tried to knock the crap out of me, with Jacko trying to get between us and stop the pandemonium. In the ensuing tussle Jacko took a knock, which cut his lip. At this, John stopped, hugged his dad and apologised. He then turned to me and said, “Look what you’ve done now”, aiming a few more blows in my direction, before he stopped again having noticed the décor. Jacko had been given some paint and had decided to paint the lounge. The only problem was that Jacko was colour-blind and nobody had told him that the paint was lime green and orange. John looked around the room in disbelief, which gave me a breather, then again focused on the job in hand, shouted at me again, then disappeared out the door.

  Although we’d had several good scraps with each other whilst growing up, this would be different. It would be almost a year before John and I made contact with each other. No matter what happened though, I would still follow his career through news articles in various papers, while John spent the next 12 months away from his family, an exile from England.

  Chapter 18

  CELEBRATION DAY

  On Saturday 13 September, I woke early and looked out at the world through bloodshot eyes. A stag night that had lasted all week had certainly taken its toll and today of all days I wanted to enjoy every minute, because within a few hours I would marry the beautiful girl who had been with me for the last six years. I had met Lin back in 1969, at about the same time John went off with Zeppelin and she had been with me through all the ups and downs, and had stayed with me. Being so eager not to be late, my best man, Spencer Chapman, managed to get me to the church an hour early. The only thing to do was to have a quick hair of the dog over at the Unicorn Hotel, before taking the plunge. Quite fitting really, as Jacko had also had a drink in the Unicorn before taking the plunge; out of the window on VE night many years before. So, with nerves calmed, we made our way back to St. Stephens Church, near the town centre.

  At 1.30pm, escorted by her father Stanley and followed by the bridesmaids, Rosita, Julie and my younger sister Debbie, Lin joined me at the altar, as we became husband and wife. Along with the birth of my two children, it would be one of the three happiest days of my life, and as we said our vows and then danced the night away, I would occasionally glance out of the window in the hope that I may see John arrive, but alas, it was not to be. Sadly, I had always believed that on my own wedding day my big brother would have been by my side.

  Prior to the wedding, Lin and I had managed to acquire a two bedroomed flat, so on our return from honeymoon we started our new life at 11 Dolben Lane, Winyates. Situated on the top floor of a three-storey building, with glass patio doors in the lounge, one could just sit and look over one’s ‘estate’. It was here that I would ponder just what it was that had caused such an upheaval between John and myself, and it all seemed to boil down to a misunderstanding when the wedding plans had been made at the beginning of the year. We had already booked our wedding when John told us that Pat’s brother Jeff had also booked his wedding on the same day and was there any chance of us changing our date. At this late stage it would have been an impossible task, and I’m sure this mix up had a lot to do with what happened on the night of baby Zoe’s birth. It wouldn’t be for many years that I would find out just how much it had actually hurt John not to be at our wedding, something I would never have wanted to happen.

  But now as a married man I needed to put food on the table, so in the post Old Hyde search for employment, I had taken on full-time work at Dollydisc. Dollydisc was, if you can contain your laughter, an all-female, disco dancing, music playing, go anywhere, drinking disco outfit. It consisted of five girls; Connie Chapman would play the music while Karen Pennington, Jilly Davies, Vicky Harten and Annie would do all the drinking and dancing. All the equipment had been designed and built by Connie’s husband, Spencer who had been a designer of some acclaim at the BBC, and it was our job to get the equipment and the girls in working order at venues around the country. It was as we travelled around the country in a little, old Bedford van that memories of the early band days in the 60s came flooding back, only instead of five guys having a whip round for petrol we had five girls having a whip round for a bottle of wine. The majority of our work came from the British and American Air Force bases, where we would perform on the Officer’s Mess. I’d love to know where that name comes from, because these places really were the dog’s bollocks, you know. I’m talking Five star hotel stuff and we were treated in style. So when we were invited to appear at the Sergeants Mess at a Royal Air Force base (which will remain nameless as I don’t want to contravene the Official Secrets Act) we never expected to be playing in what appeared to be a big shed situated between two runways. But against all odds the evening went very well, until some kind soul gave permission for an aircraft to take off without informing us. At first we thought it was thunder until the whole building started to shake, scaring the shit out of all of us.

  Still, these bases treated us well and we always had a good time, but if you really wanted to party, it had to be one of the American bases. These guys were in charge of the Early Warning System, which could track down a fart in a Force 9 gale, and I was to make friends with many of the lads, but one in particular, called Joe, would always look after us whenever we were there. It was Joe who introduced me to the Double 7, which was a large measure of Seagrams VO7 topped up with Seven Up, and by the end of the night he didn’t know where he was, let alone the enemy. Indeed, it led me to believe that if they were looking after us, who the hell looks after them?

  Eventually, mileage would take its toll so Connie and Spence, purchased a beautiful old country house, where they planned to open their own club and bring audiences to them. The name of the place was Ettington Park Manor and it stood in its own grounds some six miles south of Stratford-upon-Avon, and gave it the appearance of a stately home that could have doubled for the set of The Munsters. With its eerie presence and its own small church set at the side, it had been used as the set for the classic horror film The Haunting (the 60s original mind you, and not the dire 90s remake). Still, whenever I stayed there I always slept with the light on.

  Turning Ettington into a club would take a lot of hard work and a lot of hard cash, so it had to be a working venue and, once a couple of rooms were finished, it was opened to the public. During the day Spence and I would do all the renovating while Connie, Jill and Karen did the administration. Come night time, we would be barmen and the girls would return to being Dollydisc.

  During one of my rare weekends off, Lin and I were relaxing in the lounge, watching the world go by from our balcony perch when in the distance came the sound of a very powerful motor car coming our way. Lin gave me a quizzical look and said, “That’s John.” It couldn’t be I said, as the music papers had said he’d had to go and live abroad. Still the sound drew nearer and we looked out to see who it was. The car that pulled into the car park was the sort of thing you’d imagine either John or Cruella DeVill owning, but without waiting to find out I was up and running down the three flights of stairs and out into the car park to find John walking towards me with that heart-warming smile across his face. No words were exchanged, we just hugged each other until Lin arrived and joined in. We made our way back to the flat, all babbling away at once and inside John told us over the next few hours about everything that had been happening; about Robert and Maureen’s bad crash, that the film would be out in 1976 and about work on the new album ‘Presence’. He
also told us about his hatred of having to live away from his family, and was only allowed so many days back in the country and that he would have to leave again tomorrow.

  One thing he did want to know about was how was Jacko. Immediately memories of that fateful night returned, but John just burst out laughing and said, “I couldn’t ask at the time, but what had Jacko done to his lounge?” What he was referring to was how Jacko had decorated the room, so I told him the story of how he’d been working on a job and discovered several tins of discarded paint. Thinking he could save a few bob, he’d brought them home and painted the lounge. This was all okay for Jacko because he was totally colour-blind, but you could see why no one had wanted the paint. Jacko had ended up with three very bright orange walls and one lime green one. To Jacko it looked great but to the unsuspecting guest it merely had the effect of snow blindness. By the time I’d finished explaining we both had tears running down our faces, visualising a whistling Jacko painting away. John left for Coventry the next day and I returned to work at the Manor a very contented man.