John Bonham

John Bonham

"John Bonham was born in 1948 in Redditch, England. As a child he would bang on his mom’s pots and pans. He got his first drum at the age of ten. Soon after that he got his first set. It was a used and beat up set but he treated it like his baby. Right after high school he joined his first band that was called Terry Web and the Spiders."

He went on a few years playing with other bands and then at the age of 18 he met his later on wife Pat. She really didn’t want to marry him because she didn’t think he would make it in the music business but she did.

After that he met a singer named Robert Plant and they started a band named The Band of Joy. That band didn’t last very long and they broke up and went their separate ways. Later on John was approached by a man named Jimmy Page who had started a band called The New Yardbirds, with Robert Plant as the singer. Robert had told Jimmy about John and so they recruited John on drums. They got their name from the band The Who’s drummer. Keith Moon. He had heard them and said, “You'll go over like a Lead Zeppelin.” So they changed their name to Led Zeppelin.

John was known as a drinker and late one September night he had 40 shots of vodka and took a taxi to Jimmy Page’s ranch where a roady laid him to bed. In the middle of the night John vomited while unconscious and choked. The next morning bassist John Paul Jones found him. John Bonham died September 25, 1980, of asphyxiation. He left behind his wife and their two kids, Jason and Zoe.