Late in the evening of Monday July 1980, the final chords of Whole Lotta Love rang out through the 6,000 capacity Eissporthalle ice rink in Berlin West Germany. The four members of Led Zeppelin left the stage broadly happy that the last performance of their 14 date European tour their first in seven years had gone well. But what they couldn’t have known was that the Berlin date would be their last ever show together due to the death of hard living drummer John Bonzo Bonham just 11 weeks later. Bonham was found dead on the afternoon of September 25 in a guest room at bandmate Jimmy Page’s house in Windsor after a monumental drinking binge, He’d consumed an estimated 40 shots of vodka the day before as the band were rehearsing for what was meant to be a comeback tour of North America, Bonham had choked on his own vomit, He was 32. Forty years on from their final concert, Led Zeppelin are still revered as one of the finest hard rock bands ever to have played. But the story of Bonham’s demise is a salutary lesson in the pitfalls of fame, fortune and life on the road. Although the band’s glory days were arguably over when he died, the tragedy brought the shutters down on a group still eager to prove they had a third act in them, singer Robert Plant said two years later, His death was one of the most flattening, heartbreaking parts of my life. Apart from a few reunion shows, such as at 1985’s Live Aid and their one-off 2007 concert at London’s O2, the Led Zep project was over, Yet Bonham’s legacy lives on. He remains one of the most technically gifted, hardest hitting and celebrated drummers in rock history, constantly vying for the top spot in best ever drummer polls with jazz supremo Buddy Rich. Not bad for a carpenter’s son from the Midlands who, in the words of unofficial band biographer Stephen Davis grew up hammering things. In the months before Bonzo’s death, Led Zeppelin were a band refinding their mojo, A series of setbacks in the late 1970s had knocked them off course. Plant had been derailed by an accident a 1975 car crash on Rhodes had left him struggling to walk and an unimaginable tragedy in 1977 his five year old son Karac died from a stomach infection. Musically punk had come along and altered the landscape although guitarist Jimmy Page has often said that punk’s raw spirit reminded them of their former selves.
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8 июл 2024
