Stairway To Heaven (4 page)

J
ohn Bonham was as down-to-earth as they came. For as long as I knew him, there weren't pretensions that needed to be peeled away to get to the real Bonham. All the loudness, all the craziness, all the wit, and all the talent were all Bonzo. What you saw was what you got.

As a child, long before John had become the drummer with the Band of Joy or Led Zeppelin, he was banging on just about anything that could make noise. Born in 1948 in Redditch—about twelve miles south of Birmingham—he would pound on his mother's pots and pans or on a round coffee tin that had a wire attached to it in an attempt to mimic the sound of a snare drum.

Bonham's mother bought him his first real drum at age ten, and before long, his father brought home a full drum kit, secondhand and a bit worn. That drum set may have been rusty, but John absolutely treasured it. He would become upset when some of his friends and fellow drummers wouldn't give their own instruments the tender loving care he felt was warranted. To Bonzo, that kind of neglect was just a rung below child abuse. Music became his first addiction, and if he went a day without playing the drums, it was like going through withdrawal.

Shortly after John left school, at a time when Ringo Starr was already the envy of every youngster in England with a set of drumsticks, Bonzo began trying to make a living with his music. He performed with Terry Webb and the Spiders, attired in a string tie and a purple coat, with his hair greased
back. His playing was a bit calmer and more controlled than it would soon become.

Like Plant, Bonham was pressured by family members to give up music. “There's a lot of honest work out there, John,” his father told him. “You can make a decent living if you really want to.” Bonham's dad was a carpenter and a builder, and John helped him for a while, putting aside the drumsticks for a set of hammers. But he loved music—nothing he had ever done made him so happy—and before long, he was back playing in local bands: the Nicky James Movement, A Way of Life, and Steve Brett and the Mavericks.

John believed that music was the only thing he was good at, but nevertheless he became the stereotypical starving artist. At age eighteen, when he met his future wife, Pat, she was level-headed enough to think twice about marrying someone whose future might include more famine than fame. Bonham, however, was persistent.

“It's just a matter of time,” he told Pat. “I'm going to make it if you have faith in me. Don't give up on me.”

Despite the odds, she didn't. Pat finally relented, and they moved into a fifteen-foot trailer together. On occasion, when Bonzo was feeling dejected about the slow pace at which his career was moving—and when he'd lose his temper and lash out when reality fell short of his expectations—he might promise Pat that he would quit if things didn't soon turn around. But they were hollow promises, and both of them realized it. Music was an undeniable part of him. He never seriously thought of giving it all up.

At times, Bonzo might have done better panhandling than playing music. When he was part of the Nicky James Movement, the band was frequently so short of funds that they often performed with equipment they hadn't fully paid for; more than once, when a gig was over, their instruments or PA equipment was confiscated because they were unable to meet their payments. “This isn't the way to make good music,” John told himself. But at least for the moment, he didn't have many alternatives. And he felt an unwavering loyalty to those who let him play with them; he loved being part of a group, a feeling that continued throughout the long run of Led Zeppelin. Even during those tough periods, Bonzo's notoriety spread: “He's the best drummer in England”…“He plays so loud that you can barely hear yourself think”…“He breaks more drumskins in a week than most drummers do in a lifetime.”

With time, Bonzo developed more finesse and less belligerence as he played. Even though he remained a team player, he yearned for the same attention as the musicians who played in front of him, particularly as he saw other rock drummers move into the spotlight. He admired and envied Ginger Baker, dating back to the Graham Bond Organisation, when Baker never let himself become overshadowed by the others in the group despite the strong
musical presence of Bond and Jack Bruce. “That's the way I want to be,” Bonzo would mutter, “an equal member of the band, not someone just keeping the beat for the forward musicians.” Later, when Cream's album,
Fresh Cream
, was released early in 1967, with Ginger Baker's “Toad” solo turning him into a headliner, Bonzo set his sights on stardom. Less than two years later, he was a member of Led Zeppelin.

E
ven for those who knew John Paul Jones well, he was somewhat of a mystery man. He methodically went about making his music with a cool confidence that never was shaken. For as long as I knew him, no matter how much feeling he brought to his music, he was solid and dependable. He knew what he was capable of doing—and he did it.

John Paul's real name is John Baldwin. He came from a family that enthusiastically nurtured his musical interests. He was born in 1946 in Sidcup, Kent, where his father was a piano player and a bandleader. While still a child, John Paul performed on the piano with his old man at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and parties. John Paul realized that it wasn't Madison Square Garden or the London Palladium, but it was a good training ground for what was to come.

John Paul picked up the bass for the first time in his early teens. He had only one lesson on the instrument, but that seemed to be enough. He let his musical instincts and sensitive fingers take over, along with the influences of musicians like Charlie Mingus, Scott La Faro, and Ray Brown.

John Paul's first bass was a Dallas model (“It had a neck like a tree trunk”). But while encouraging his son's interest in music, John Paul's dad saw no future in the bass. He urged his son to concentrate on the tenor saxophone, convinced that the bass guitar's days were numbered.

Despite such ominous predictions, the bass never went the way of the accordion or the autoharp. In fact, when John Paul proved to his father that he
could actually earn money with the bass, the old man had an immediate change of heart.

At age seventeen, John Paul began moving through a few bands, playing Burns guitars, performing songs by Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, and wearing outfits like purple jackets and white shoes that would have embarassed him years later. The best known of these bands was the Harris/ Meehan Group, fronted by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, who had sung with the Shadows when that band had a hit record, “Diamonds.” Because of his youth and inexperience, John Paul suffered some unsettled nerves during this time, but his self-confidence kept his performance level high.

Before long, John Paul found a more lucrative way to make music, namely, by becoming a studio musician. From the beginning, he was serious and methodical, and he was soon offered as much session work as he could handle, accompanying everyone from Dusty Springfield to Tom Jones to Jeff Beck. He played on the “She's a Rainbow” track for the Rolling Stones and “Sunshine Superman” for Donovan. He also became an arranger for Herman's Hermits and, in the midst of all this, released a single of his own, “Baja,” whose flip side was the inexplicably titled “A Foggy Day in Vietnam.” Unfortunately, the record achieved about as much popularity as the Vietnam War itself.

As successful as John Paul was in the studio, it eventually wasn't enough for him. He began looking for ways to expand his horizons beyond the four walls of the recording halls. To the general public, John Paul was unknown, but he never felt that fame was something he needed; more important, he sometimes had the urge to seek new directions for expressing himself musically.

At the same time, however, John Paul was a real homebody and earned a comfortable living in the studio that allowed him to spend a lot of time with his wife, Mo, and his two young daughters. So he'd question whether he really wanted to join a band where concerts, traveling, and being away from home were part of the bargain.

Ultimately, an opportunity would present itself that was too good to ignore. It would come from a young guitarist named Jimmy Page, whom John Paul had met in the studio. Jimmy was impressed with John Paul's work, particularly after hearing the arrangements he had done for some songs on a Yardbirds' album. Jimmy kept John Paul's name in mind and figured their paths would cross again.

J
immy Page was born in 1944 in Heston, Middlesex, but much of his youth was spent in Feltham, a London suburb so close to Heathrow Airport that he could
feel
the airplanes land. His idle time was spent fishing and collecting stamps, until at age twelve, his life changed when he heard an Elvis record, “Baby, Let's Play House.” It wasn't just Elvis's distinctive voice that caught Jimmy's attention. It was the instruments behind him—the electric guitar, the acoustic guitar, the slap bass—that compelled him to play and replay the record ad nauseum until the needle had almost worn through it.

With Elvis on his mind, Jimmy picked up a Spanish guitar with steel strings, trying to copy the sounds he had heard. His attempts were understandably rusty at first. But it didn't matter. Overnight, he was hooked. He could feel the excitement rushing through him. He couldn't have put the guitar down even if he had wanted to.

Jimmy was a star hurdler in school, but everything was soon overshadowed by the music. He asked a friend at school to teach him a few chords. He bought a self-teaching book,
Play in a Day
, at a local music shop. He would scan the backs of album covers, looking for familiar names among the guitarists—Scotty Moore, who played on Elvis's records, James Burton, who performed behind Ricky Nelson, and Cliff Gallup, who accompanied Gene Vincent. He still loved the Top 40—from “Stagger Lee” to “Jailhouse Rock” to “Save the Last Dance for Me”—but he found himself listening more to the background musicians than the lead vocalists.

Jimmy's father was an industrial personnel manager and—almost by default—began encouraging Jimmy's musical talents. Jimmy's other real love was art, which to the elder Page seemed even more of a dead end. So once Jimmy was out of school, his dad only flinched a little when, while performing at a dance hall in Epsom, Jimmy was spotted by Neil Christian, a vocalist who invited Jimmy to become part of Neil Christian and the Crusaders. Christian, ever a polite fellow, even sought the permission of Jimmy's parents. “I'll keep an eye on your boy,” he promised them.

The Crusaders had the misfortune of never falling fully in sync with their audiences. Even though the band gradually built up a following, they preferred playing old Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Gene Vincent songs, while the crowds wanted to hear the Top 10. To make matters worse, the Crusaders traveled in a dilapidated van that had more breakdowns than an entire ward of psychiatric patients. So despite their talent, they seemed doomed from the start in their quest to become the next Bill Haley and His Comets.

Nevertheless, their talents did not go unnoticed. Jeff Beck, whose sister introduced him to Jimmy, saw the Crusaders play one night and was awestruck by the presence of Pagey onstage. The guitar, he told friends, was almost bigger than Jimmy, who “was this skinny guy whose arms and legs projected out like toothpicks.”

Even then, Jimmy dressed distinctively and created some guitar licks and melodic phrasing that sometimes almost made Neil Christian stop singing in midsong and let his young guitarist take center stage.

Jimmy was earning about twenty pounds a week with the Crusaders, but the fast pace of the band's one-night gigs finally took a toll upon his health. He may have been a star athlete in high school, but his body was no match for the physical demands of nonstop touring. Suffering from exhaustion, Jimmy developed a chronic cough that turned into a severe case of glandular fever.

One night, while standing outside a club in Sheffield, Jimmy collapsed. Doctors examined him that night and again the following day and offered a simple but firm prescription: “Slow down.” Jimmy, weary and weak, was in no mood to play around with his health. He quit the Crusaders.

During his recovery, Jimmy enrolled in art college in Sutton. But as much as he enjoyed art, he wasn't happy solely with brushes and easels. He couldn't put music completely behind him and kept picking up his guitar. There were moments when he contemplated setting aside the rigors of music for the seemingly less stressful life of an artist. “Maybe art is my calling,” he sometimes reasoned. “Anything I do with music should be a hobby.” But before long, he began going to clubs in the West End like the Marquee and Crawdaddy, where he would jam with just about anyone who would play with
him. Sometimes for hours, he would play old Chuck Berry hits until the blisters on his fingers would almost burst. He absolutely loved it.

Like John Paul, Jimmy slipped into session work—and stayed there for six years, finally putting his palette and paints aside, virtually for good. Almost overnight, he was bombarded with session opportunities, not only because he was as good as they came, but he was reliable, too, capable of playing just about any kind of music—from rock to blues to jazz. At first, he really enjoyed it, and sometimes he was in awe of the artists he backed, including the Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, the Kinks, and even Petula Clark and Burt Bacharach. He played on Donovan's “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and the Who's “I Can't Explain.” He was once hired to play for a Muzak recording session, and there were even some commercial jingles.

Initially, because he didn't have formal musical training, Jimmy had some self-doubts about how he'd fare in the studio. No one could “feel” the music any better than he, but he was often called upon to play according to someone else's vision, not his own. And that meant following the sheet music in front of him, measure after measure.

It took Jimmy a while to learn to read music, and there were some awkward, difficult moments when his shaky skills caused embarrassing mistakes. He often said that when he first started, the sheet music looked like a bunch of crows on telephone wires. Even so, almost from the beginning, he was earning a very good living in the studio.

Not surprisingly, Jimmy's skills intimidated some of his fellow musicians. Producer Shel Talmy once told him, “The Kinks are recording a new album called
You Really Got Me
. I'd like you to sit in on it.”

Shel explained that Jimmy's talents would contribute immeasurably to the recording sessions—but the band itself wasn't so sure. “What do we need him for?” an anxious Peter Quaife was supposed to have asked. “Dave Davies can handle the lead guitar work just fine. This is ridiculous, Shel!”

Shel sat back and let them vent their anger and apprehension. Then, once the emotional level had settled down, he brought in Jimmy. In short order, the Kinks became converts. Once they heard Jimmy play, no one in the band questioned Shel's judgment.

As the years wore on, and one recording session blended into the next, Jimmy developed feelings of boredom and emptiness. He told friends that the session work was robbing him of his creativity. “You go in, they tell you what they want you to play, and to keep them happy, you avoid improvising,” he said. “It's all so mechanical.”

At one point, when Jimmy's frustration level was particularly high, he met Andrew Oldham, the Rolling Stones' manager, who told him about the forma
tion of a new record label. “We could use you a lot, Jimmy,” Oldham told him. “Not just for session work, but for producing.”

It sounded like a new challenge, a way to expand his musical horizons. So Jimmy jumped at the opportunity to become the house producer of the new label, Immediate Records, where he worked on sessions with John Mayall and Nico. It provided a surge of new enthusiasm that he desperately needed.

During this time, Jimmy bumped into Eric Clapton, literally in the lobby of a recording studio. Under his contract with Immediate, Jimmy began producing some blues cuts with Eric—songs like “Double Crossin' Time” and “Telephone Blues.” The two sensed a special chemistry between them, and they would often jam with one another when their schedules allowed. One night at Jimmy's house, they played together for hours, drawing upon each other's energy, excited at the synergy of merging their enormous talents. Jimmy even recorded some of their jamming that night on a simple, two-channel tape recorder.

During those sessions, Jimmy realized that he had more to offer the music world beyond his studio work. As he looked in other directions, he was intent on making the kind of music
he
wanted to. When he joined the Yardbirds—and later formed Led Zeppelin—he demanded as much control as he could possibly get.