Music history has always been shaped by happenstance. Whether it was John Lennon and Paul McCartney crossing paths at a church fete, or Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reconnecting on a train platform, the wheels of many great bands were set in motion by nothing more than luck.
Led Zeppelin are no exception. One of the most influential acts of all time, they filled the void left by The Beatles with an esoteric blend of hard rock and traditional sounds drawn from across the world. But before they could rise so meteorically, they needed fortune to play its part – specifically in bringing two of the band’s four members together.
It was 1965. Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had already set a cultural revolution in motion, but for the two future members of Led Zeppelin hailing from the West Midlands, their careers had yet to take them far from home. While Jimmy Page was flourishing as a session musician and John Paul Jones was already revered as a player for hire and arranger, Robert Plant and John Bonham were still working the clubs of Birmingham and its surrounding area.
One night that year, Plant and his Kidderminster-based blues outfit, The Crawling Kingsnakes, were playing at the Plaza in Old Hill. A natural showman even then, Plant worked the room freely – blurring the line between rock vocalist and stand-up comedian. At one point, he locked eyes with someone at the front of the crowd who was watching the band with a visible scowl.
Plant recalled what happened next. The unhappy figure in the crowd was John Bonham – a man Plant could not have imagined would become his closest friend, let alone his partner in reshaping rock music.
“So I was playing at the Plaza and saw this guy in the crowd looking up, sort of scowling,” Plant said. “He said to me, ‘you’re alright, but you’d be a lot better if you had the best drummer in the world behind you.'”
“I said, ‘yeah yeah, and I suppose you’re him?’ He said, ‘yeah.’ And I said, ‘Okay, good, well that sounds alright. But where do you live?’ He said ‘Redditch’. And I said, ‘So you’ve got a sense of humour then. But Redditch is like 25 miles from where we live. We can’t afford the fuel to go and pick you up. So if you want to try it out, these are the songs we do, just come along and play, but you make your own way there.'”
A second version of the exchange exists, in which a more deadpan Plant simply told Bonham: “I don’t care if you’re Buddy Rich, I’m not picking you up from Redditch.”
Whichever version is accurate, the outcome was the same. Bonham joined The Crawling Kingsnakes, and when that band folded, followed Plant into his next project, Listen. That too was short-lived, but when Plant formed The Band of Joy in 1966, Bonham was again on the drum stool.
It was The Band of Joy that brought them to wider attention. In 1968, following the break-up of The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page set about forming a new group – initially called The New Yardbirds, later to become Led Zeppelin. His first choice, Terry Reid, turned the offer down but suggested Plant as a replacement. Page took the advice. Plant accepted on one condition: Bonham would play drums. The rest, as they say, is history.
