Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s son Jason, on life and fame
His dad was Led Zeppelin’s drummer. Then Jason Bonham took on the gig, and the rollercoaster ride began.
As a young musician navigating the English rock business in the mid-1980s, Jason Bonham found his famous surname could cut both ways. The people he encountered usually tended to try one of two approaches.
They’d either blow smoke up his arse, simply because his father was John Bonham, legendary drummer of rock band Led Zeppelin.
Or they’d make snide remarks if his talents were perceived to be less than those of his old man, who worked the drum kit like one possessed until his untimely death, aged 32, in September 1980, which effectively ended the band.
“I faced way more critique; the door might open quicker, but it can also slam,” Bonham says of that time in his life. “Everyone expects another standard; a different level. They expect you to be amazing from the moment they see you, and if you’re not quite up to par … I remember a few drummers were like: ‘Well, you’re no Bonzo, are ya?’ ”
Born in 1966, Bonham grew up during Led Zeppelin’s heyday. He began learning to play drums at the age of four; a snippet from the 1976 concert film The Song Remains the Same shows a small blond boy keeping steady time while chewing gum and twirling a drumstick.
The boy was 14 when his father died suddenly, after choking on his vomit following a heavy drinking session. Though he was more interested in motocross as a child, it was not long before he decided to follow his father by pursuing music as a career.
Doors swung open: the first band he joined, Airrace, opened for Queen. His next band, Virginia Wolf, opened for the Firm, a rock supergroup that featured Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page on guitar. Page then asked Bonham to play drums on his 1988 solo album, Outrider, and on the subsequent tour.
The three surviving Led Zeppelin members reformed the band that year for a single show to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Atlantic Records, with Bonham behind the kit. No one disgraced themselves, but the five-song performance didn’t exactly set the world alight, in part because of the short rehearsal time.
Still, those high-profile appearances earned him a record deal for the first album under the Bonham band name, 1989’s The Disregard of Timekeeping. This led to a tour with Motley Crue that he describes as “one hell of a stag night”, as he married his wife, Jan Charteris, immediately afterwards; Zeppelin played at their wedding reception.
“I was treated like a movie star,” he says on the phone from his home in Florida, where he and Charteris have two children together. “It felt very surreal. I look back on it now, and some of the behaviour that I portrayed … I was young and naive. Having a few beers, getting a bit pissed and having a joke — sometimes it’s not the most professional thing to do. But when you’re 22 or 23, and you’ve just got a gold album, and everyone’s kissing your arse, you become a little bit of a prick, if you ask me,” he says with a laugh. “Pardon the expression.”
His first visit to Australia occurred in an era when record companies were so flush with cash that flying a British band around the world just to shoot a music video sounded like a fine idea, which explains why Change of a Season, from the 1992 album Mad Hatter, was filmed in the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba, NSW.
After renaming to the Jason Bonham Band, in 1997 he decided to release an album of live Zeppelin covers named In the Name of My Father: The Zepset. “In some ways, that was the acorn that grew into the tree, which is what inspired the first run of going out and playing just those songs,” he says.
That same year he released another album of original music with that band, When You See the Sun, but the door was soon to slam.
“My drinking was really spiralling out of control at that point in my life,” he recalls. “I had a three-year-old, and then my son was born, and I was not enjoying being away at all. It almost all came to a grinding halt when I wanted to go home, and just stop and reassess.”
Strangely, it was a call to visit London for a film audition that changed everything.
The 2001 film Rock Star featured Mark Wahlberg in the lead role. Bonham performed in a fictional band named Steel Dragon. “That period of doing Rock Star was my realisation that I was an alcoholic; an addict,” he says. “I was portraying one in a movie and realising that I had a problem. So the year it was released, I stopped, and haven’t touched it or drugs since.”
It was with a clear head, then, that he undertook six weeks of rehearsals with Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones ahead of a one-off performance at London’s O2 Arena in December 2007. Arranged as a benefit concert in memory of Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, the Guinness Book of World Records noted that 20 million requests were made for the 20,000 available tickets.
“That six weeks I had with them was some of the most amazing time of my life,” says Bonham. “To be around them for that length of time, every day; to walk around with them; to be introduced to people as the drummer of Led Zeppelin — it was surreal. I expected my father to walk in the room at any point.” That 2007 concert was met with universal praise, with Bonham’s performance behind the kit singled out for matching the uncanny groove and feel of his father. It later was released in 2012 as a live film and album under the name Celebration Day but, for the drummer, the years that followed the London show were some of the most unpleasant of his life.
“I remember my mum saying to me, ‘I’m really happy for you, but I’m scared that if it stops, will you be able to deal with it?’ ” he recalls. “And I was like: ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.’ But when it did stop, it ripped my soul out.
“I could not believe that I’d got this close. We did the gig; I was happy I did that, but I really hit a dark patch. I think if I was going to ever drink again or anything, it was in 2008 and 2009; [those years] were sending me a message of darkness, because I was like: ‘You know what? I’m done. I can’t even think about being in another band now.’ ”
His manager suggested that he attempt to address the darkness head-on by trying another Zeppelin live venture. “I said: ‘Is that the best advice you have for me right f. king now? I’ve just played with them; the last thing I want to go and do is tarnish [that].’ But after lots and lots of persuasion, once I realised I could make it a personal thing, it grew.”
All of which explains why, after a lifetime of bearing the weight of his famous surname, the musician now tours the world playing the songs of his father and his three friends.
With the door to another Led Zeppelin reunion firmly shut, these concerts are devoted to the simple pleasures of sharing and celebrating the music of one of the greatest bands to write and record rock ’n’ roll.
Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening will appear in Sydney on May 23, then Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane.