‘A sweet, cuddly, goofy fella – until he got drunk’: How Led Zeppelin lost John Bonham

On January 23 1975, on a frigid noon-time day, John Bonham sat in the back of a stretch Cadillac limousine drinking vodka from the bottle. Following the completion of Led Zeppelin’s three-night stand at the Chicago Stadium the previous night, the group’s next gig, in St Louis, had been cancelled because singer Robert Plant had fallen ill.

Aboard the band’s private jet, “the Starship”, lively discussions were soon to commence as to where its passengers might be spirited for an unexpected 48-hour holiday. Bassist John Paul Jones fancied the Caribbean, while guitarist Jimmy Page hoped to go to LA. Their drummer, meanwhile, was in no doubt about where he wanted to be.

“What the f___ am I doing here?” Bonham asked on the ride to O’Hare Airport. “I wanna be back home.”

July 7 marks the anniversary of the last time John Henry Bonham played live with Led Zeppelin. Less than three months after the group’s final concert with their original line-up, at the Eissporthalle in West Berlin, one of most revered, and most unstable, drummers in rock history died on September 25, 1980 at Jimmy Page’s Berkshire home after a day of very heavy drinking. He was 32 years old.

In 1975, as the Good Ship Zeppelin flew west towards Los Angeles, the travelling party were able to content themselves that “Bonzo” had retreated to a bed at the rear of the plane to sleep off his latest jag. The mood was lightened further after iron-fisted tour manager Richard Cole learned from the journalist Chris Charlesworth, who had travelled in Bonham’s limousine, that the drummer hadn’t thought to mix his vodka with a fistful of pills.

Such was the mood of uncommon conviviality, in fact, that after lunch and several drinks, John Paul Jones began playing a selection of music hall standards on an organ attached to the bar amidships. At full volume, Peter Grant, the group’s fearsome manager, began bellowing the words to Any Old Iron.

“Bonzo, forgotten amid the festivities, emerges from the bedroom dressed only in a loosely-fitting bathrobe, lurches drunkenly into us and, without even having been introduced, attempts to do something very rude with one of the stewardesses,” Charlesworth recalled. “He is probably three times her bodyweight. She screams. Grant and Cole wrench Bonzo away from the distressed girl and lead him struggling back towards the bedroom. The girl continues screaming. A pilot appears, demanding to know what is happening. I walk away. The pilot is very angry. The girl is sobbing now, but while Grant re-emerges and assures him that everything is under control, Page leads the unfortunate girl off towards a couch where he soothes her with practised platitudes. Calm ensues.”

That this squalid tale remained untold for almost 30 years can be explained by what happened next. “The remainder of the journey passes in silence,” Charlesworth said, “except for when Cole comes down to where [the press] are sat. He doesn’t smile. ‘I don’t want to see one f______ word of this finding its f______ way into your f______ magazines. Right?”