In order to complete the annual springtime trifecta of Thursday’s “May the 4th be with you” (which spawned this fantastic trailer, made even more amazing by the fact it was apparently created completely by AI(?!?)) and Friday’s Cinco de Mayo (celebrated with tacos, pambazos, and chicharrones like a good member of La Raza) it’s time for the much-awaited dawning of the sun(shine) and an appearance from yours truly. (The Kentucky Derby is today, too, but we all know I’m the real show pony here…) As such, wanted to share some recent finds with my beloved sunbeams (aka the eight of you who still check in here every once in a while), the first of which is the biography of the legendary John Bonham that I happily stumbled upon recently.
Aptly titled Beast (which you learn was the name the band/crew had for Bonham’s destructive drunken alter ego — ie “I wouldn’t go in there, the Beast is out tonight”) it takes us from his early life in rural Worcestershire, England through his rise into the stratosphere with the legendary Zeppelin and his unfortunate, untimely death at the appalling age of 32. Somehow it’s the first biography on Bonham and it fittingly comes with a foreword from living legend Dave Grohl (an homage from the best rock drummer of this generation to the best of the one before). It’s a solid read for any fan of the Zep (which should include 95% of the population — the other 5% being deaf) or anyone who’s ever been enchanted by (and/or wanted to play) the drums — because Bonham is almost always held to be the best there was. (I can’t remember which musician said it in an interview, but essentially their answer was “the right question to ask is ‘who’s the next best drummer’ — because obviously he’s alone at the top.” It might have been Grohl himself, actually — doesn’t really matter, though…)
It’s thanks to that universal acclaim I was so surprised there’d never been an official biography on him to date, and even more so to find this sitting unannounced on the shelf at the book store as I hadn’t heard a peep about it on any of the music sites I regularly traffic — but there it thankfully was. Even if you’re a huge fan of the man/band and think you know most of the story, author Kushins has plenty of wonderful little nuggets in here to round out your appreciation. Things like the night Bonham and JPJ were in an airport bar in Brisbane and ended up singing Everly Brothers songs to the Fijian Police Choir while they waited for their plane. Or when he went and saw Bob Marley in concert with Ringo Starr and Keith Moon because they were all such fans. Or when he was mistaken as a farmer by Stones bassist Bill Wyman’s girlfriend because he was going on and on about his prized livestock one night at dinner. Or when he jumped onstage and dragged the drummer off the kit at a Chuck Berry concert because he wasn’t doing his beloved icon justice, filling in for the rest of the show. Or his love of the Police (the band, not the civic servants) and how he took his siblings to see them in concert, nearly getting into a fistfight with Sting backstage. These little details serve as bright contrasts to the contours of the more well-known, darker story, which Kushins effectively portrays in all its sad destruction.
Yet even that story had some unknown elements (at least to me), which help make more sense of that broader narrative. Yes, Bonham (and his bandmates) are almost as legendary for their off-stage antics as their timeless tunes, destroying innumerable hotel rooms and imbibing inhuman amounts of alcohol and drugs over the course of their meteoric rise. What I didn’t know was how this behavior was apparently driven not by boredom or an impish (some might say immature) sense of humor, as was the case with fellow icon and friend Keith Moon (who also died at the ridiculously cruel age of 32 and whose equally good biography this one now sits alongside on my shelf), but by a debilitating sense of homesickness.
Over and over throughout the book Kushins paints a picture of a somewhat reluctant superstar — someone who hated to be away from his wife and baby son rather than out carousing with the seemingly infinite number of groupies (and other illicit substances) at his disposal. Someone who was equally (if not moreso) comfortable working construction jobs and tending to the livestock on his farm rather than touring the globe and playing to hordes of thrilled fans onstage every night. Someone who would get panic attacks before shows as late as ’75 when they had long since become the biggest band on the planet. (And when when he would regularly command the spotlight for 20-30 minutes each night on his own with his epic “Moby Dick” solos. )
It’s against this backdrop that the well-known drinking and destruction take on a new light and become inordinately sadder — not just for how they end with Bonham’s early demise, but for how unnecessary and avoidable it all seems. The most agonizing section comes with the “never ending tour” of 1975 when the band was essentially exiled from England in order to avoid its crushing tax codes. (A topic which British bands from the Stones, Beatles, and Radiohead have all covered over the years.) Time and again Kushins relates instances where Bonham was drinking too much (literally ordering and consuming dozens of drinks in one sitting before heading to another bar to do it all again), acting out (whether smashing hotel rooms, driving/crashing cars, or storming stages/getting into fights with other bands he’d go see), and just going further and further down his dark spiral, unable to return home and just lashing out as a result.
Today you feel like he’d have hopefully gotten medical help (either for the anxiety, depression, or alcoholism, if not all three) and his family would have maybe flown to be on tour with him rather than stayed in the UK, making matters worse. (Plant and Jones also apparently were much more family oriented and homesick than I’d known — although far less destructive than Bonham — so maybe in today’s age we’d have had a different version of the touring band. Sure, we’d be deprived of the depraved decadence and excess that’s detailed in Hammer of the Gods, but I’m sure every single fan would gladly trade that in if it meant saving Bonham and giving the world more years of music.) The security situation around the band would likely also have been different — they apparently regularly received death threats, which aside from being inscrutable and confusing (why would you possibly want to threaten one/all of these guys — just on account of their fame?) also fed this sense of isolation and paranoia that apparently ran in the background and fueled some of the more destructive behavior. (And also helped keep the family members away, one would assume, only making matters worse.)
It all fed into this reinforcing cycle of bad behavior — another town, another show, another death threat, another stretch of hours without family or the comforts of home, which garnered more booze, more drugs, more destruction to distract himself (themselves) and make him/themself feel more calm. It’s tough to keep reading after a certain point (I can only imagine how horrible it was to see firsthand) and by the time the band is touring in ’77 it leads to the official “Rules of Engagement,” which were sent ahead to all venues/journalists prior to the band’s arrival. Rule number one? (Actually 1a) “Do not make any sort of eye contact with John Bonham. This is for your own safety.” That this went on for another two and a half years speaks to both his (and the band’s) capacity for punishment and their love of making music (and money, I’m sure). The band was still pushing themselves and evolving, trying new sounds and arrangements instead of just coasting on their immense fame and laurels — if only they could have better controlled their inner demons, things might have turned out differently…
————-
My love of the band dates back to middle school and idolizing Bonham’s playing was one of the primary reasons I wanted to learn the drums. (Note to anyone aspiring to play drums (or any instrument, for that matter) — do not start out by trying to play Zeppelin songs. You will immediately become disheartened and want to quit because of how good a musician each of them were on their respective instruments.) Zeppelin was the first band from my parents’ era that felt like my own — my mom was always playing Beatles songs while Pops was a huge fan of the Stones — but these guys I found on my own. (Sure, I heard their songs a lot on the radio when the local station would “get the Led out,” but I never really knew who they belonged to.)
I vividly remember finding the first album in their record collection — the one with the iconic flaming Hindenburg photo on the cover in eye-catching black and white — and instantly being converted when I put it on up in my room. By the force of the sound, sure, but also by that first irresistible lick of a riff — DUH DUH……DUH DUH…. — it was like the Jaws theme being played on a fuzzed up guitar and only got better from there, with Bonham slowly slipping in to pummel you shortly thereafter. I remember listening to Houses of the Holy while I contentedly drew comics at my desk, thinking “this is the sexiest sh#$ I’ve ever heard” without having any clue what sexiness actually was. (I was in middle school after all — not that I’m much more savvy now.)
I remember laying on the carpet with the shades down, the smell of lilacs and the summer breeze blowing over me from the open window, while “How Many More Times” or “Levee” blasted out at high volume and Pops coming in to say, “I love what you’re doing here — really, I do — but we’ve got to turn it down. The neighbors are complaining” with a proud twinkle in his eye. (Incredibly, I learned here that the version of “Levee” we hear on their fourth album — the one with the miraculous, cacophonous sound of Bonham’s drums, quite probably the most emblematic example of his prowess — was the only recording of their initial sessions that survived. All the rest — “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” etc — were lost and subsequently had to be rerecorded, but thankfully those iconic, incredible drum sounds on “Levee” were spared.)
In recent years I’ve begun revisiting some of their later albums, spending time with some of the ones I didn’t wear out in the years since middle school. Physical Graffiti has been a primary target — one I’d always thought was a little disjointed and just felt off compared to the others (which I now know may in part be because it’s at least half pulled from remnants of earlier recording sessions, possibly accounting for that differing feel as the Zep of the first album had changed quite a bit by the time of this one). And while I still think it pales a bit in relation to some of those flawless earlier albums, there are some killer tracks on there I’ve been wearing out again, particularly after reading this book — none moreso than “In My Time of Dying” and “The Wanton Song.”
I was recently down in Austin (more on this in a minute) and was drunkenly gushing to my buddy about how bananas Bonham’s kicks are in these two, particularly the latter. Known for his furious triplets — which I learned in this book were not the product of him using a double kick as I’d long assumed, but even more astoundingly were just done with a single pedal — he throws down an almost unending string of quartets in the latter, something we flailingly tried to replicate on my buddy’s kit at two in the morning, avoiding both a half-decent approximation of the drumming (not a surprise), as well as having the police show up. (A borderline miracle.) It’s worth giving both another listen (as well as those aforementioned classics that annoyed the neighbors 30 years prior), and checking this book out when you’re done. Long live the Beast…
We’ll close out with a few more recs, first this list of Depeche Mode’s 30 best songs, according to the gang over at the Onion. It was compiled in anticipation of their recently released Memento Mori, their first since the death of keyboardist Andy Fletcher last year. The list does a pretty solid job of sampling from the band’s fifteen albums, appropriately centering on the run from Music for the Masses to Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion as the best of the best.
As always happens with these types of lists there’s a few I would have included that they didn’t (and vice versa) — songs like “Pleasure, Little Treasure,” “In Chains” (a fantastic opener that I got to see them play — appropriately to open their set — years ago at Lolla, which was a definite bucket list moment), and the sultry, sinister “I Feel You,” one of my all-time faves. Overall, though, theirs makes for a heck of a playlist, so give it (and my omitted trio) a listen when you can. In the meantime enjoy this one from the new album — it sounds like Depeche channeling Massive Attack, which is every bit as tasty as it sounds. Give it a ride here:
Up next comes one of the reasons I flew down to Austin (other than to spend time with two of my favorite humans) — Toronto’s Wine Lips, who were playing at the stacked second day of Psych Fest. Even if my best friend and wife didn’t live there it would have been hard to pass up — the evening run went from Night Beats (a solid mix of garage rock and spaghetti Western sounding tunes) to a 13th Floor Elevators tribute, the Raveonettes (playing their stellar debut, Whip it On, in its entirety to start the set), hometown faves the Black Angels, and the ever-awesome BRMC to close it out.
In the middle were the scrappy Lips in all their trashy glory, playing a blistering set that crammed about 100 songs into its scant thirty minutes. They remind me a bit of Bass Drum of Death (before he added synths and polish) and are every bit as high energy/attitude as that act at their best. We got to chat with half the band afterward and they seemed lovely, more gracious and down to earth than you might expect from a band playing this type of brash, snotty punk music. I’m a big fan — I’ve been listening to their most recent album, 2021’s Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party, a ton lately, and it grabs you from the outset with the killer blast of fire that is the opening “Eyes.” Give it a listen here and go see them if they come to town — it’s a hell of an enjoyable workout:
We’ll close with a track from one of my all-time faves, the ever-epic Built to Spill, who I got to see live again this week. It’s the final leg of their tour for the latest album, When the Wind Forgets your Name (which landed at #6 on my year-end list last year), and possibly the final time touring with bassist Melanie Radford (normally from Blood Lemon) and drummer Teresa Esguerra (normally in Prism Bitch, who were opening for the band). The two have been with Doug since the tour for his Daniel Johnston cover album (which landed at #10 on my 2020 list), though they didn’t appear on that or the following album for whatever reason. That said, they more than meet the bar set by the previous three piece incarnations of the band — Radford even took the lead and sang vocals during a cover of the Heartless Bastards’ “The Mountain.”
It was a solid run through the majority of the band’s history — six of their nine albums were represented — but I almost didn’t go because of how little they were playing from the new album. One of my favorite things to do is see how new music from long-running bands stands up next to perennial favorites — particularly from albums I enjoyed/enjoy as much as this one — so was a bit bummed to see how little was showing up from their latest outing. (Don’t get me wrong — I love this band and have seen them dozens of times (and will continue to for as long as they keep touring), but always like to hear the new stuff as much as I can since it’s not like they tour every year.)
Perusing the recent setlists they didn’t appear to play more than three songs from it a night (sometimes only one!) and they’ve never played the epic closing track, which is fantastic and screams to be heard live, stretched out even further by one of Doug’s deliriously leggy benders. Sadly they didn’t that night either, but the pain of omission was dampened because they DID close with “Broken Chairs,” one of my all-time faves (and one of my three selections from our game Gimme Three Steps for why someone should listen to this band). I listened to that and the missing track multiple times on the ride home (and several more times the following day) so feels appropriate to share and close with here. Check out “Comes a Day” here:
That’s all for now — until next time, my friends…
–BS