Bonzo's drum sound

Although I never saw him play either, my guess would be 10 percent of the sound was the studio (mike technique, processing, etc), another 10 percent could be the drums he played (tuning, sticks, heads, build of the set, etc), and the remaining 90 percent was the man himself, and his ability to control his playing, and translate his emotion to what he played, so on and so forth.
(I guess that about makes the 110 worth of percent performance I generally heard from him)

Drum sound has four variables. How the drummer strikes, brand/material of the drum, how the drum is tuned and how the drum is mic'd (and processed). Bonham clearly was a powerful striker and I belive he played Ludwig maples. The book "A Thunder of Drums" details the exact drum kits and tunings Bonham used. With that as background, do not underestimate the contributions of Jimmy Page (producer) and Andy Johns (engineer) to the recorded sound of Bonham's drum. Their's is more than 10% of the actual sound you hear on LZ's records.

All Real,

Heavey handed"feel"player with wide open drum tunning and squeaky"speed-king" bass drum pedal.

Great for that band..

Funny you should mention that about John Bonham. I've been telling people for years how hard he hits the drums. The only reaction I ever got was either rolling eyes or funny looks. Bonham is clearly my favorite drummer of all time. The new DVD set with 5 different concerts is absolutely stunning. Great old footage/DTS sound. Its a little raw but it absolutely rocks your socks off. Led Zeppelin is clearly my favorite band off all time.

Too bad we don't have ability to post images into these forum threads. I have images of Led Zepplin in their hotel room (stoned) with a KLH portable hanging from the hand of John Bonham.

Just before they disassembled the player they were spinning 45 RPM singles of Dion's "Runaround Sue" (while dancing wildly and jumping on the bed) then a new record by Elton John titled, "60 Years On."

This was many years ago when I did a lot of rock and roll stage photography and this was the first time (ever) I had heard of Elton John.

Robert Plant predicted Elton would be a big hit in the states as he was already popular in England.

Obviously they knew nothing about the KLH as it never got put back together, at least while I was there . However he was right about Elton John.