Name the drummers who helped shape the sound of heavy metal, and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward will be at the very top of the list. Both men combined hard-hitting power with dexterity, incorporating everything from James Brown-inspired funk beats to jazz swing into their playing, inspiring countless drummers and bands who followed.
Coincidentally, the pair were born within a month of each other, less than 20 miles apart – Ward on May 5, 1948 in Aston, Birmingham, and Bonham on May 31 the same year in Redditch, just south of the city.
As drummers coming up on the same circuit, they got to know each other long before they joined the bands that made them famous. Ward was a member of The Rest, before joining up with future Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi in Mythology, while Bonham passed through several local bands, including Terry Webb And The Spiders, The Senators, Crawling King Snakes and Band Of Joy, the latter two with Zeppelin singer Robert Plant.
But was there a rivalry between these two pioneering drummers? And what did Ward think of Bonham. Speaking to Classic Rock in 2022, Ward shed some light on their relationship, onstage and off.
“When I was in The Rest I used to go and watch John play whichever band he was in,” said Ward. “We’d crossed paths all the time. I remember seeing him when he was in with The Crawling King Snakes and he was just whacking the shit out of his kit. I’d just sit there and watch him.’”
The feeling was reciprocated. Recalling his early days on the West Midlands club circuit with Ward, Tony Iommi remembered Bonham attending gigs by their pre-Sabbath band Mythology as well as the formative incarnation of Black Sabbath.
“When we were playing clubs, John would sometimes come along, and he’d want to get up and jam,” Iommi told Classic Rock in 2016. “The first time we said, ‘OK then.’ So he got up and played Bill’s drums and just wrecked them. Bill was really pissed off, so after that anytime John came along and said, ‘Can I have a go?’, Bill would go, ‘No’ and not let him play.”
By the early 70s, both Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath had established themselves as transatlantic stars, but the bonds from the old days on the Birmingham scene remained. Bonham even acted as best man at Iommi’s wedding in 1973, while the two drummers spent time at each other’s houses.
In the summer of 1973, the worlds of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin came together when Bonham turned up at London’s Morgan Studios, where Sabbath were recording their fifth album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. He’d brought Zeppelin bandmates Robert Plant and John Paul Jones with him. What followed was a jam session between two of the greatest bands in history.
“They came in and John’s going, ‘Let’s play Supernaut!’, cos he loved that song,” Iommi told Classic Rock. “So he sat behind the kit and we started to play it. Of course, he didn’t play it right, but we just carried on and went into a jam. We were just jamming, making stuff up. Our session went totally out of the window.”
Ward backed up Iommi’s memories.:“He really loved Supernaut. He really had that song down. We were in the studio one day and he came by. He saw I was playing the double bass drum. He said: ‘I’ll do it on one.’”
Despite any potential rivalry between the two drummers, Ward remained hugely respectful of his friend. “He was, without question, the best drummer in the world,” Ward told Classic Rock. “The legacy he gave us, and Led Zeppelin gave us, continues long after John passed away.”
