for a better ticket than that. If that isn’t going to turn your head and make you say, ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ ”
There were more mundane matters to attend to first. His father had packed him off to a job interview with a firm of accountants and they took him on. He went to work as a trainee chartered accountant in Stourport, a picturesque town on the banks of the River Severn, sixteen miles from Stourbridge. His wages were £2 a week, less than he could earn for one gig.
This didn’t stop him going out most nights—to perform, to watch other bands or to dance in clubs. He dragged himself into the office for just two weeks before he was politely asked to clear his desk. It was then he decided to turn pro with the Crawling King Snakes, although he had to take on additional work at a local carpet factory to supplement his income. In any event, this latest act of rebellion left his father despairing that his son was throwing his life away.
It was at this moment that Plant met John Bonham for the first time. Bonham, known to one and all as “Bonzo,” approached him after Crawling King Snakes had completed one of their twenty-minute slots at Old Hill Plaza. He told Plant his band was good but that the drummer was hopeless and he was better. Bonzo joined Crawling King Snakes soon after.
Born in the Midlands town of Redditch in the spring of 1948, Bonham was ten when his mother bought him his first set of drums. Her son had been gripped from the moment he saw the great jazz drummer Gene Krupa pummelling out the tribal rhythm of “Sing Sing Sing” in the 1956 film The Benny Goodman Story . Bonham was drumming in bands from the age of fifteen, passing through the likes of the Blue Star Trio, the Senators, and Terry Webb and the Spiders.
Bonham was just three months older than Plant but was already married. He and his wife Pat were living in a caravan parked behind his family home. Not only worldlier than his new friend, in terms of ability Bonham was also ahead of anyone Plant had played with to that point. In the Black Country’s pubs and clubs, he was already spoken of as a drummer of prodigious ability, a powerhouse.
“Bonzo had at one time been in a dance band,” Plant said to me. “So he got all of his chops from being able to play those big band arrangements. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“John was a bit odd even in those days,” adds Tolley, Plant’s school friend. “Every time he walked into a room there was a strange aroma—he was definitely smoking a lot of wacky baccy. But he was a great drummer and he had a better kit than anyone else.”
For a short spell the possibilities seemed boundless. With Bonham propelling them, the Crawling King Snakes opened up for the Spencer Davis Group, Gene Vincent, the Walker Brothers and others. Plant was brought closer than he had ever been to the magical center of things, so close he could taste the glories that were being offered up.
He and Bonham stood at the side of the stage at Stourbridge Town Hall and watched the Walker Brothers, listening to teenage girls scream at their singer Scott Walker as if he were a god. Even a band such as Liverpool’s the Merseybeats, for whom fame was fleeting, could pull into town in their blue and white station wagon and appear to Plant as “renegade guys who ran off with all our teen queens.”
“There was no notion of where we were going but no known cure either,” he told me. “I mean to say, I didn’t have any concept of fame as a seventeen-year-old kid. It was just the fact of being able to get away from the clerks desk as a chartered accountant. And then to go back to my parents, who only ever wanted the best for me, and proclaim that I had to go . . . and forever.”
Plant felt more now than just the pull of singing the blues. He had heard the screams, smelled the sex and sensed the power that could be bestowed upon the man with the microphone. And then, as was his custom in those days,
There were more mundane matters to attend to first. His father had packed him off to a job interview with a firm of accountants and they took him on. He went to work as a trainee chartered accountant in Stourport, a picturesque town on the banks of the River Severn, sixteen miles from Stourbridge. His wages were £2 a week, less than he could earn for one gig.
This didn’t stop him going out most nights—to perform, to watch other bands or to dance in clubs. He dragged himself into the office for just two weeks before he was politely asked to clear his desk. It was then he decided to turn pro with the Crawling King Snakes, although he had to take on additional work at a local carpet factory to supplement his income. In any event, this latest act of rebellion left his father despairing that his son was throwing his life away.
It was at this moment that Plant met John Bonham for the first time. Bonham, known to one and all as “Bonzo,” approached him after Crawling King Snakes had completed one of their twenty-minute slots at Old Hill Plaza. He told Plant his band was good but that the drummer was hopeless and he was better. Bonzo joined Crawling King Snakes soon after.
Born in the Midlands town of Redditch in the spring of 1948, Bonham was ten when his mother bought him his first set of drums. Her son had been gripped from the moment he saw the great jazz drummer Gene Krupa pummelling out the tribal rhythm of “Sing Sing Sing” in the 1956 film The Benny Goodman Story . Bonham was drumming in bands from the age of fifteen, passing through the likes of the Blue Star Trio, the Senators, and Terry Webb and the Spiders.
Bonham was just three months older than Plant but was already married. He and his wife Pat were living in a caravan parked behind his family home. Not only worldlier than his new friend, in terms of ability Bonham was also ahead of anyone Plant had played with to that point. In the Black Country’s pubs and clubs, he was already spoken of as a drummer of prodigious ability, a powerhouse.
“Bonzo had at one time been in a dance band,” Plant said to me. “So he got all of his chops from being able to play those big band arrangements. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“John was a bit odd even in those days,” adds Tolley, Plant’s school friend. “Every time he walked into a room there was a strange aroma—he was definitely smoking a lot of wacky baccy. But he was a great drummer and he had a better kit than anyone else.”
For a short spell the possibilities seemed boundless. With Bonham propelling them, the Crawling King Snakes opened up for the Spencer Davis Group, Gene Vincent, the Walker Brothers and others. Plant was brought closer than he had ever been to the magical center of things, so close he could taste the glories that were being offered up.
He and Bonham stood at the side of the stage at Stourbridge Town Hall and watched the Walker Brothers, listening to teenage girls scream at their singer Scott Walker as if he were a god. Even a band such as Liverpool’s the Merseybeats, for whom fame was fleeting, could pull into town in their blue and white station wagon and appear to Plant as “renegade guys who ran off with all our teen queens.”
“There was no notion of where we were going but no known cure either,” he told me. “I mean to say, I didn’t have any concept of fame as a seventeen-year-old kid. It was just the fact of being able to get away from the clerks desk as a chartered accountant. And then to go back to my parents, who only ever wanted the best for me, and proclaim that I had to go . . . and forever.”
Plant felt more now than just the pull of singing the blues. He had heard the screams, smelled the sex and sensed the power that could be bestowed upon the man with the microphone. And then, as was his custom in those days,
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