< PreviousModern Drummer June 2021 28June 2021 Modern Drummer 29 TerryKeating T erry Keating’s Bonzoleum channel has been a fixture on YouTube for the wide community of John Bonham devotees since 2008. Keating is prolific, with hundreds of videos ranging from play-throughs of songs, a wealth of information about Bonham’s gear, and, above all, lessons dissecting Bonham’s technique. Keating is an accomplished drummer, songwriter, and session player whose love of music is evident in everything he does. I sent him a fan letter a few years ago, and I was thrilled to be able to sit down and talk about our favorite drummer together. As someone who makes their living playing Led Zeppelin music, there are so many things I love about your videos, but one of them is you’re a great teacher. My relationship with my drum teacher in New York, Fred Klatz, is such an important relationship. He’s a wonderful teacher, and I see that in you, as well. Thank you. The key is to keep a student doing something over and over again because they want to—not because they feel like they have to. It’s an important distinction. You really want the person to know they’re in charge, and that the more they do something, the better they’ll get at it. It’s also not lost on me that if someone seeks to learn something, there’s a chance the first teacher they run into might be a total dick—which can definitely turn people off to learning. Sometimes you get teachers who are real task masters, and if you come from a background where you had a parent who was a task master, it’s not necessarily the best way to teach. You talk a lot about the perfection in imperfection. There are so many great young drummers, and yet they’re so metronomic, because they haven’t been listening to music that used push- and-pull and space in order to create emotions. I guarantee there are drummers, pianists, and other people who can play precisely and metronomically to a click track for five minutes, but they’re missing the whole point by doing that. Of course, you don’t want a song to rush off or go too slow. But the funny thing about a click track is how you approach it. For example, I may choose to get a little ahead of the click for a bar-and-a-half while we go into this chorus. You’re not totally jumbling around and messing up your time, but you can see if you get a little ahead of it or behind it, and use the click as a guide to get back to the tempo. This concept of having absolute perfect time throughout an entire performance—who said that’s the way it should be done? In fact, speeding stuff up, or slowing stuff down is something drummers should have in their toolbox. It’s something on your palette—speeding up and slowing down with the intention of being musical to create an emotional, visceral landscape. I’ve played John Bonham’s parts in my all-female Led Zeppelin tribute, Zepparella, for 16 years. When you play somebody else’s parts for a long time, you start to understand who you are as a drummer. Spreading the Gospel of Bonzo By Clementine MossModern Drummer June 2021 30 When we get to play a Zeppelin gig, we have to really fill the shoes. It’s a tall order. There are a lot of things you have to arrive at in order to reproduce John Bonham’s playing. I was lucky, because I fell under Bonham’s spell when I was young. I really got it into my bones. When any musician approaches an instrument, there’s a signature—a character—that comes across in their playing. Not everybody has an ability to tell the difference. For example, most people have the ability to tell the difference between a really good Christopher Walken impersonation and a bad one. With a drummer, though, you just know it when you hear it, and there’s something about the way Bonham played—apart from his technique, his playing behind the beat, or whatever. So when you seek to copy Bonham, it’s not just a two- dimensional thing. There’s a way he did things. Also, when Bonham, John Paul Jones, and Jimmy Page played behind the beat, it wasn’t necessarily just Bonham driving it. For example, if I’m the drummer, and I start playing behind the beat, the bass player might be like, “Why is he dragging?” He or she is going to compensate and slow down. So now I’m going to slow down a little more, because you’re not letting me be behind the beat. It’s more of a relationship that all the players have—to determine where each discrete note falls. It’s also your temperament. Somebody might be a real uptight person, and someone else might be relaxed. A relaxed drummer doesn’t feel rushed all the time. It’s the “I’ll get to it when I get to it” mentality versus the more nervous person who says, “Let’s do this already!” I’m a nervous-type guy, so maybe what I hear in Bonham’s playing is a sort of calm. Bonham had really interesting time, he had an emotional quality to his playing, he had a heavy quality, and he had a very exacting quality. He had all of these different aspects— the whole package. It’s so interesting to me how different drummers choose one of those aspects to focus on. Well, that’s how they hear it. When you listen to some Led Zeppelin recordings that start out with the instruments—say, the guitar first and then the drums—Bonham would come in where he was supposed to come in, but he’d slow it down a little. It’s hard to explain. Bonham seemed to have a lot of momentum. When he started kicking that bass drum, it was just very solid, like, “I’m not playing with you. You’re playing with me.” He’s like the immovable object. He played very solid. A great example of this way of playing is the studio recording of “The Rain Song.” Bonham does those cool fills, but he’s not matching what’s happening with the guitar. He’s setting very much an authoritative feel, but I guess you could say that it’s held back a lot. He could have done more. You know, there’s a great recording I always point out to people—”Jim’s Blues” by P.J. Proby. Proby went to England to record, and John Paul Jones was contracted as an arranger and session bass player. He brought in John on drums and Page on guitar, and the sound of the instrumentation is like Led Zeppelin I. It’s a blues song that rocks real hard. Bonham is freshly 20 years old, and, supposedly, he’d only been playing a drum set for four or five years. This fricking guy is playing on “Jim’s Blues” before he ever played a note for Zeppelin in the studio, and his technique is just out of hand. He did buzz rolls terrifically, but early on, he did single-stroke rolls with the French grip where the sticks never really seemed to go that far off the head. It was really fast without being very loud. Then, there’s the sound of Bonham’s drums and the cymbals. In our band room at school, we had a green-sparkle Ludwig kit with Zildjian cymbals. I thought, “These don’t sound anything like what you hear on the record.” I looked at a picture on an album jacket, and I could see the 18” cymbal said “Paiste.” I was hell bent to get my “Speeding stuff up, or slowing stuff down is something drummers should have in their toolbox.”CYMBALSModern Drummer June 2021 32 hands on whatever this fricking guy in Zeppelin had. It was just a different sound. I was going to give you a little a disclaimer at the beginning of this interview, which is that I am so not a gear head. Well, people are gear heads or they’re not. It’s funny to know how much of a gear head Bonham actually was. I remember reading a mid-’80s Modern Drummer interview with Neil Peart where he was asked how he chose his cymbals, and he said something like, “I just tell them I want a medium weight and bigger ones or smaller ones, and this is what they send me.” Have you ever had any scary moments performing Bonham’s parts onstage? The hardest show I ever did in any Zeppelin department was the first show I played in 2017 with Kashmir [New York Led Zep tribute band], because I hadn’t really done any of that stuff for seven years. I drove up to the gig, and I remember setting up real fast, and asking myself, “Are you ready to play?” I was sitting there right before kicking into “Rock and Roll,” and that song is so hard to do first. To properly play that shuffle beat, you almost bounce up and down a little. It’s like a dance. But if you don’t play it that way—like me where you are forcing every fricking hit—it’s torture. I busted my way through that tune, trying to maintain the tempo right up to that fill at the end. Then, 16 seconds later, I had to play “Celebration Day.” It was right out of a nightmare. If a young drummer is going to start learning Zeppelin, I would say “The Rover” should be the first one to learn. I feel there’s so much about Bonham’s drumming in that feel. Oh, you’re absolutely right. In the first 20 seconds of the song, he’s not really dragging, but he’s still manipulating the time. Most drummers would probably pick it up at a point, but he’s not going to rush at all. And, in fact, he’s going to pull them back. That song is a very good snapshot of Bonham’s personality and playing. Who’s your favorite drummer that you ever saw play Bonham? I would say my favorite living Led Zeppelin drummer—who I think can channel Bonham the best—is my friend George Fludas, who has a YouTube channel, Bonhamology. Years ago, he came over to my Bonzoleum studios to hang, and when he sat down at my drums, from the very first tap tap he did on the snare, it sounded like the beginning of a Zeppelin show. He asked, “Do you mind if I change the tuning?” I let him tinker with it a little, and within two seconds that snare went from sounding like a pretty good Bonham tuning to sounding like it had just been taken off the truck at Headley Grange [a historic former workhouse in Hampshire, England where Led Zeppelin recorded parts of Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti]. He started messing around with the live Royal Albert Hall version of “Moby Dick,” and I was like, “This guy has got this down cold.” When I’m playing on stage, it’s easy for me to call up that feeling of being 13 years old and hearing Led Zeppelin’s music. I feel like it will always be in my veins—that love for the songs. Well, that’s when you’re also providing the audience with your best playing, because if you feel that way, you’re certainly not playing bad. You’re doing it. You’re giving it your all. “When you play a Zeppelin gig, you have to fill Bonham’s shoes, and that’s a tall order.” Keating (far right) with Bonzo buddy George Fludas on David Ward’s Musicians on the Record podcast.Modern Drummer June 2021 34 John BushellJune 2021 Modern Drummer 35 Nandi Bushell Pre-Teen Drumming Evangelist Spreads the Joy of Playing Across the Planet By Michael Molenda I t’s an unrelenting bombardment of music and joyfulness that makes Beatlemania, T-Rextasy, and the Kardashian phenomenon seem like underachieving, ho-hum non-happenings. It’s almost unfathomable how many times each day there appears to be a post or news item or video release involving 11-year-old British multi-instrumentalist Nandi Bushell— almost to the point where a media company could launch a 24-hour “Nandi News” channel and still have to bump some items, because there simply wouldn’t be enough airtime available to run everything. My brain hurts. Does yours?Modern Drummer June 2021 36 Happily, in this case, the cerebral ache is pleasurable and idyllic— an onslaught of creativity, energy, achievement, elation, and drumming. Unless you’d rather be assaulted by despair-inducting media frenzies about the pandemic, world tensions, and why the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so darned confusing, Bushell’s persistent enthusiasm beams everything that’s wonderful about playing music to young and old, celebrities and the not-so-famous, and anyone looking for a smile. She may be one of the most triumphant forces for inspiring music making and music-instrument sales that the galaxy has ever seen. Her sunny evangelism extends beyond encouraging pre-teens to pick up drumsticks, guitars, basses, and keyboards and play them, as she is also motivating former players who have left their instruments in basement storage for years to dig out those musical tools and give it another go. For example, after watching a few of Bushell’s videos, a 55-year-old former band mate of mine—who had given up playing drums in the 1990s—told me, “You know, I’d like to do a cover of ‘Message in a Bottle.’ I got my kit out and I started a YouTube channel.” I’m sure this isn’t an isolated incident. Yet, if Bushell was simply a “momentary cuteness distraction,” I’m not sure that so many music stars would support and promote her, that numerous equipment manufacturers would seek her out for endorsements, and that multitudes of fans would continue to push her videos into the strata of millions of views. She is serious about her performances, and she works hard to get the right balance of technique and vibe in her playing. It’s also apparent that she is not playing for her—or her ego—she is playing for you, which is what most transcendent musicians manage to decode naturally Andrea Southam June 2021 Modern Drummer 37 or through experience as they work their way towards becoming masters of their craft. You could say Bushell is wise beyond her years, and that would make sense, but her popularity, productivity, and talent almost point to some kind of magic at work. Somehow, she has filled the world with beautiful content, built an incredible career in a very short time and at an extremely young age, and made friends and fans with megastars such as Questlove, Lenny Kravitz, Dave Grohl, Tom Morello, and many others. Whatever the business acumen, musical chops, or sorcery in play to get Bushell to where she is today, I couldn’t think of a more capable angel to help fill the world with music, love, and respect. Rock on. Who is the first drummer that inspired you to pick up drumsticks? Easy! Ringo Starr. My family and I make pancakes almost every weekend, and we like to listen to music and watch bands on YouTube as we make them. When I was five, my favorite song was “Hey Jude” by the Beatles. I used to watch Ringo play the drums, and he always looked so happy. He is always smiling. I wanted to play drums and be happy like him. One Sunday, I did really well at a Math Club, and my mummy and daddy said I could have a toy from the toy shop. I knew exactly what I wanted. I picked a £25 toy drum kit. I have never stopped playing ever since. How did your parents influence your love for music? My daddy is obsessed with music. In his room, he has a wall full of pictures of all of his favorite musicians. We listen to lots of music together, and we like to jam. He’s not the greatest musician, but he loves making music and having fun. He started taking me to the pub with him when I was six years old to open jam nights. I started improvising and jamming with adults. I feel really comfortable just getting up and jamming. On the weekends, we bake together, and he plays me songs so I can pick the ones I want to cover. My daddy likes to challenge me, and he pushes my skills with each suggested cover. When did your parents realize that you had something special? Nandi’s Gear Drumsets [1] Custom-made Ludwig Legacy Mahogany Vintage with wood hoops, presented to Bushell by Nate Smith and Lenny Kravitz: 12x18 bass drum, 12x14 floor tom, 7x10 rack tom, 6x12 snare drum. [2] Ludwig Pocket Kit that was a gift from Questlove. [3] Roland VAD506 V-Drums Acoustic Design. (“This kit keeps my neighbors happy when I want to practice into the night,” says Bushell.) Cymbals Zildjian Sweet-K crashes, dark crashes, and rides. Sticks Vic Firth Nandi Bushell Signature, 5A. Footpedal Prototype Ludwig double bass. (“I am testing it out for them,” says Bushell. “It’s pretty awesome.”) Drumheads Remo. A power trio of Nandi and her video clones.Next >