The Trouble Robert Plant Went Thru To Play With John Bonham

It’s fascinating to know how Led Zeppelin assembled to create a powerhouse band. Robert Plant once recalled meeting John Bonham and how that incident led him to create distress from the police.

Both Bonham and Plant were active in the same circuit, albeit on different bands, during their teenage years in the 60s. Gigs were done every night around the pubs in the Black Country region somewhere in England. When Bonham saw Plant who was still fronting the Crawling King Snakes, the drummer civilly introduced himself to him.

“He said, ‘You’re okay… but you’d be a lot better if you had the best drummer in the world behind you,’” Plant said in a recent interview from the Broken Record podcast. “And I said, ‘Well, okay, I know that you’re good – but where do you live?’ He told me, and I said, ‘Oh, you can’t join our group because we can’t afford the gasoline to go and pick you up and drop you off!’”

Plant further told Bonham’s suggestion, which draws under the thin line of theft. “I got caught by the police for sucking fuel out a gas tank just to keep [the lineup] going,” he added.

Apart from that funny encounter, host Rick Rubin also asked the 73-year-old singer why the band didn’t continue after the death of their drummer in 1980. “As a four-piece band, what are you going to do? I don’t know how any band – any group of people – could [proceed without the] 25 percent of the driving wheel,” Plant told Rubin.

You can listen to the podcast below.