Born in Liverpool, England back in 1966, Jason Bonham was just a teenager when his father, the Led Zeppelin drummer, John Bonham passed away at the age of 32. His father taught him to play the drums when he was just a kid and over the decades he improved, having the chance to play with many incredible artists like Jimmy Page, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin and for the past 10 years he had been playing with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony.
They are currently on the “Best of All Worlds” tour with the guitarist Joe Satriani, focusing on the “Van Hagar” material, the Van Halen era with Sammy on vocals. In an interview with KSHE (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), the musician recalled the bad encounter he had with the drummer Alex Van Halen back in the 80s. He believes it wasn’t good because Alex didn’t have a good experience when meeting his late father John.
Jason Bonham recalls a bad encounter he had with Alex Van Halen
“It’s 10 years since I’ve been with Sammy and Mike, and it’s 40 years since I saw Mike play at Donington. My wife and I went to Donington, Monsters of Rock: AC/DC, Van Halen. The ‘monsters of throwing lots of bottles everywhere when they were playing.'”
“And I got to meet Alex that day, and Leonard [Haze] from Y&T introduced me. He came up, this is a classic, and I’m like ‘Oh my God, it’s Alex Van Halen.’ And he goes, ‘Hey Leonard!’ ‘This is Jason Bonham.’ And he goes, ‘So what?'”
“I said, ‘Mikey, why was Alex such a dick?’ He goes, ‘Well, we heard your dad was in the Rainbow, and we were playing Gazzarri’s next door. We kind of ran around the Rainbow and tried to say hi to him, and Alex kind of like jumped over the thing and went to put his hand out… And your dad took a swing at him!’ Maybe that’s why he’s a little pissed.”