Unlike many artists from his generation, Paul McCartney remains interested in the music scene to this day and is often seen at concerts by artists who emerged over the past decades. In the 1970s, he followed the large number of Rock subgenres that appeared, many of them heavily inspired by the experimentation done by The Beatles on their albums.
One of the biggest bands to emerge in England after the Fab Four was Led Zeppelin and McCartney was a big fan of them. Over the decades, he spoke about the group and named one of their songs that, in his opinion, was especially powerful because of the late drummer John Bonham.
The Led Zeppelin song Paul McCartney said was powerful
Paul McCartney is a fan of Led Zeppelin’s music and admires the members of the band, especially the late legendary drummer John Bonham, who he had the chance to meet and play with. Once when talking about him, he described “Kashmir” as a song that had power. “John Bonham was a good friend of mine and I was a great admirer of his. I really liked the power of John. I remember (someone) asking him once ‘How do you want your tom-toms to sound?’ He said: ‘Like cannons!’ That is true. If you listen to something like ‘Kashmir’. There’s a power and he was a very powerful guy,” Paul McCartney said in an interview (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Written by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Bonham, the song was part of their acclaimed 1975 album “Physical Graffiti.” That same year, McCartney invited the drummer to join him in the studio. They ended up recording a demo of “Beware My Love.”
In 1979 he played once again with Paul, this time on two tracks from the album “Back to the Egg.” They were “Rockestra Theme” and “So Glad to See You Here.” A few years ago he talked about that collaboration, saying: “It was fantastic! He was always on my top 5 drummer list. (It was) a great friend and ballsy drummer!”
When asked to name the greatest drummers of all time, he placed Bonham in second position. He was behind Ringo Starr and ahead of Keith Moon. “I’d go Ringo top, he’s something else. Second, I’d go Bonzo (Bonham. And third, Keith Moon. That’s mine. I’m going from that generation. Those are pretty good drummers, those boys,” Paul McCartney said in an interview with Howard Stern in 2020.
McCartney chose John Bonham when asked to form his “dream band”
Paul McCartney was already in a band most Rock musicians dreamed about being part of. But when asked to form his own “dream band”, he chose other musicians, including John Bonham on drums. The Beatle also listed in an interview with Estadão in 2019, Billy Preston on keyboards, John Entwistle on bass, Jimi Hendrix on guitar and Elvis Presley on vocals.
Besides playing in the studio, Bonham and Paul had the chance to share the stage at least once in 1979, at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. It was Wings concert and Bonham, John Paul Jones, Pete Townshend and Robert Plant joined them on stage that night.
Paul McCartney was already a Led Zeppelin fan in the early 70s
Unlike many artists from his generation, Paul McCartney remained interested in listening to new artists and embraced many bands that emerged after the 1960s. He was already aware of Led Zeppelin in the early 1970s and praised them as one of the greatest British bands of the time.
“(To do a) show is hard. If you go on and do a show, you’ve got to know how people are doing it today. Because I went to a Led Zeppelin gig. Zeppelin goes on and they do a good show because they have the thing together as a band. They’ve got absolute confidence in each other. You get a band that hasn’t played together for 10 years and pass up will, well, then it’s difficult,” he told Los Angeles Times in 1974.
Two years later he once again praised the band. “I like the Pink Floyd, I like Led Zeppelin, I like the Rolling Stones. I like quite a few of the English groups,” he told Sounds magazine in 1976. McCartney never played with Jimmy Page, but he mentioned him in one of his songs. In the lyrics of “Rock Show,” from Wings’ album “Venus and Mars,” he sings: “Tell me. What’s that man movin’ cross the stage? It looks a lot like the one used by Jimmy Page. It’s like a relic from a different age.”