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Which songs did Bonzo play a key role on?


unleasher

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The intro drums to The Rover - GOLD.

Four sticks

The Lemon Song

How Many More Times

Black Country Woman for the power and subtlety at the same time.

The Song Remains the Same

Achillies Last Stand (of course)

Since I've Been Lovin' You

Trampled Underfoot

Gallows Pole

Can't think of any more right now - but there are many, many more where without Bonzo, the song would just not be as good by a good measure.

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Not saying Page and Plant were as guilty as, say, Jagger/Richards of depriving their bandmates of deserved songwriting credit (Mick Taylor in particular) but suffice it say that -even using Juxtiphi's list as a basis- there are a helluva lot more songs that by all rights should have been credited "Bonham/Jones/Page/Plant" or "Bonham/Page/Plant" or "Jones/Page/Plant" than there actually are. Take the Presence album for example: they actually expect us to believe that given John Bonham's incredible contributions to the drums on that album -the intricate time signatures, the stop/start rhythms etc- the only fucking song where he actually contributed to the 'songwriting' was "Royal Orleans"? I don't believe for one second that, while doing the pre-album rehearsals at S.I.R., when the band was first running down "Achilles Last Stand", "Nobody's Fault But Mine" or "Candy Store Rock" Page and/or Plant were telling Bonzo, "Play it like this." Not when you consider that on almost every leaked session/rehearsal tape I've heard Bonham is coming up with his own drum patterns and contributing plenty to the actual arrangements.

I am actually quite surprised that songwriting credits were not a big bone of contention amongst the members of Led Zeppelin. Perhaps if they'd stayed together they might have been...I know in recent years John Paul Jones has made a tongue-in-cheek comment or two in interviews along the lines of "The credits on the record label weren't exactly accurate" but it says a lot for the mutual respect that these guys have for one another that it all didn't end up in a courtroom- I bet had their actual personalities been different it could very easily have ended up that way.

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I guess as long as you are getting the same amount of money from the albums there's no problem. I highly doubt John and John would settle for less than the others when it came to pay day but I really don't know how much each member made from the albums.

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Unless they had some sort of special arrangement, songwriting credits were definitely effecting payday. I've always wondered who has the final say on a specific song's credit. It's not like they had a fifth party at sessions evaluating who contributed and who did not.

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He was 1/4 of Zeppelin no matter what, and made every song better than any other drummer could have. He was perfect.

When they don't list him on writing credits it's possibly because he ONLY played drums on the songs, which the other 2-3 members may have created the songs (the name, lyrics, and structure of the song, anything else in there..) then Bonzo would just play the drums. The songs he's listed on are the ones he helped write a little more..? That's just a guess... Take Kashmir for example, Page said that he and Bonham showed up to the studio one day and Plant and Jones were running late so Page and Bonham started working on a new riff for a song that eventually turned into Kashmir...

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