Jason Bonham says he found unmarked tapes in John Bonham’s belongings
The tapes may be destroyed upon attempting to play them, Jason revealed.
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John Bonham’s son Jason has revealed the existence of unmarked tapes that may contain unreleased studio mixes of Led Zeppelin songs in his father’s belongings.
In an interview with the Vinyl Guide podcast, Jason revealed the big find, sharing that he discovered the box of tapes upon his most recent visit to his childhood home, though he had yet to listen to the tapes himself. “I need to get the machine up and running and hook it up, which I will save that for an episode for YouTube, like ‘Let’s get this thing up and running. Let’s find out if we’ve got anything that hasn’t even been released yet,’” he shared, “Because they’re all unmarked, that’s the best of it. Or they just deteriorated.”
He also noted that due to the format of the tapes, the contents may be destroyed if he attempts to play them, sharing: “They might just… you put them in the machine and it just erases them the moment you press start. I think they had to do that when they were doing the Knebworth mixing. They had to bake the… they only had the U-matic tapes and they had to bake the tapes to preserve what was on there. Imagine all the multitracks they’ve got, from the one-inch to the two-inch, sitting in Jimmy’s facility or whatever.”
Earlier this year, Bonham’s Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page revealed that the Beatles’ George Harrison had inspired the 1973 track The Rain Song after Harrison had commented that Led Zeppelin “never do ballads”. Proclaiming the track one of the band’s best, Page also shared that he paid tribute to the Beatles in the music itself. “I thought it would be interesting to put the first two notes from Something into the beginning of The Rain Song … [As a whole,] The Rain Song was really nothing like Something, so nobody was even going to think of it,” he revealed.