Hammers of the God

“Good Times Bad Times,” Led Zeppelin’s first US single, was released on March 10, 1969.

In a 2022 New Yorker piece, “Led Zeppelin Gets into Your Soul,“ writer James Wood made the case that drummer John Bonham was Led Zeppelin, in his ability to “land heavily and lightly at once.”

“In ‘Good Times Bad Times,’ the opening song on the group’s first album, Bonham makes funky use of his cowbell, and introduces something that, it would seem, hadn’t been featured before in rock—a series of fast triplets on the bass drum, but with the first strike of the triplet merely implied, so that the beat falls more heavily on the second and third strikes. That’s the technical explanation. Most listeners simply hear the staggered staccato of the bass drum worrying away at the beat in an interesting manner. That swift right foot is everywhere in the early albums.”

Wood framed his story growing up in provincial northern England, but he triggered my memory of hearing “Good Times Bad Times” for the first time circa 1969 in Arvada, Colorado. I was almost 15 years old, raised on ’60s pop and aspiring to play drums with Python Deity, my town’s leading/only high-school garage band. I saved my allowance to buy a copy of Led Zeppelin I, turned off the lights in my bedroom, lay down with my head between the stereo speakers…and figuratively sprained my ankle just listening to Bonham doing those bass drum triplets. If I was a better person, I would have vowed right then and there to practice and keep practicing until I could do the same. Instead, I picked up a Dairy Queen job application. Spent my first paycheck on a typewriter, though!