John Bonham, meet Alex Van Halen. Alex Van Halen, meet John Bonham’s fist.
During a recent radio interview, Jason Bonham shared the story of the first time Alex met Bonzo and it didn’t turn out as Alex had hoped. Greg Prato shared his article originally posted to Ultimate Guitar with the VHND:
There’s a famous saying, “Never meet your heroes.” And it turns out that this precise proverb came into play twice concerning two members of the John Bonham family, in a roundabout way. The first episode would have taken place sometime in the ’70s in Hollywood, California, while the second episode can be pinpointed to August 18, 1984, in Derbyshire, England.
During a recent interview with KSHE 95, Bonham’s son, Jason, was discussing his involvement in the currently underway Best of All Worlds Tour, which leans heavily on “Van Hagar” material due to the involvement of Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony. But during the chat, Jason discussed what he knows about the two aforementioned occurrences.
“It’s 10 years since I’ve been with Sammy and Mike, and it’s 40 years since I saw Mike play at Donington,” Bonham explained (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). “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?'”
Years later, after Jason and Michael Anthony became friends, he told him about his not-so-great intro to Alex. And the former Van Halen bassist took a guess as to why his former bandmate wasn’t so chummy.
“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.”