Drummer Danny Leo Pays Tribute to his Hero John Bonham

Danny Leo was born 10 years after Led Zeppelin’s one and only Australian tour.

Still, he was the obvious choice of drummer to commemorate the British rock band’s concert at Melbourne’s Kooyong Tennis Centre in the summer of 1972.

”Danny is such a passionate devotee of John Bonham,” guitarist Ash Naylor says of the ill-fated Led Zeppelin drummer, just 32 when he died in 1980. ”He knows all the nuances. It is hard to replicate the swing and the groove and Danny has got that in bucket loads.”

Leo, who plays drums in a well-known Led Zeppelin tribute band when not with his duo King of the North with guitarist Andrew Higgs, remembers an encounter after a Zep Boys gig in Queensland.

”There was an older man – he would have been easily in his late 60s, 70s,” he recalls. ”He came up to me after the gig and grabbed my hand in both of his and shook it firmly as he looked at me and said, ‘I saw Led Zeppelin in Sydney in 1972. I haven’t seen a performance like that since then on the drums – that was exceptional, young man’.”

Also in the commemorative show in Richmond are bassist Stephen Hadley, Bruce Haymes on keyboards, Dallas Crane guitarist Dave Larkin, singer Vika Bull, My Dynamite frontman Pat Carmody and Wolfgramm Sisters, Talei and Eliza.

The celebration of Led Zeppelin’s 1972 Kooyong concert is at the Corner Hotel on Friday.