Legendary drummer Jason Bonham has retracted a recent story about Led Zeppelin‘s Jimmy Page giving him his first line of cocaine when he was just 16.
Jason, the son of Led Zeppelin’s late drummer John Bonham, made headlines last week after telling Howard Stern how the guitar icon offered him the drug at a hotel while the band was on tour.
“Jimmy was the first one to ever give it to me,” Bonham previously told Stern.
“We got called to his room. … I was 16 at this point, and there was a woman on the floor with a collar on, meowing, and he had this grinder thing … and he turned it over and he went, ‘Here you go,’ and I went, ‘Thanks.’ He’s like, ‘You’ve done this before, right?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course I have.’
But in his naivety, Bonham hoovered up the drug without realising that it was supposed to be shared between the whole band.
“I just did all of it, and he went, ‘Just like your father – you know, that was supposed to be for all of us.’”
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While the story seemingly offered a glimpse into the hedonistic lifestyles of Led Zeppelin, Bonham has now issued a statement to “unconditionally retract all derogatory and defamatory comments relating to Mr J Page.”
“It is wholly untrue that Mr J Page offered me any illegal substances either when I was a minor or at all,” Bonham wrote on his website.
“I apologize to Mr Page, unreservedly, for making these unfounded and untrue comments about him. Out of my long held respect for Mr Page I will make no further comments on the interview and I agree to make no further comments which Mr Page might view as disparaging, either now or in the future.”
The original anecdote came after Bonham previously stood in for his dad at several Led Zeppelin reunions – including the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and their comeback performance at Ahmet Ertegun’s O2 Arena tribute concert in 2007.
But it’s unlikely that another comeback will ever happen, with frontman Robert Plant previously admitting that the band would only reunite in a “chip shop”.