When Jason Bonham first met Alex Van Halen, things didn’t go well.
Bonham — who is currently on tour with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony on the Best of All Worlds tour — recalled the incident during a recent interview with KSHE 95 (audio below).
“It’s 40 years since I saw Mike play at Donington,” he said of his visit to the U.K. festival in 1984. “My wife and I went to Donington – Monsters of Rock – AC/DC, Van Halen. And I got to meet Alex that day… 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!’
“He goes, ‘Hey Leonard!’ [Haze says:] ‘This is Jason Bonham.’ And he goes, ‘So what?’ He just went, ‘So what?’”
Years later, Jason become friends with Anthony and asked him why Van Halen may have been so dismissive. “I said, ‘Mikey, why was Alex such a dick?’” the drummer recalled. The bassist suggested it could have been payback for the time Van Halen met Jason’s dad, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.
Anthony harked back to the moment in the late ‘70s when Van Halen had tried to meet the elder Bonham. “He goes, ‘Well, we heard your dad was in (Sunset Strip bar) the Rainbow, and we were playing Gazzarri’s next door. We kind of ran around the Rainbow and tried to say ‘hi’ to him.”
Van Halen was excited to meet his idol, but Bonzo didn’t reciprocate the enthusiasm.
“Alex kind of like jumped over the [barrier] and went to put his hand out… And your dad took a swing at him!’” Anthony explained to Jason. “Maybe that’s why he was a little pissed!”
