The Led Zeppelin Platinum Drums is a collection of John Bonham drumset transcriptions, transcribed from the Led Zeppelin albums, Led Zeppelin I, II and III. Drawing from more than 30 years of documentation, interviews, and recorded footage, these all-new drum transcriptions deliver unprecedented accuracy.
REVIEW 
Each of these three Led Zeppelin Platinum Album Edition drum transcription books (there's a fourth, but I didn't receive it to review) contain a nice historical forward (with vintage Zeppelin photographs) from Guitar World magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Brad Tolinski.
Here are the songs from each album that have been transcribed:
- Good Times Bad Times
- Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
- You Shook Me
- Dazed And Confused
- Your Time Is Gonna Come
- Communication Breakdown
- I Can't Quit You Baby
- How Many More Times
- Whole Lotta Love
- What Is And What Should Never Be
- The Lemon Song
- Thank You
- Heartbreaker
- Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)
- Ramble On
- Moby Dick
- Bring It On Home
- Immigrant Song
- Celebration Day
- Since I've Been Loving You
- Out On The Tiles
- Gallows Pole
- Tangerine
- Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
There's no better way to review a book of transcriptions than to actually sit down behind a drumkit, put on the album/CD, do some critical listening and play-along ... so that's exactly what I did. I didn't play through every transcription, but randomly picked several tunes from each book. Here's what I found.
All of the transcriptions seem to be very good; probably some of the best Led Zeppelin drum transcriptions I've seen to date. But as good as they are, they're certainly not without mistakes. For example, in "What Is And What Should Never Be" from Led Zeppelin II, the Snare hit in measure 74 should be an eighth-note on the AND of beat 4, not a quarter-note on beat 4. "Since I've Been Loving You" (written in 6/4) from Led Zeppelin III, has quite a few missing Snare hits that land in unison with the Kick drum and Crash cymbal. There are more errors than these throughout the three books, such as missed half-open HiHat notations, Ride cymbal notation when it should be riding on the Crash cymbal, etc. For the most part, these are all minor problems. Mistakes like these happen during the music engraving process, but sometimes the transcriber misses things all together.
For anyone not comfortable with transcribing John Bonham drum parts on their own, this book is going to be a life-saver. For the advanced player/reader/transcriber, the mistakes found in these books are easily fixed with a pencil and some careful listening. Despite the glitches and few mistakes I found, I still recommend this drum transcription series to all Led Zeppelin fans and those wanting to study further the drumming styles of legendary drummer, John Bonham.
