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John Bonham, the drummer for Led Zeppelin also known as "Bonzo" and "The Beast," died on Sept. 25, 1980, after choking on his own vomit at Jimmy Page's mansion in Windsor, England, which Page had just bought from the actor Michael Caine.
At the time, the band was preparing for a 20-city tour of the U.S. But days later, the remaining members announced that Led Zeppelin was no more.
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"We can't go on without Bonham," Robert Plant said.
Page added: "We couldn't just replace somebody; it wasn't that sort of band."
Twenty-seven years passed before the band played another show. That show—a tribute to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the charismatic founder of Atlantic Records and a close friend of the band— took place at the O2 Arena in London on December 10, 2007. 20 million people applied for tickets in a worldwide lottery, and only 18,000 got them. Bonham's son Jason stood in on drums.
The concert has been preserved in the form of an epic two-hour film called Celebration Day, which premiered on Tuesday night at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan. Earlier that day, a press preview was held at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by a tense and at times bizarre press conference with the band.