Everybody watches Plant cry. I watch the drummer. Ann Wilson’s vocal. The choir. The balcony. All of that is in the clip. What gets me is the kit at the back. John Bonham died in 1980 and took the band with him. Thirty-two years later his son walks out at the Kennedy Center in his father’s bowler hat and sits in the only seat that was never filled. When Jason finally opens up the drums, it doesn’t sound like a cover finding its climax. It sounds like a pulse coming back into a room that had learned to live without it. That’s when the strings and the choir stop being decoration. They’re the size of the absence. I don’t think Plant was only crying at the song. I think he was looking at a kid who used to run around rehearsal, now keeping his father’s time in front of the men who survived it. Heart · Stairway to Heaven Kennedy Center Honors, 2012 Jason Bonham on drums. Some tributes honor a catalog. This one honors a vacant chair.