John Paul Jones: Led Zeppelin’s Secret Weapon
By Steven P. Wheeler
For 12 years, from 1968-1980, Led Zeppelin dominated the rock world with an unparalleled blend of brutal thundering power and shimmering acoustic beauty, an intoxicating balance of darkness and light. From their explosive self-titled debut to their final and most diverse studio album In Through the Out Door (released 40 years ago today), Led Zeppelin would rapidly expand the boundaries of rock music into new realms.
“Stairway to Heaven,” “Whole Lotta Love” and “Kashmir” alone represent the closest thing to Biblical Tablets music fans may ever find on the Mount of Rock; each unique unto themselves, each a fascinating mind-expanding journey that no band had dared embark upon before.
Selling an estimated 300 million albums around the world, Led Zeppelin—guitarist Jimmy Page, vocalist Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham—and their flamboyantly intimidating manager Peter Grant broke all the existing rules of the music industry and all concert records along the way. And Zeppelin did it all without the support of mainstream music critics who largely despised them and their phenomenal success.
Led Zeppelin was truly the definition of a people’s band until it all came to a screeching halt on September 25, 1980 with the tragic death of drummer John Bonham—12 years to the day they began recording their first album.
In early 2000, I sat down with John Paul Jones: Led Zeppelin’s Secret Weapon; the Quiet One who enabled the quartet to be totally self-contained as he was not only rock’s finest and most innovative bassists, but also a master keyboardist and someone who could literally play any instrument he laid his hands on. During his time with Zep, the former London-based session musician, composer, producer and arranger not only (officially) co-wrote half of the band’s tunes but also, just as importantly, he added the textures and layers that truly made Zeppelin unique.
While Plant sang and blew a little harp on occasion and Page bounced from acoustic to electric guitars and Bonham propelled the band behind his drum kit, JPJ laid the rhythmic foundation with his bass playing mastery while adding piano, organ, clavinet, mellotron, synthesizers, mandolin, banjo or any little ingredient that would complete a particular Zeppelin stew. His amazing and versatile musicianship also allowed Zeppelin to bring their texture-ridden studio work to the stage.
Led Zeppelin never once had supporting musicians join them in concert, keeping the magical diamond of musicianship within the four. This was due to Jones, whether playing keyboard and bass pedals concurrently or pulling out his triple-neck during the band’s now-famous acoustic sets in the middle of their legendary three-hour performances.
Whether composing “No Quarter” or writing the riff of “Black Dog” or arranging the horns and strings on “Kashmir,” the importance of John Paul Jones to Led Zeppelin cannot be overstated. Without the classical, jazz, blues, pop and rock pedigree that this only child and musical prodigy from Kent brought to Zep, the band would never have achieved its status as one of rock’s most influential and successful acts in history.
Quietly Busier Than Ever
Jones’ vast array of abilities remain just as in demand today as they did all those years ago. Since his Zep days, Jones has played, produced and/or arranged for such mainstream superstars as R.E.M., Heart, Peter Gabriel, Lenny Kravitz and Paul McCartney while also showing off his love of musical diversity by working with lesser known acts like goth-rockers The Mission U.K., punk act the Butthole Surfers, and the avant-garde powerhouse Diamanda Galás. Not to mention his two solo albums in 1999 and 2001, Zooma and The Thunderthief, as well as some film scoring on the side.
In fact, over the past ten years, Jones, who turned 73 this past January, has been busier than most musicians half his age, including his hugely successful stint with the trio Them Crooked Vultures, which he co-founded with Nirvana/Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss frontman Josh Homme.
Them Crooked Vultures’ 2009 self-titled album rocketed up the charts, hitting #12 on Billboard, and their raucous live appearances around the world left fans wanting more. Grohl, Homme and Jones all continue to say they will record another album together once each of their busy schedules allow.
More recently this master of his trade has recorded and played live with the American bluesman Seasick Steve, including on SS’s 2011 Top Ten U.K. album You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks, not to mention playing live as part of the jazz trio Tres Coyotes with celloist Anssi Karttunen and pianist Magnus Lindberg. And just last month, Jones announced his latest act Sons of Chipotle, in which Jones will move to piano along with Karttunen and experimental musician/producer Jim O’Rourke who worked previously as a member of Sonic Youth. They will be playing live next month in Japan.
Meet Mr. Baldwin
Born John Richard Baldwin to a musical mother and a piano-playing father who was also a big band arranger in the ’40s and ’50s, like his future Zeppelin band mate Jimmy Page, the teenage Baldwin would become one of the most in-demand session musicians in London during the 1960s. The musical whiz kid was merely 16 when he went on the road in 1962 as the bassist for Jet Harris and Tony Meehan of the Shadows, who had formed a duo and recorded the chart-topping U.K. hit, “Diamonds,” which, ironically, featured Page on guitar.
With Meehan’s help, Mr. Baldwin began an amazing career as a session musician and arranger. At one point, in 1964, he even released his own solo recording, an instrumental called “Baja,” under his newly christened stage name: John Paul Jones, which came at the suggestion of Rolling Stones’ manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham.
Over the next several years, Jones would work with such major pop and rock acts as the Rolling Stones, Donovan, Jeff Beck, Cat Stevens, Tom Jones, Herman’s Hermits, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, and countless others. During a December, 1965 Donovan session, Jones would work with Page on “Sunshine Superman,” which hit #1 in America.
The following year Jones would also do the arrangement for Donovan’s other classic hit “Mellow Yellow,” and in 1968 Jones and Page would work together again on his #2 hit, “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” Jones played the bass, handled the string arrangement and booked the session players, including Page.
The “Lead Balloon” Session
In May of 1966, Jones took part in a fateful recording session for Jeff Beck—Page’s former band mate in the Yardbirds. The musicians on this now-famous recording of “Beck’s Bolero,” were Beck, Jones and Page, along with Who drummer Keith Moon and legendary session pianist Nicky Hopkins.
Although the track wouldn’t be released as a single until the following year, it was what happened during a break in that 1966 session that planted the seed for what would take over the lives of Jones and Page two years later. When someone mentioned that these five musicians should all form a group, Moon is said to have replied famously: “Oh no, that would go over like a ‘lead balloon’.” Apparently, Page remembered the joke and would dub his eventual new band: Led Zeppelin.
In late 1967, producer Reg Tracey brought together session players to back his vocalist discovery Keith De Groot. This track featured the nucleus of the musicians on the “Beck’s Bolero” session a year earlier: John Paul Jones on bass, Jimmy Page on guitar, and the late great Nicky Hopkins on keyboards who also wrote this particular track, “Burn Up.” These recordings were never released until the mid-‘70s to ride the Zeppelin wave of popularity.
Arranger Extraordinaire
Early in his studio career, Jones branched out rapidly from his bass and keyboard work and quickly became a highly sought after string arranger as well. One of Jones’ most famous arrangements was one he did for the Rolling Stones in 1967.
“She’s a Rainbow” was not a huge hit at the time, but it is incredibly popular today with it being used in TWO seemingly incessant TV ad campaigns—one for Acura and one for Dior. With those two commercials, the song from the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesty’s Request sessions has been brought back into the spotlight. The Stones even brought the song out of the closet and have played it during their 2019 tour.
All these work-for-hire gigs at the time had their drawbacks as Jones recalled with a laugh: “Back in the ‘60s, I did an arrangement for Herman’s Hermits and there was one particular arrangement I did for a song called ‘There’s a Kind of Hush’ [for their 1967 album of the same name].
“It was a big hit for them, but it was an even bigger hit for The Carpenters [in 1976], who, more or less, used the same arrangement I did back in the ‘60s for which I was paid about 80 dollars,” he said with a hearty laugh. “So things have changed for me a bit because of that; my fees are a lot higher now,” he noted with a smile. “In those days they got a lot of value for their 80 bucks.”
“When I did the arrangements for R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, Michael Stipe wrote me this really nice handwritten letter saying, ‘We really like what you do’ and he wrote down little things like ‘can the strings come in halfway through ‘Everybody Hurts’”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
When it comes to his work as an arranger, Jones pointed to charting the strings for the R.E.M. classic, “Everybody Hurts,” 25 years after his work with the Stones, as a guide. “I like doing arrangements because they’re quick and they’re usually a lot of fun,” he said during our conversation. “People will seek me out because they like the arrangements I’ve done before, so they’ll send me the tracks and leave me to do what I do. The most direction I’ll get is maybe something like, ‘We’d like the strings to come in halfway through the song,’” he laughs, “that’s the most instruction I tend to get.
“It’s like when I did the arrangements for R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People [in 1992], Michael Stipe wrote me this really nice handwritten letter saying, ‘We really like what you do’ and he wrote down little things like ‘can the strings come in halfway through ‘Everybody Hurts’ or on other songs maybe something like ‘please watch out for the guitar line that we would like to keep,’ so just little things like that. And that was it.
“I wrote out all the charts and arrangements, turned up and booked the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,” explained Jones. “We had a great time for two or three days; had dinner, hung out and it was over.”
A few years later, in 1995, Jones served as the producer and arranger for The Road Home, a live “unplugged” styled album by hardcore Zeppelin devotees Heart. Jones not only helmed the project but also did the orchestra arrangements and played piano, bass and mandolin at the concert.
Heart’s guitarist Nancy Wilson recalled when the sisters met JPJ for the first time: “We had our first meeting at the Sit ‘n Spin, this laundromat/diner/bar across the street from Bad Animals Studio in Seattle. We had a pint together and we were just so beside ourselves at the excitement just to meet him. We were trying to act all nonchalant and natural around him and he just mentions in passing, ‘You know, I might just, perhaps, pick up a guitar now and then.’ It was, ‘Are you kidding, of course!’ We’d been afraid to ask. He’s so gifted.”
Heart vocalist Ann Wilson recalled: “He really knows how to give himself to a situation. He’s had all these experiences in his life and these incredible levels but he can still come to Seattle and totally immerse himself in it and be cheerful and sincere and write these great string charts and play the mandolin and sit around afterwards and have a drink and tell stories.
“He spent a big weekend in his hotel room where he locked the door and just wrote all the string charts,” the singer said, “and I envisioned papers just flying through the air and pots of tea and stuff. It was so great. It was a great experience, top to bottom. And people around here are still talking about it.”
Back to the Beginning
By 1968, Jones was working an insane schedule of two or three sessions per day, six or seven days a week, and doing some 50 string and/or horn arrangements a month. While toiling away non-stop, it left little time for anything else in his life, musically or otherwise.
At only 22 years of age, he was feeling trapped by his own success. “I didn’t have a manager in those days,” Jones told me. “I did the work and my wife ran the diary. That was pretty much it. We did it together. In the pre-Zeppelin days I used to go at it tooth-and-nail, and accepted so much work.”
In search of and desperate for change, Jones said he needed out of the studio for his own sanity, and at the suggestion of his wife, Maureen, who he had just married the year before in 1967 (and, yes, they are still married 52 years later), he approached his old session mate Jimmy Page in the spring of 1968. Maureen had heard through the grapevine that Page was said to be forming a new band out of the ashes of the Yardbirds, who he had joined in 1966.
Page recalled that the chance meeting happened during a Donovan session in April of 1968: “I was working at the sessions for Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man, and John Paul Jones was looking after the musical arrangements. During a break, he asked me if I could use a bass player in the new group I was forming. He had proper music training, and he had quite brilliant ideas. I jumped at the chance of getting him.”
With two of London’s most talented session players together, the “veterans” Page (all of 24) and Jones (only 22) were eventually joined by two completely unknowns only 19 and 20 years old, respectively—a raw blues wailing vocalist named Robert Plant and his mate and drumming powerhouse John Bonham.
As legend has it, the four gathered together in a small basement room on Gerrard Street in London in mid-August of ’68—just days before Plant’s 20th birthday—to see if there was any kismet between them. By the time they had finished a rough run-through of “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” it wasn’t so much magic as a musical epiphany!
Jones described that first jam to me in one word: it was nothing short of an “explosion.” None of the four members had ever heard so much power and intensity coming from three instruments and a vocalist. They knew it then and there. This was new. This was magic. This was Led Zeppelin.
First “Zeppelin” Recording
The rest of the world would have to wait a few more months to hear this new sound as the quartet first had to fulfill some concert dates in Scandinavia under the name of the New Yardbirds in September of ‘68. What many Zep fans may not know is that just before hitting the road, Jones had been booked as the arranger at Olympic Studios for a session backing P.J. Proby for his album Three Week Hero.
As a way to get his new band familiar with the studio, Jones simply hired Page, Bonham and Plant as the band for the session. The result was that this would be the very first time the future Led Zeppelin quartet would be recorded in a studio together.
Zeppelin Arrives
After the Proby sessions, they were off to Scandinavia for a series of gigs that brought the four together even more intensely, both in sound and focus. Upon their return to London, on September 25, 1968, the newly christened band once again entered Olympic Studios. This time it was to record their own album. Tight, rehearsed, and brimming with new confidence from their tour, the self-titled debut was recorded and mixed in less than 40 HOURS.
The intro of the first cut on that now classic album perfectly illustrated the dynamic arrival of two new words on the music scene: Led Zeppelin.
The Sound That “Shook” the World
When it comes to Led Zeppelin, it’s hard to explain in this day and age just how much they changed the sound of recorded music. One of the biggest innovations that Zeppelin brought to the world of music was a mic’ing technique that captured an in-your-face gargantuan sound, which dwarfed the often-muddled sounds that came before, especially in the area of drums.
Much of this could be attributed to the years of studio experience that both Page and Jones had put together. As Jones noted, unlike most session players who would take a tea break or read books during the inevitable down time, he and Page were studio nerds who would spend that time in the studio watching and learning about sounds and techniques from the engineers and producers, and with Zeppelin this knowledge and their own experimentation all came to fruition.
Take this example of Willie Dixon’s blues classic “You Shook Me” by the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart on vocals (and a certain John Paul Jones on organ) from Beck’s iconic Truth album versus the recording of the same song by Zeppelin on their first album.
Note that both of these recordings took place at Olympic Studios only four months apart. And while both are classic renditions in their own right, the studio sound captured by Zeppelin was truly groundbreaking in 1968 and brought an all-new dimension to rock recordings.
It’s also interesting to hear the vastly different organ solos from John Paul Jones. There is the controlled, concise and safe approach under the direction of producer Mickie Most on the Beck version and the no-holds-barred, break all the rules approach that was Led Zeppelin.
The Business of Zeppelin
Without a record deal when they went about recording their first album, Page and the band’s legendary manager Peter Grant paid all the studio costs for their debut in just the first of many examples of how Led Zeppelin would change the business of the music industry forever. By paying for the album themselves, they would be literally selling the band and their album to a record company, which they ultimately did with legendary Atlantic Records’ co-founder Ahmet Ertegun.
“[Peter Grant] would always say, ‘You take care of the music and I’ll take care of the business.’ It was a simple division. He certainly revolutionized the touring business. It was a 60/40 split before Zeppelin came along. Peter straight out told promoters that if they wanted Zeppelin it was 90/10. He knew that the artist was getting ripped off by just about everybody and he wanted to change it.”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
From that point forward, Zeppelin would retain control of their own destiny; free of record company interference in their artistic process as Grant would handle everything outside the music. And in so doing, he would single-handedly change many of the archaic systems of an industry that benefited everyone but the artist. In Grant’s mind, he worked for the band, not the other way around, which had often been the conventional thinking.
Jones had nothing but the highest praise for their late manager, noting that the physically intimidating ex-wrestler was perfect for the band. “In terms of Zeppelin, what Peter Grant did for us was he kept everyone away. He would always say, ‘You take care of the music and I’ll take care of the business.’ It was a simple division.
“He didn’t say anything about the music, other than ‘that’s great,’” Jones said, jokingly, “but he would keep everyone away from us so we could get on with creating and making the music. We didn’t even have a management contract with Peter Grant for many years. It was all on trust, and you can’t buy that kind of thing.”
Although Jones snickered as he recalled that eventually the band did have to draw up an agreement with their manager at the behest of their record label who eventually discovered that fact. “Of course when Atlantic Records found out that we didn’t have a contract with Peter a few years after we signed with them, they made us put one together.”
Grant died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 60.
When I mention that no matter how great Zeppelin was, it seems that they would have never achieved their landmark success without the involvement of Grant. Jones enthusiastically agreed: “Oh yes, absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. He was a brilliant manager.
“He certainly revolutionized the touring business. It was a 60/40 split before Zeppelin came along.” With a smile at the memory, Jones continued, “Peter straight out told promoters that if they wanted Zeppelin it was 90/10, and that’s kind of how it’s been ever since.” Promoters soon realized that with the amount of business that Zeppelin pulled in, 10 percent was better than nothing at all and they all fell into line.
“Peter really did single-handedly change all of that,” Jones explained. “He really and truly believed that the artist should get their due. He knew that the artist was getting ripped off by just about everybody and he wanted to change it.”
As for his reputation as a brawler and intimidating businessman, Jones noted: “Peter Grant was a very fair man and if you played ball and were fair with him, he’d be fair with you. There must have been a lot of concert promoters who hated his guts, but there were a lot of promoters that we worked with who really respected him and knew that his word was very honorable.
“Ahmet [Ertegun, the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records] said to Peter: ‘You have got to have a single. If you put out a single, you’ll easily sell 800,000 singles.’ And Peter just stood his ground and said, ‘No, there are to be no singles.’ And sure enough we would sell 800,000 albums instead [laughs].”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
“Aside from what he did in terms of the concert business, Peter also got Zeppelin really good royalty rates. We obviously did very well touring, but we also deal very well on the record side. We really sold a lot of records, we really did!
“In the days of Zeppelin, even our record label was saying that ‘You have to put out a single in order to sell albums,’ Jones said with an eyeroll. “That’s a great Peter Grant story, where Ahmet [Ertegun, the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records] said to Peter: ‘You have got to have a single. If you put out a single, you’ll easily sell 800,000 singles.’ And Peter just stood his ground and said, ‘No, there are to be no singles.’ And sure enough we would sell 800,000 albums instead [laughs].
“The only thing we didn’t really do in those days was merchandising. Those were the days before people really understood merchandising. There just weren’t the setups like there are today. But between touring and record sales, we did really well because Peter made really good deals.”
Swan Song
With their fame reaching the stratosphere in 1974, Grant and Zeppelin created their own record company Swan Song. Within a year of forming the company, Swan Song had four albums in the Billboard Charts at the same time—Bad Company’s classic self-titled debut, Zeppelin’s double-album juggernaut Physical Graffiti, Pretty Things’ Silk Torpedo and Maggie Bell’s Suicide Sal.
“Peter Grant was sort of driving Swan Song,” Jones said. “There was Bad Company and Maggie Bell and the Pretty Things and Detective for a while. The four of us were somewhat involved but it got kind of loose in those days, to be honest. In retrospect, I don’t think that we should have been trying to run a record company as well as our own career in Zeppelin.”
The company closed its door in 1983. “It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time,” he admitted. “It worked well for a while, but then everybody had other stuff to attend to after a while. So it probably wasn’t the most successful venture overall.”
Behind the Songs
As for the internal band business of songwriting, Jones says now that he wished that he had done things differently with Zeppelin in retrospect. “My advice for musicians in bands is to make sure that the way you determine writings credits is worked out fairly early on and perhaps even put it down on paper.
“Led Zeppelin was a partnership between four people and sometimes when you see these ‘Page/Plant’ songwriting credits on everything, it looks like it was a Lennon/McCartney type situation where they wrote everything and we just kind of learned it from them. I was stunned that people really thought that because it’s so far from the truth.”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
“I probably should have paid more attention to the writing credits in the earlier days, but in those days I would say, ‘Well, I wrote that, but, hell, I guess it’s just part of the arrangement or whatever,’ not realizing that it had more to do with the writing than just arranging it.”
While Jones was credited on writing 31 of the 73 songs that were released during Zeppelin’s existence, I asked if all four members should have been credited on everything like other bands have done. “That’s probably true, but it wasn’t that way. I also thought that John Bonham’s contribution was much more than the dozen or so he ever got credit for. I know it was much more than a handful of songs.”
Asked to explain how Zeppelin created their music, Jones said matter-of-factly: “Here’s the thing, Led Zeppelin was a partnership between four people and sometimes when you see these ‘Page/Plant’ songwriting credits on everything, it looks like it was a Lennon/McCartney type situation where they wrote everything and we just kind of learned it from them.
“In fact, a journalist once asked me that question, he said, ‘So did [Page and Plant] just write the songs and then teach them to you and Bonham?’ And my mouth just flopped open. I was stunned that people really thought that and I couldn’t even think of an answer because it’s so far from the truth [laughs].
“To start with Robert used to usually write the lyrics last after we had completed the track, but he was credited on every song because there are lyrics on every one, but sometimes we would send him back to rewrite them,” he said with a laugh. “But whatever, I’ve done fine out of the whole thing. It’s bought me endless studios and the freedom to do what I want musically, so I shouldn’t complain.”
It was on the band’s final album, In Through the Out Door, that Jones was credited on all the tracks, with the exception of the pseudo country-rocker “Hot Dog.” The reason for this is simple: Jimmy Page just wasn’t around much, reportedly fighting his heroin demons. “I was always involved in the songwriting, but I just got more credits on that album because Page was less involved. At the rehearsals, Robert and I more or less wrote the whole album together.”
At the time, Jones had purchased the incredibly huge Yamaha GX-1, a 600-pound behemoth of a complex polyphonic synthesizer organ that he dubbed “the Dream Machine,” which he would also play at the band’s two Knebworth gigs around the time of the album’s release.
Probably one of the chart-topping album’s most memorable songs is “All My Love,” written by Jones and Plant. Jones’ inspired melody and playing gave a heavenly lift to Plant’s touching lyrical ode to his son, Karac, who had tragically died of a stomach virus at the age of five, one year before their final recording sessions.
The Zeppelin Rift
With the death of John Bonham in September of 1980, Led Zeppelin would fly no more in a recording studio. In the wake of the Zeppelin break-up, Plant embarked on his still ongoing solo career, Page joined up with Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers in The Firm for two albums, and Jones took the early ‘80s off to spend time with his wife and three daughters. The three surviving members did get together for a couple of one-off performances, but nothing seemed to carry on beyond that.
“We did try various things,” Jones admitted to me during our meeting in 2000, “but we always knew that there was no Zeppelin. No John Bonham, no Zeppelin; simple as that. But there was the feeling that the three of us had worked together for 12 years, so there seemed no reason not to have another go at some point.
“What would happen over the years is that we would end up together for a reunion of sorts; like Live-Aid [in 1985] or the Atlantic 40th Anniversary Concert [in 1988]. And we would immediately say, ‘This feels good, let’s try something.’ At one point, we did try something with [drummer] Tony Thompson, who played with us at Live-Aid, but for one reason or another the enthusiasm would wane and it never came off. Robert was always much more concerned and focused with his solo stuff and never really wanted to get involved with us.”
Things came to a head between the three Zeps when Page and Plant decided to get together again but without Jones. Many fans, including myself, thought this was very cavalier treatment towards their former partner in crime, but, behind the scenes, it was even worse.
“I think [Robert] got involved with Page, without me, perhaps thinking that it wouldn’t be Zeppelin, but then they started doing all Zeppelin songs [laughs]. I remember the press contacting me and asking me what I thought of No Quarter, presumably meaning their album, and I said, ‘I always reckoned it was one of my best tunes.’”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
Neither Page nor Plant had even bothered to call Jones to let him know that it was happening, leaving him to field incessant calls from the media about why he was not involved with the project. In fact, Jones found out by accident when rumors of a Zeppelin reunion were heating up again in 1993.
“Every year since Zeppelin broke up there would be talk of a reunion and all of that,” Jones said. “So at some point in early ’94, I was talking with one of the band’s business associates and I said, ‘I see the rumors are getting bad again,’ like a joke. And he said, ‘Oh, haven’t they told you?’
“I went, ‘Whaddya mean? Told me what?’ And he said, ‘Well, they’re working together, but, of course, they’re not doing Zeppelin material.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, whatever.’ It wasn’t so much that I thought they should include me with what they were doing. I just thought I should have been informed.”
At the time, Jones had just finished producing an album called The Sporting Life with the avant-garde American soprano/composer Diamanda Galás, and they ended up taking the show on the road.
It was during that European tour that Jones saw what his former partners were doing. Their claim of not doing Zeppelin material was not so true after all. “While I was on the road touring with Diamanda in Germany I saw [their No Quarter concert] on TV and it was 95 percent Zeppelin songs they were playing [laughs]. I was thinking, ‘Hmm, this organ part sounds familiar and then my bass parts came in and then my string parts came in.’ So I just thought, ‘Okay, so that’s how it’s gonna be then.’”
“I think [Robert] got involved with Page, without me, perhaps thinking that it wouldn’t be Zeppelin, but then they started doing all Zeppelin songs [laughs]. I remember the press contacting me and asking me what I thought of No Quarter, presumably meaning their album, and I said, ‘I always reckoned it was one of my best tunes.’ So I would get out of those things gracefully with a little wit.
“It was very, very strange for them to call their album No Quarter. I don’t know, I just never understood it. I remember that Robert said at one point: ‘It would have been different if [Jones] was involved,’ which is damn right and probably why they didn’t want me along,” he added with a laugh.
This behind-the-scenes drama became public at Led Zeppelin’s 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when Jones made a brief yet pointed statement from the stage, which left his former colleagues uncomfortable and the audience in hysterics.
“I just could never understand why they couldn’t just pick up the phone, which is why I said what I said at the Hall of Fame thing,” Jones explained. “That was just a bad day because there was just this strange vibe going on. Nobody would talk to each other. It was just a horrible day when it really should have been a good day. That whole situation really ruined it.”
“I just felt like I had to say something and I felt a whole lot better when I did, and the noise of the laughter coming from the press table was a joy to hear I have to say,” Jones told me.
Page and Plant’s next album, the bland and disappointing Walking into Clarksdale in 1998 put an end to that collaboration, and as Jones noted: “In the final analysis, they did me a favor because I got to focus on doing my first solo album and I’m excited about it and doing this tour.”
By 2000, during our conversation, it seemed that things may have settled down a little bit but the wedge still seemed to be present. “We see each other for business purposes; meetings and stuff like that. It’s a formal relationship these days, let’s say,” Jones explained. “We get together when projects like the remastering of the albums comes up or releasing something like the BBC Sessions, and all of us have to agree unanimously or it doesn’t happen. That’s how it was always set up.”
Initial Post-Zep Career
While Jones’ post-Zeppelin career has really been on roll over the past 25 years, after taking a career sabbatical for the first half of the ‘80s, he admitted to finding things a tough-go once he started to look at working again. His legendary Zeppelin career actually made people forget what he did before that lead balloon first took flight.
“For a while I did try and get some film work but I was running into people thinking: ‘He’s a rock bass player, what does he know about scoring or arranging?’ People had forgotten or never knew that I had done all this stuff before. They would only know me from Zeppelin.”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
Jones first ran into issues when he looked into doing some film scoring. “I had been working for 18 solid straight years by the time Zeppelin finished, so it was a good time to take a break and be with the family because the kids were growing up and I got to spend some time there. I never really worried that I wouldn’t get work when I decided to go back, but it was kind of hard right after Zeppelin.
“For a while I did try and get some film work but I was running into people thinking: ‘He’s a rock bass player, what does he know about scoring or arranging?’ People had forgotten or never knew that I had done all this stuff before. They would only know me from Zeppelin, so no one would give me any work.
“I did dabble in it, but the first film [1984’s Scream for Help] wasn’t very good,” he admitted. “In fact, it went straight to video [laughs]. It’s one of those things where if I want to make a career of it then I would need to move to Hollywood and pretty much accept every project that comes along, which is what I had to do back in the session days. But there are a couple songs from the Scream For Help soundtrack I did which are quite good and appropriate to play on this tour I’m doing.”
“It wasn’t just me though,” he pointed out, before recalling a conversation he had with the Beatles’ producer and composer Sir George Martin. “That’s how the business can be. I remember George Martin telling me once that he scored a film called Honky Tonk Freeway [a 1981 British comedy flop] with an elephant water skiing in it. And they actually told him that they didn’t think he would be able to score a scene with an American marching band in it because he wasn’t American and wouldn’t know how. I mean, this is George Martin, right? [laughs].
“A lot of these film people are really worse than music industry people, and that’s saying something, with all due respect. You know the kind of people I’m talking about, don’t you, Steve?,” he asked rhetorically.
“Everything is decided by committee as well, so it can be quite interesting at times. Of course there are the people who say, ‘I know what I want and I know you can do it, let’s get it on.’ But there are very few of those people in the movie business.
“You accept every gig that comes along and then you can start to pick and choose, and I didn’t want to do that with film scoring, starting an all-new career like that. I didn’t do that with production either by the way. I turned down so much stuff by some really well-known people, for no other reason than I just didn’t think it was me or because I didn’t feel like I could really bring anything else to the project except my name.
“Film scores are pretty much like that for me. I really didn’t want to work that hard to get into the system and then have to take on projects whether you liked them or not and then be driven crazy with deadlines, and having to send copies of the scores in taxis in the middle of the night and trying to get orchestras together. I’ve done all of that. It would have been like the old days.”
JPJ Producer
Eventually Jones turned his attention to producing and worked himself back into studio life. “It was kind of tough going there in the early ‘80s, but then I got work producing The Mission [the goth-rock act known as The Mission UK in the States] on their second album in ’87, but even then I ran into these weird things. I remember wanting to do this John Hiatt album and the label guy said, ‘Well, we really can’t see your relevance to John Hiatt.’ Relevance? It’s music! What are these people talking about? [laughs]. I understand his music perfectly, what’s up?’
“Production is much more time consuming,” Jones noted, “especially the way I produce. I tend to make sure that the band really knows what they’re going to be recording, so I spend a lot of time in pre-production before we ever go in the studio because it’s the band’s money you’re spending.
“People think the record company is paying for it, but the band is and I tell them that: ‘Look, you’re paying for this. You really want to use your studio time wisely.’ So I’ll work three months or more when I do a production and I work very hard for them, as any band I’ve worked with will tell you. Production is just much more time consuming so I’m less interested in doing that these days.
Jones continued on as a producer through the ‘90s, taking on a very diverse roster of acts, including the unlikely choice of the controversial American hardcore outfit the Butthole Surfers; helming their sixth album 1993’s Independent Worm Saloon which became the band’s first effort to make the Billboard Charts.
First Solo Album
By 1999, Jones had finally decided to take the plunge and record his very first solo album Zooma, an instrumental rock album that he released on Discipline Global Mobile, the artist-centric indie label founded by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp.
“I share management with Fripp and I asked my manager: ‘What does Robert do with his label?’ Because I was interested in finding someone who is kind of a maverick where the industry is concerned. So the first thing he told me was: ‘There are no contracts, it’s all on trust. If you don’t like them you can leave whenever you want.’
“That really reminded me of the early days of Led Zeppelin, so not having a contract with Robert’s record label wasn’t so strange to me. And they also have this ethical policy whereby the artist keeps all their copyrights and masters, and they pay a very good royalty rate and they have very good distribution with Rykodisc in America and Pinnacle in the U.K. They also have a good internet presence and a great mail-order service and a really good setup.
“They had built up all these alternative forms of promotion and distribution, because a lot of their stuff isn’t wildly commercial. Plus they loved the album, so I met with Fripp and he struck me as a fairly decent chap, he’s a great guitarist, and now he’s my new label boss [laughs].”
As for as commercial expectations of Zooma, Jones had no illusions that an instrumental rock album will find a mainstream audience in today’s marketplace, but that was never the intention. “This album isn’t going to be a huge chart album, so I want to do a lot of press and promotion and touring so that everybody at least gets to know about it and has a crack at hearing it because they might like it. I just want to give this album its best possible chance.
“People will say that instrumental rock in this day and age won’t sell, but I always point to Tracy Chapman and say, ‘Could anybody have said that a black female folk singer was going to take the charts by storm?’ People would have said you were off your head.”
“In the old days when I first started in the early ‘60s, there was a ton of instrumental rock with Duane Eddy and the Ventures and the Shadows. There were all sorts of people doing instrumental rock and then the Beatles came along and killed it stone-dead.”
(Interview By Steven P. Wheeler)
Jones went on to say that he was focused on creating an actual instrumental album because he knew what would happen otherwise. “I knew that if I brought in a singer that I would stop being an instrumentalist and a composer and I would quickly become a producer and an arranger. I knew that’s what I would do by instinct. I would begin to immediately work on songs with lyrics and spend all my time trying to make the singer sound good and make sure he sang them all perfectly, and my compositions would have just fallen by the wayside.
“I just didn’t want to do that, and, to be honest, I’m just not that interested in song-based rock at the moment. And no one else is doing instrumental rock right now so I kind of have the field to myself,” he said, with a laugh. “That’s one way to cut down on the competition, right? Do something that nobody else is doing.
“But creating instrumental music is a challenge because there are no lyrics and no singing to hang anything on,” Jones continued. “It’s like a classical composition or jazz, which are by definition instrumental music. It’s just that these days rock music isn’t.”
The irony is that when he was a teenager, instrumental music was en vogue, unlike today. “In the old days when I first started in the early ‘60s, there was a ton of instrumental rock with Duane Eddy and the Ventures and the Shadows. There were all sorts of people doing instrumental rock and then the Beatles came along and killed it stone-dead [laughs].
“When I was with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan we had three Top Ten hits in about four or five months. They were all instrumentals and then suddenly the Beatles came along and I don’t think there was another instrumental rock record after that.”
First Solo Tour
Going out on tour behind the album was also central to Jones’ approach to the album after getting back onstage with Diamanda Galás in ’94: “I really got the playing bug again with Diamanda,” he said. “After the Zeppelin days, I did a lot of producing, arranging and composing, but playing live wasn’t one of them. And I realized just how much I really missed it when we went on the road, and I got the bug again.
“With my album, I’m going on the road and will be playing for people that I can actually see which will be nice,” Jones said about the smaller club date tour. “When you can see faces you can get a really different kind of feedback from your audience and I’m really looking forward to that. That’s how Zeppelin started, playing in small clubs and taking your music to the people. This album serves two functions in a way: I get to do my solo album but I also get to have a body of work that allows me to go out and play live onstage.”
“There are surprisingly very little overdubs on the album. A lot of it was done with pedals and live electronics, so when it sounds like a ton of guitars, they aren’t really. It’s me hitting a pedal with some processing. This album was designed to be played live, and with the live show, it will be drummer Terl Bryant from Aztec Camera, Bauhaus, and loads of sessions, and Nick Beggs playing a Chapman Stick.
“I’ll play the multi-string basses and the lap steel guitar, so when I’m playing the lap steel, the Chapman Stick will handle the bass, and when I’m playing the bass, Nick will play the guitar side of the Chapman. There will be a lot of swapping around during this tour. I’ll also play some keyboards onstage that will also handle the string parts.”
Jones also noted at the time that he was already mentally piecing together his second solo effort. “Brain-wise I’m already halfway through the next album. I’ve got all sorts of ideas I want to do.” Sure enough, Jones’ second solo album, The Thunderthief, would ultimately be released in 2001 and this time featured three tracks with JPJ doing vocals, including his humorous post-punk rocker “Angry Angry.”
Zeppelin Flies Again
By 2007, the rift between Jones and Page/Plant had healed enough for one final Led Zeppelin reunion. This time it was to celebrate the memory of the late music business legend Ahmet Ertegun; the man who signed Zeppelin all those years ago and who had passed away in December of 2006 .
And all three surviving members were determined to do it right by bringing in Jason Bonham to fill his father’s drum stool for a full-length concert. It was to be a true Zeppelin family affair. Unlike the ramshackle Live-Aid and less-than-memorable Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary mini-sets, this was to be a full-blown Zeppelin extravaganza; the first in 27 long years and the band spent six weeks of rehearsal in preparation.
The ticket demand for the charity event at the 02 Arena in London literally brought down the internet as more than 20 million fans from around the world registered at the same time in hopes of securing one of the 20,000 available tickets. Those lucky 20,000 were treated to an awe-inspiring 18-song set that showed the magic of the Mighty Zeppelin one more time as they effectively put a final exclamation point on the band’s enduring legacy.
The memorable concert was finally released on Blu-ray and DVD in 2012. At the time of that delayed release, Jones summed it up by joking: “Five years is like five minutes in Zeppelin time. I’m actually surprised we got it out so quickly.”
One Final Honor
Five years after the now legendary 02 reunion, Led Zeppelin received massive public acclaim once more in 2012 when they were honored by the prestigious Kennedy Center for their artistic contribution to American culture; which would have been unheard of during their wild-eyed heyday. But times change and 50 years after they first blasted out of stereo speakers and radios, Led Zeppelin will forever be mentioned as one of the, if not THE greatest rock band in the history of music.
And last but not least, I’m gonna wrap things up with this sublime and beautiful Jones-focused Led Zeppelin outtake from 1976’s Presence, which was the only Zep album not to feature any of JPJ’s keyboards. This gorgeous instrumental demonstrates that Jones did indeed play some piano and compose during those sessions after all. Enjoy the majestic ivory tickling talents of Mr. John Paul Jones.