"Rock & Roll," "Black Dog," "Going to California," "Kashmir," "Whole Lotta Love," "Thank You," and of course "Stairway to Heaven": The list of songs rivals that of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Little wonder that Zeppelin remains one of the most popular bands on the planet, with new legions of rock fans discovering the group every year.
Both old and new fans alike will find the riffs of Jones' first solo album, "ZOOMA", familiar. Ironically, Jones, the man least credited with Zeppelin's thunderous sound, has made the most Zeppelin-esque solo album of all the remaining members of the group.
"ZOOMA" is not just Jones' attempt to live in the past, though. Rather, it is Jones' successful attempt to take control of his music. The album is very much a solo project, with Jones handling much of the instrumentation, the art work, production, composing and probably the cleaning of the studio after the recording was done for the night.
I had the opportunity to meet up with a true rock-&-roll legend prior to the release of "ZOOMA" and find out why, after 19 years, he's finally decided to release a proper solo record.
CDNOW: What made you decide that this was the appropriate time to release your first official solo record?
John Paul Jones: I was getting disillusioned with producing. I worked very hard as a producer, and I was conscientious. You can ask anyone I worked with, and they'll say, "Oh God he made me do this everyday." People hire you, and you turn up and do a proper job for them. You make what you think is a really good record and put all your energy in to it and come release date, the guy who signed the band gets fired. That's kind of the end of the record. No one else really needs to work on it because they've got their own band. That's the way the music industry works.
Also, during my collaboration with Diamanda Galas I realized that the one thing I had been missing over the years was playing live. I really missed that 'cause you can go so many places more playing live than in a studio. And I had a really good time on the road with Diamanda.
CDNOW: Do you think having so much time off the road has helped you appreciate it and made you sort of miss it?
John Paul Jones: I can't say that I miss the road that much. If I could be teleported, I might go for that. And of course, I don't get the starship jet this time, which is a big minus actually. Doing a rock-&-roll tour by jet cannot be beat, folks. It really can't. It's the stage that I'm looking forward to.
CDNOW: So you moved back to London. Where were you living?
John Paul Jones:Way out in the country.
CDNOW:Are you more of a country or city guy?
John Paul Jones: Both. I was brought up in London. We moved out when the kids were growing up. It was really nice for them. They grew up in the countryside, which was really nice, but now they've all left home. I just really wanted to get back to doing city things like dances, restaurants, concerts, that kind of stuff.
CDNOW: Do you like to go out and see bands?
John Paul Jones: No. I never was a rock-&-roll consumer. I go to concerts but not bands -- jazz, new music. I go to dance, I go to theatre. The last concert I went to was Del McCoury and Steve Earle.
CDNOW: Interesting, because this is still very much a rock-&-roll record.
John Paul Jones: I like to play rock & roll. I like everything really, but the most fun I have is actually playing rock & roll, making a very loud noise with a very big guitar. There's nothing like it. It can't be beat, and if I want to play rock & roll, that's how I'm going to do it -- loud. I like it loud and tense.
CDNOW: Was it always important to you to retain such control of the project?
John Paul Jones: Yes, once I decided to do the album, I knew how I would do it. What I didn't actually know was how it was going to sound. That came about more as I'd written a couple of riffs. I wrote "Zooma" while I was producing a band [Elephant Ride] on Zuma Beach [in Malibu, Calif.]. It was just part of the reason for the album name.
It was only when I got it home that I wondered how this would fit in with other avant-garde ideas I wanted to do. I remember a riff I had written around the time of the Diamanda Galas album, which turned out to be "B Fingers." The two of them ("B Fingers" and "Zooma") together began to suggest a direction. Then I wrote another riff, and I began to balance the riffs with other stuff, which is how the whole thing became an entire album.
CDNOW: It has a very strong ending. It has a lot of fierceness to it.
John Paul Jones: It's tempting sometimes to put all the biggies up front. I didn't like the way that it felt on the album; it felt too intense. I needed to spread it out because there is quite a lot of intensity on the record. I think you can dilute the effect.
It's like any composition. You really have to balance your dynamics, your tensions, and your releases. Otherwise it's really hard to listen to. There's no point in making an album that's just plain hard to listen to. No point, you may as well stay home and play with yourself. Excuse the expression. If I was going to do a record, then it must be listenable and enjoyable without compromise. You compose it to be listened to. Otherwise, why bother?
CDNOW: I would imagine that it would've been very easy for you to assemble an all-star lineup for this album.
John Paul Jones: I want people to like it; I want people to buy it, but more because it justifies me doing it this way. I'm not super rich, but I don't have to do this thing for commercial reasons. There would be no point in my trying to compete with Aerosmith. Musically, it doesn't interest me to do things that way. I have to do things to first please me.
I prefer my music generally on the more challenging side. I either like it challenging or really very simple. The simplest music in the world -- if it's done really well, I love it. That's what I like about bluegrass. The standard of musicianship is so high and also with jazz, classical music, and flamenco.
CDNOW: What keeps rock & roll fresh for you?
John Paul Jones: Well, I still like to play rock & roll. I like to see where it will go and do new things and try and push it forward, otherwise it would not be interesting.
In order to make any sense of it at all, I've got to just see where it will go. I've had ideas of where I've wanted to go for a long time. When you're with a band, really good things come out, but it's always a compromise. Quite often the compromise is good. On the other hand, there are things you would like to do without anyone else's input. You just really want to try on your own to see how far you can push it. And there's room for both. I've done one; now, I want to do the other.
CDNOW: Since the early '80s you've been involved in film scores, production work, multi-media stuff. Have all of those different mediums added to your music today?
John Paul Jones: It all comes from the same place. I've only got one brain, and it all comes from there. My senses just feed on this stuff and everything else I see. So I don't really see a distinction between all these different types of music and different types of media. It's just different ways of looking at things. If I go to the theatre and see good staging or good lighting, it will suggest atmosphere or mood to me. And out of those moods can come music or sounds.
CDNOW: It seems as if you really have gravitated towards collaborations in the last two decades.
John Paul Jones: That's because I am a solo artist. When you're in a band, people don't ask you to do anything because you're with a band. When you're not with a band, you get to hang around with people who are interested in doing this stuff. You get to hang around with composers in London, and they've all got strange ideas.
There's tons of stuff that I want to do that I will never get around to in my life.
CDNOW: What are some of the things that you still want to do?
John Paul Jones: Oh, God. There are a million instruments that I know I won't get around to playing. I have a theory that's why composers are the way they are. They've realized that they can't learn every instrument there is. The compromise is to write for it and have other people play for them. My main ambition is to bring all the elements that I love in all of the music I love and try to form it into something very personal. If you are an instrumentalist, you've got a voice. You like to project that. If you've got a guitar, that sound is your voice. If you are a composer, it's much harder, unless you are a particularly stylistic composer like Mr. Phillip Glass.
CDNOW: This album very much has a Zeppelin-esque feel to it. Is this album your way of reclaiming your musical legacy?
John Paul Jones: Maybe in a way but in another way, I don't feel I have to reclaim anything. I've always known where it was. But people have suggested that my contributions were less evident than what actually happened. So people have said that this is actually showing people a bit more than what anybody thinks you are doing, and I suppose that's probably true.
There's a lot of Bonzo [John Bonham] in this album, as well. I think, "How would we have done things?" because the rhythm section was very exciting.