Jimmy Page and Robert Plant soon resurfaced in solo projects and super groups, but bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones slipped inextricably under the radar. If you read album liner notes, you saw that he was busy, producing albums and arranging string sections for bands such as R.E.M. But if you searched for his name in the CD bins or the concert listings, it looked like he had quit music altogether.

Nineteen years after Bonham died and Zeppelin called it quits, Jones has resurfaced with his first bona fide solo album, Zooma, and first concert tour. He plays at the Ogden Theatre on Saturday.

"I could say that I'm a really slow worker, but that's not entirely true," he said on the phone recently. "Over the last 20 years, with all of the things that I've done, between producing, composing and arranging, the one thing that I haven't done was play live. And this album gives me a body of work that I can take out on the road and play live.

"I've been a professional for 38 years now. I think I've finally decided that it's time to concentrate on my own music, to put all of these skills in line and arrange and perform my own music. It's all coming together into one project."

Jones is well aware of his place in rock 'n' roll history. Half of one of rock's mightiest rhythm sections, he not only kept up with Bonham's thunderous drumming, but also helped arrange Zeppelin's orchestral sound on later albums. He doesn't distance himself from his historic run in one of rock's best bands, but he doesn't want to keep reliving it, either.

"I'm proud of the music that we did -- I obviously thought it was the best band in the world -- but it was 12 years of my life, and it was time to move on after I got over the shock after the death of John."

That said, he suffers questions about his old band mates carefully, but without griping.

On Page and Plant reuniting and playing old Zeppelin tunes without him: "I was disappointed not to be informed about what they were doing. I was kind of hurt at the time. We were really close as a band. I suppose I was surprised that they didn't just call me up and said, 'Hey we're going to be doing something together. You should hear it from us rather than reading about it in the papers' -- which is what happened."

On Page and Plant's remake of No Quarter: "It was different. Not really to my tastes, really."

On Page's collaboration with Puff Daddy on a hip-hop remake of Kashmir: "I'm not that precious about old music, to be honest. Once it's out there, it doesn't have much to do with me. I didn't cry. But I wasn't jumping for joy, either."

On his relationship with Page and Plant: "Relations are cordial, I suppose. There's no point in being unnecessarily immature, but I can't say we hang out."

On the chances that the three of them would get back together: "It's pretty remote. Uh, no. I don't think so. We have different ideas really on what should be done and how it should be done. I'm happy to be doing my own music for a change."

"My music is pretty personal. I don't sing myself, to any successful degree, anyway. And so it didn't make much sense for me to have a singer on it," he said. "If I got someone in to write and sing on the record, then I would end up producing it, and it would really be their record then."

He knew not to take "Zooma" to a major label, since they'd likely ask "'Where's the single?' -- aside from, 'Where's the singer?"' Jones said. Instead, he joined Robert Fripp's Discipline Global Mobile label, an independent imprint that doesn't even mandate that its artists sign contracts.

Live, he intends to play all of "Zooma", some old soundtrack tracks and a few songs by a certain band in his past.

"Why shouldn't I do a couple of Zeppelin tunes?" he asked. "I'm not going to do many, and they'll have different arrangements. But why shouldn't I do a few?"