"Rock Legend Who Beat the Devil"

It has been a long time since he rock 'n' rolled, but, as a founding member, bassist, multi-instrumentalist and string-arranger with Led Zeppelin, Jones has earned the right to be considered a genuine rock legend. The pioneering heavy-rock quartet that he formed with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Bonham was the most successful and arguably the most influential British group of the post-Beatles era.

They also gained a reputation as one of the most decadent. In Stephen Davis's classic rock biography, Hammer of the Gods, the Zeppelin story is retold as an orgiastic odyssey of self-indulgence, shrouded by guitarist Page's flirtation with Satanism, beset by regular tragedy and culminating in the death from alcohol poisoning of drummer Bonham in 1980.

After Led Zeppelin disbanded, Jones retired from live performance and (barring occasional production and string-arrangement credits, notably on REM's "Everybody Hurts") effectively slipped out of public sight. It has taken him almost two decades to get round to recording his first solo album, "Zooma" (released by the independent Discipline Global Mobile label next week).

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from my encounter with this rock veteran. But having come across his former colleagues Page and Plant several times, both of them unreconstructed rockers given to wearing their thinning hair long and tucking expanding waistlines into leather trousers, I certainly didn't expect someone so. . . well, normal.

A well-preserved, neatly attired, relaxed, good-humoured 53-year-old with a vein of self-deprecatory wit, Jones comes across more like an old Blue Peter presenter than a slavering rock star paying for years of abuse.

But then, according to one of the most absurd and persistent of the myths that surrounded Led Zeppelin, Jones is the only member of the group who did not sell his soul to the devil. If so, he is a living testament to the power of good over evil. Jones himself, however, has a more prosaic explanation for why he is characterised in Hammer of the Gods as the group's "only real survivor", getting out with his family, fortune and dignity still intact.

"I always had a sanity plan on the road," says Jones. "I was never one to wake up at four in the afternoon and have room service for the rest of the day. I used to get out, walk a lot and meet people. I had a great time, but a lot of it was apart from everything else that was going on. Well, I'd done it all before, you see. I'd gone through that rock star stuff at a very early age."

In 1963, just out of school but already a consummate musician with years of experience backing his parents' variety act, Jones joined a new band fronted by Jet Harris of the Shadows. With it came all the trappings of pop stardom. Well, screaming girls and £30 a week anyway. "I was 17 and I felt like king of the world," he laughs.

At 18, he released an instrumental single, Baja, for which the Rolling Stones's manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, suggested a name change from John Baldwin to the more exotic John Paul Jones. Although it failed to make him a star, Jones became Oldham's musical director, arranging records for a range of artists including Nico (later of the Velvet Underground) and Lionel Bart.

He subsequently fulfilled the same role for legendary pop entrepreneurs Robert Stigwood and Mickie Most. It has left him with a CV that reads like a roll-call of Sixties pop culture, from the Supremes to the Stones, Herman's Hermits to the Yardbirds, Tom Jones to Dusty Springfield.

"You could be doing Cliff Richard in the morning, Marc Bolan in the afternoon and Champion Jack Dupree in the evening," says Jones. "That's what it was like in the Sixties, hundreds of musicians going from studio to studio, all day long, all week long. A fantastic scene, very social." He recalls a session arranging horns for what turned out to be Donovan's first million-seller, Mellow Yellow.

"All his people were going, 'Oh no, it's not Donovan, man', and the session was descending into doom and gloom when the Lord sent Paul McCartney walking through the door, and he heard it and goes, "The brass is fantastic." The whole mood changed and I was a hero again."

By 1968, the 21-year-old was one of the top session players and arrangers in British pop. He was also in danger of burning out from overwork. So when his wife, Mo, heard that session guitarist Jimmy Page was putting a band together, she urged Jones to get involved. "She said I should get out on the road and get some sanity back in my life," he laughs.

According to Jones, everything clicked at the very first rehearsal. "As soon as we started playing, I went, 'Oh hello, this is something!' It immediately had this sense of not sounding like anything else." Over the next 12 years Led Zeppelin created a new archetype for the rock quartet. "I'm very proud of the music we did. It was the best band in the world, I thought."

Although he appeared with the reunited Zeppelin at Live Aid in 1985, the man who was regularly characterised as the band's outsider was not invited to perform at the Unledded concert for MTV in 1994 that did so much to revive the careers of Page and Plant. The latter have continued working together, playing live sets that largely draw on Zeppelin material.

"I was a bit hurt when I wasn't informed about what they were doing," admits Jones. "It was strange just to read it in the papers. But there was no bad blood. I have no interest in doing that stuff now. We did it really well then."

It is a sensible and even admirable attitude. Yet listening to his solo album, I am struck by a sense of missed opportunity. An album of bass-led rock instrumentals, Zooma is not the most accessible of recordings, but it certainly has a modern dynamism and sense of musical ambition missing from Page and Plant's recent offering, Walking Into Clarksdale.

Taken in isolation, it is all too easy to see what each of these talents once brought to the other. But Jones is adamant that a Zeppelin reunion is now out of the question. "The time has passed," he says. "There's no point in going back."

There is one thing about Led Zeppelin that Jones admits he will miss. "You cannot beat touring by private jet," he says. "I'm going to be back in a bus on my next tour. But hey. At least I'll be able to see the people I'm playing to this time."