Hats off to John Paul Jones!

John Paul Jones was the ‘quiet’ Zeppeliner, much like George Harrison, who was the ‘quiet’ Beatle. He didn’t have the output of the Plant/Page songwriting duo, but what he did for Zeppelin is often undermined.  What makes John Paul Jones great is the sum of his work, before, during, and after the Led Zeppelin years. There’s rarely such a productive, diverse, and sought-after musician/producer like this guy. So let's start his story from the beginning.

The first band John Baldwin (his birth name) joined were The Deltas in 196. He was 15 then, and their career didn’t last very long. After that, he played with the jazz collective called ‘Jett Blacks’ and with the R&B band ‘Herbie Goins & the Nightimers’ alongside young John McLaughlin. His first breakthrough on the British music scene came when he joined The Shadows in 1962. Ultimately, they decided not to hire him permanently, so he left the band in October 1963 to start work as an arranger/producer/session musician for Decca records. His output was so vast that he claims not to remember two-thirds of the sessions he has been involved in. During this four years period before Led Zeppelin were formed, John Paul Jones (he adopted this name somewhere in 1964) appeared on hundreds of records, most notably on the Rolling Stones’ ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ (string arrangement on "She's a Rainbow") and Donovan’s "Sunshine Superman," "Hurdy Gurdy Man," and "Mellow Yellow". He also collaborated with Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Cat Stevens, Tom Jones, Nico, Dusty Springfield, etc.

In 1964, Jones entered the studio with Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to cut his first single, "Baja," With "A Foggy Day in Vietnam", as a B-side, the single was released under his name on Pye Records in April 1964.

Another future Led Zeppelin member, Jimmy Page, was also a fruitful session guitarist at that time in London. They often met in the studios around town and collaborated on several projects. The most relevant for the future formation of the legendary quartet was the one for The Yardbirds’ 1967 album ‘Little Games’. During the recording sessions, Jones told Page that he’d be glad to work with him on any project that the guitarist would have in the future. When The Yardbirds disbanded and Jimmy Page was left alone to complete form a new band and complete the contracts for some Scandinavian concerts, Jones came up to him and asked about the empty bass player position. Page happily accepted his offer, stating later that Jones “had a proper music training, and he had quite brilliant ideas. I jumped at the chance of getting him.”

When Robert Plant and John Bonham joined Page and Jones, the band was first known as The New Yardbirds, but soon they switched to the name Led Zeppelin, and shortly after that they rose to be the biggest band on Earth (at least in the seventies.) As it was noted in the beginning, Jones’ contributions to the band’s music were huge, although often underrated by the press. Some even call him the “secret weapon” of Zeppelin, because of his superb knowledge of harmonies, his masterful arrangements and couple of brilliant songs he added to their repertoire. Among other contributions, are the legendary bass line for ‘Dazed and Confused’, the song ‘No Quarter’, the recorder on ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and one of the most powerful and badass riffs of all times on ‘Black Dog’.

In 1973, he considered leaving Led Zeppelin but opted to stay in the band and stuck it out for another seven years until the death of John Bonham. He continued where he stopped before joining Zeppelin - with session work, contributing his abilities and creative ideas to an incredible variety of projects. In the early 80’s, he started working with with Paul McCartney on the soundtrack to the former Beatle’s film ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’. While the movie failed to gain recognition, the album did quite well, taking the number one spot on the British charts. Lead single "No More Lonely Nights" earned both a Golden Globe and a BAFTA nomination.

In 1988, he collaborated with Brian Eno on his album ‘Music for Films III’, working with him on the track "4-Minute Warning," which is one of the most celebrated compositions from the, otherwise not so good, Eno album. Jones Worked on the orchestral arrangements for R.E.M.'s ‘Automatic for the People’ in 1992 and produced the Butthole Surfers' 1993 album ‘Independent Worm Saloon.’

One of the most unusual records he worked on is probably the 1994 Diamanda Gallas album, titled ‘The Sporting Life’. In the same time when Page and Plant were making a big comeback with ‘No Quarter’ (the album that ironically borrowed the name from Jones’ song, even though they excluded him from the project), John Paul Jones decided to dig deep into the avant-garde. "We met once in London for an evening and talked about music and our backgrounds and what we liked," he said. "Diamanda went back on tour and then to New York, and I went back home and started thinking about this. And I put down some riffs with a drum machine and sent them to Diamanda, who by that time was working at a studio, SIR, with a Hammond organ. ... We got together for the recording period, just the two of us for two weeks and put it all down."

After spending some time waiting to see if Page or Plant will call and ask him whether he would join them out on the road, Jones decided to move on and try his hand as a solo artist. When it came time to find a label, he reached out to King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, who had just started his own company: Discipline Global Mobile or DGM. Jones put out two albums under the Discipline umbrella, ‘Zooma’ in 1999 and ‘The Thunderchief’ in 2002. The former actually featured Jones' boss Fripp playing guitar on the song "Leafy Meadows."

John Paul Jones played on two tracks on the Foo Fighters' 2005 album, ‘In Your Honor’. He played mandolin on the song "Another Round" and piano on "Miracle," making Dave Grohl extremely happy, himself being a huge Zeppelin fan and admirer. Their collaboration still continues to this day, along with ‘Queens of the Stone Age’ frontman Josh Homme in the supergroup ‘Them Crooked Vultures’.

The diversity of Jones’ work continues to this day. He’s working on an opera that he writes while collaborating with bands such as ‘Sonic Youth.' Some say that Jones was the wildest party “animal” during the Zeppelin years. There were numerous obscure stories connected to his name, most of them being the result of Zep’s rare public statements and press conferences. Jones is still active in many fields, and there is a lot more we can expect from this brilliant musician. Hats off to John Paul Jones!