John Paul Jones (musician)

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John Paul Jones (2010)

John Paul Jones (born January 3, 1946 in Sidcup , Kent ; actually John Richard Baldwin ) is known as the bassist of the British hard rock group Led Zeppelin . In addition to the bass, Jones also played keyboards and mandolin there . Today he works as an arranger and music producer .

Career and work

His parents were also musicians, his father a pianist and arranger, and his mother a singer and dancer. John learned the piano at a young age and soon after learned the organ , which he also played in church .

He began playing bass at the age of 14, although his father recommended that he learn to play the saxophone on the grounds that he “would never starve” .

In the following years he played in school bands and also in a duet with his father. He left school at 17 and applied to play bass with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan , two former The Shadows who were about to start a band. John Baldwin became the bass player and toured with the band for about a year, who, ahead of their time, played music like Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago .

His first solo record, the Pye Records single "Baja / A Foggy Day in Vietnam," released in April 1964, was released by Baldwin on the advice of producer and Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham under the name of John Paul Jones , a Scottish captain who gave himself the surname Jones as camouflage in North America, fought the British in European waters to become a founding father of the US Navy, and was the title hero of a Hollywood film in 1959.

His career as a studio musician lasted from 1964 to 1968 , during which he played with numerous rock and pop greats of the time. He can be heard on the following recordings, among others:

During a session with Donovan , he learned that Jimmy Page , who had also worked very successfully as a studio musician, wanted to start a new band. His wife Mo persuaded him to ask Jimmy about the position of bass player. Since Jimmy Page's preferred candidates weren't available, Jones got the job. The band was initially called New Yardbirds and was renamed Led Zeppelin during their first tour in 1968 . The success of this groundbreaking and style-defining hard rock formation is legendary. In this classic period, Jones mostly played the Fender Jazz Bass , as well as the Fender Rhodes electric piano . His funky style, obviously influenced by James Jamerson , can be heard particularly well in the Lemon Song (1969).

After Led Zeppelin ended in 1980, Jones worked as an innovative producer and arranger in various musical styles, including The Mission (1987), Ben E. King (1986), Cinderella (1990), the Butthole Surfers (1992), REM (1992), Peter Gabriel (1992), Raging Slab (1993) and the Foo Fighters (2005). He also worked on the soundtrack for Scream for Help and performed with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at the 1985 Live Aid concert.

Together with the Greek-American artist Diamanda Galás he released the album Sporting Life in 1994 . The songs contained on it have an economical and powerful instrumentation (mostly bass and drums), which gives the distinctive voice of Galás an enormous presence.

In 1998 Jones began work on his first solo album, Zooma . The response from rock experts to Zooma was extremely positive and the following world tour (1999–2000) was just as successful. In 2001 Jones released his second solo album The Thunderthief . Both productions, which were released by Robert Fripp on the Discipline Global Mobile record label , show a musical affinity for progressive rock à la King Crimson . The album Zooma consistently contains unconventional, bass-oriented instrumental pieces in which virtuosity and sound experimentality enter into an interesting symbiosis. The album The Thunderthief shows next to instrumental progressive rock such. B. Leafy Meadows (with a difficult guitar solo by Robert Fripp) also plays folk-ballad-like pieces, e.g. For example, the IceFishing at Night sung by Jones himself and accompanied on the piano .

In 2004 he helped the young New Zealand hard rock band The Datsuns with the recording of their second album Outta Sight / Outta Mind . His keyboard can be heard on some songs.

At the beginning of 2009 it became known that he founded the band Them Crooked Vultures together with Dave Grohl ( Foo Fighters , ex- Nirvana ) and Josh Homme ( Queens of the Stone Age , ex- Kyuss ) . The debut album of the same name was released in Germany on November 13, 2009.

John Paul Jones played bass and mandolin for Seasick Steve on various live shows .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ excerpt ; Mp3 file; 521 kB
  2. ↑ youtube.com: Seasick Steve & John Paul Jones

Web links

Commons : John Paul Jones  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Jones, John Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baldwin, John (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English rock musician and record producer
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Sidcup , Kent