John Paul Jones was, of course, the bass player for Led Zeppelin, a band that has been gone for over 30 years and yet the sound they created continues to influence the sound of even today. Two of the musicians who have been caught in the sway of Zeppelin are Dave Grohl and Josh Homme and now the frontmen for the Foo Fighters and Queens Of The Stone Age respectively have hooked up with Jones and created a band called Them Crooked Vultures. Combining dark and pulsing riffs with Homme’s vocals and Grohl’s athletic drumming, the quartet – rounded out by second guitarist Alain Johannes – the band have just released their first self-titled album and have already experienced tremendous radio play accompanied by sold out venues. John Paul was excited – and rightly so – about his new band and wanted to talk about it. Some 40 years after Zeppelin wrote the rules for all things heavy, TCV bassist Jones found himself in a new group that sounded nothing like Zeppelin and yet reminded you a lot about that band. Read this to understand what that means.
UG: When you first got together with Dave and Josh, did you feel the same sort of magic you felt when Zeppelin first jammed?
John Paul Jones: Yes, I did; I did. Umm, we kind of met at Dave’s birthday party at the Medieval Times thing [a concept restaurant where knights joust on horseback] which was pretty strange. It was like a blind date with Josh but he sat us together and watched us from the seats behind. And Josh was reasonably embarrassed about being there at all, I think. But it was fun and we went into the studio the next day and just started jamming. And yeah, it was quite immediate. We just realized, “Oh, actually there could be something here.” I could of expected that there would be; I couldn’t see how we could not happen. How we could not be great. Because I’ve always liked Queens of the Stone Age and always thought Josh was really interesting Dave, you know, Dave is just great anyway. So I couldn’t see how it could not be what it was.
When you first got together, did you bring in song ideas? Had you been stockpiling riffs and things?
Yeah, I had a couple. But once we got in the studio we just started working on stuff. It was like, “Well, what has anybody got? Got anything you wanna start working on?” Josh had a couple of choruses to start with and we just worked on those and then they changed into something else. Basically the machines were running all the time and we just put it all together; writing and recording pretty much at the same time. We’d work on a couple songs and overdubbing on others and it would just grow and we just sat back and listened and thinking, “Wow, this sounds really good.”
It was an organic process then. You didn’t have to push and pull and tug on each other to really find an identity for the band?
Very organic. I’ve not worked in that way before because normally I’m used to getting all the songs together and then going in and recording it all at once. This was literally it all happened in this one room; Josh’s studio. Amazing. “Once we got in the studio we just started working on stuff.”
You produced the album yourselves and didn’t bring in anyone from the outside. Did you feel that no one knew better than the band themselves what direction you wanted to head in?
Yeah; you’d have to explain it to somebody else probably. But, uh, there are three produces and we all knew what we were doing and we could all produce each other. If anybody was doing overdubs or putting vocals on then the other people could be sitting in the control box and doing what a producer would do.
You talk about the sessions having an organic feel but how were they organized? Was it you and Dave recording rhythm tracks and then having the guitars as overdubs?
It was generally live. We liked to get all the tracks down and then the overdubbing would come later. But the whole point was to get live tracks down; get the feel and get the groove. Very similar to the way we used to do it in Zeppelin actually.
Certainly Dave was a huge fan of Bonzo.
Right.
Did it feel at all like laying down tracks with John Bonham back in Zeppelin?
It was very similar. Both Bonzo and Dave are groove merchants; they both like a good groove. I like to play with a good drummer that listens and can groove and has got that sense of swing. But also both drummers were interested in – without necessarily discussing it ahead of time or talking about it in words but just by playing and listening – making a groove really work. Making a drum part really work and the more you play it, the more you kind of fine tune the part between the drums and the bass. So they work together. And that’s what makes a really good rhythm section. That’s one of the things that made Zeppelin different to a lot of other bands; we worked really closely. And that’s what I’m doing with Dave in this band. I listen to what he does. And in the live shows, we’re beginning to fill in the same places; the same phrases in the same sort of place just through improvisation basically. You play something and then you come to the same conclusion at the end of it and that’s happening more and more and that’s really gratifying.
You talk about the approach to rhythm as being similar to what you did in Zeppelin but certainly your bass sound is much different. It’s more aggressive and bigger and has more distortion.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I just felt it needed a different sound to go with the way Josh was playing and the tones he was getting. And he would suggest [sounds]; he has all these old amps, a whole studio full of strange amps, and we were looking for tones on a couple things like “Scumbag” or something. And he’s, “Well try this thing” and he’d bring out this old Guild amp and I’d use it as well as my regular bass amps. And then combine the tones at the end. And I’d say, “Well actually that’s pretty different but it really works.” It goes together much better with his guitar tones and stuff like that. And so I was really in a position to try out all different tones to get something that worked better with what we were doing.
On the videos, it looks like you were using a pick?
I used a pick a lot more; I did a lot of things with downstrokes and picks which I used to do a little bit with Zeppelin but not that much. And it’s just a continuation, I suppose, of what I’ve always done. I’ve always wanted to do different things; not just get stuck in a groove. Always get stuck in a groove and not get stuck in a rut!
Was it different for you as a bass player playing with two guitars?
There are a lot of guitars swirling around with slide parts and stuff. I played some of those slide parts myself. So …
Did you really?
Yeah; because I play steel guitar. Quite a lot of the slide guitar was me.
I didn’t have a copy of the album only various downloads so I didn’t have the credits at all. I’m sorry about that.
No, no problem. I don’t think I’m credited; it doesn’t say. I play all sorts of things: four-string, 10-string, 12-string bass; all the regular bass mandolins on the record; regular mandolins. All sorts of things. And steel guitar.
So what is happening musically on “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I,” the first song on the album?
I’m playing bass and steel guitar on that one; I did the steel guitar first and then dubbed the bass on afterwards.
That’s such a strange way to record. All of this happened in the studio?
Yeah, everything was worked on in the studio; everything you hear on that record was worked up in the studio. I think Josh had the beginnings of that riff but then it got changed about a lot and it ended up as it was. The first single, “New Fang,” has a kind of crazy shuffle feel to it. Umm, it has got a slight shuffley feel about it. It’s a very straight-ahead rock thing; I think I just played straight ahead bass on that one.
Is there anything else on that?
They were Josh’s chords as well as the first one. He would start off quite a few of the songs but then they’d all go different places. We’d all write different parts and sometimes it would change it a bit and sometimes it would change it a lot. “Elephants” has a lot of changes in it. There’s an amazing intro … Yeah. And then it goes into this completely different feel for the verse. Yeah; that’s all bass mandolin as well on my part. I don’t play bass on that at all. Yeah, again, I think the main body of the song came first and then I can’t remember who came up with the riff. There’s different riffs by different people [laughs.] They’d be working on something else and then they’d go, “Actually that would be great to start this or to end it.” And so it was a bit of picking and choosing from different things and just trying things out. “I like to play with a good drummer that listens and can groove and has got that sense of swing.”
“Bandoliers” has a strange kind of Spanish/Moorish feel to it and sports some keyboards as well.
Yeah; there’s a bit of Mellotrony stuff in the middle. I must admit I grew to hate the Mellotron mainly because I had to use it on stage with Zeppelin and they don’t like being traveled around. But then I thought, “You know, actually I’ve got some Mellotron samples” and I thought, “You know, that would sound great in this.” I grew to love the sound again and I did the same in “Caligulove” with the sound of the Vox Continental organ. I had a Vox Continental in the studio and I thought again, “This is an instrument I always used to hate in the ‘60s.” I was a Hammond man but I thought, “Do you know? I want to make this sound good because it will be different. To use a Hammond organ would be just, ‘Oh, everybody would expect that from me.’” So I just liked the tone and it just kind of fitted the mood. Again it’s all experimental in the studio; you try this, you try that. And, “Oh, OK, this sounds good or that’s not so good. Let’s try something else.”
You touch on a really interesting point. You mentioned the Mellotron samples which is a throwback to a lot of your keyboard sounds from back in the Zeppelin days. So the band has this sort of classic sound about it and yet the sound of the guitars and the arrangements and vocal melodies are really forward looking. You can hear a lot of Zeppelin in the music. In other words, you didn’t consciously try and tiptoe around your past. Does that make sense?
Yes. Well, you know, there’s no point throwing the baby out with the bathwater, is there? All these things are in my past and if they’re good, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use them in a – hopefully – new and fresh way. And if they fit the song which they certainly did, I thought, then there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use them. And you don’t hear those sounds that much anymore and so they’re kind of fresh again.
Would it ever get as specific as Josh or Dave referencing the sound on a Zeppelin song?
No references anywhere for any band for anything. And I think that helps rather than anything else. Because you can address the song in the present; you don’t have to think back at all.
“Reptiles” had a big distorted bass sound and had a really cool bass line with a lot of holes.
Yeah. Again what to do. Josh had a demo of that which sounds completely different. He had all these weird sort of acoustic guitary things going all over the place. And I remember Dave listening to it and going, “What on earth is that?” It’s very odd. Then we tried to do something with it and it turned into what you hear. It was almost our interpretation of what Josh’s idea was. And then it becomes Vultures music.
And the Vultures music album ends with “Spinning in Daffodils” with you on piano.
Yeah and 12-string bass which is tuned really, really weirdly. Every instrument I play has got a different tuning which kind of helps in a way because you can’t get comfortable with it. Your fingers just don’t go to the same normal places. Don’t go to the same places. You end up just coming up with different stuff which is always challenging at first.
It’s a great mood isn’t it, “Daffodils”? In fact the entire record has a very kind of dark mood about it.
It is; we like dark. What were some of the basses you played?
They’re all made by Hugh Manson; Manson guitars. Uhh, yeah the four-string bass is normal but it’s a Manson; 10-string bass on “Gunman” which is like a five-string bass with double strings, octave strings like a 12-string guitar type of idea. From low E to high C. The bass on “Daffodils” is a 12-string from low B to high C; a bass mandolin on “Elephants” which is tuned in fifths like a mandolin – G to E again with sort of 12-string type octave strings. The 10- and 12-string basses are in stereo so the neck pickup goes to the bass rig and the bridge pickup goes to a Bad Cat guitar rig. So it gives a very wide sound. What else am I using? I use a Yamaha bass; one of Josh’s many obscure Japanese guitars that he has.
What was your basic amp rig?
SWR 900 series. Great amps with a 4×10 [cabinet] and a 15; similar to my stage setup.
You’ve been recording your bass for such a long time; did you have an idea of what type of sound you wanted?
Nope; it depended on the song. It depended entirely on the song. Sometimes I used distortion, I used pedals; sometimes I used an old Guild amp that Josh had for distortion on a couple of tracks. I’d never used distortion before or not with Zeppelin; I think I used it on my solo albums a bit. I used a pick quite a lot which I didn’t use before. So I tried to do things differently to suit the music. The music comes first and then you figure out how best you can realize it later.
The bass playing on the album sounds very intricate – there are time changes and a bunch of different rhythmic things going on. Are you a better bass player today than you were back in the Zeppelin days?
I’m certainly different, yeah. I’m playing as well as I ever have; probably better in some respects. I’m actually practicing even sometimes which I never did before [laughs.] No, I’m enjoying playing bass again actually; I really am. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing at the moment.”
The response to the record has been huge. How does that feel? Did you expect that?
Oh, yeah, especially when we listened to it back. We probably didn’t realize when we were doing it what we were doing but when we started listening to it back, when we got a few tracks and then you put it on, you think, “Wow, actually this really is something; it’s exciting.” Again people and another of the many parallels between this band and Zeppelin is people either really get it or they really don’t. And it’s kind of not much in between which is nice. It’s not much of, “Oh, that’s alright.” Nobody says that. They say, “It’s this or that and we don’t like it.” Those reviews always refer to every other band; it’s very peculiar. And then quite a lot of the reviews, the majority thank goodness, they really get it. They say, “It’s vital; it’s dark; it’s exciting; it’s many-layered; it’s complex. But it groove and it’s fresh.” And that’s what I think of it.
What does it feel like being in your first fulltime band in three decades?
There were one-off projects before this and various solo projects but you’ve never really been a member of a working band since Zeppelin. Well, I feel lucky to still be able to do it. Umm, it’s great music with great people. We travel on a bus; we do shows; people like the shows; it’s really nice. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing at the moment. Put out good records that people like and yeah, I’m very happy.
The live shows feel great?
Oh, the live shows are amazing, yeah; every show gets better. It’s really good. I was saying to somebody else that doing some of the European festivals, I looked down and I noticed that the first 10 rows looked exactly like they did in 1969! All the same hair and the same t-shirts. It’s great.
You still have the fire?
Oh, yeah, very much. And I’m more dedicated in a way; if I can’t get something I’ll work at it until I can rather than doing something else which I used to do. The album really gives the band a lot of freedom in what you could do on a followup album. There are so many different styles here. Well, maybe there will be another record and we’ll go through a few more directions.
Interview by Steven Rosen Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2009
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