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The first record you ever bought says more about you than you probably think. Not only does it indicate the sorts of tastes you had growing up, but it also often says a lot about why you like the music you listen to now. John Paul Jones’ journey was no different.
By his own admission, Jones had an early reputation for helping musicians sound a certain way, more quintessentially American, partly because he was one of the few who actually got under the skin of many of Motown and Stax’s greatest heroes.
As a session musician, these are the people he’d often channel, learning the secrets of major players like Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn and James Jamerson while unknowingly becoming the trusty go-to for that familiar American R&B style. “I was the one who listened to all that stuff,” the bassist once said, crediting a significant portion of this to the reason why Led Zeppelin could “swing”.
In fact, by the time Jones joined the band, he was already a skilled session musician with a wealth of knowledge under his belt, and his interest in those sorts of artists meant that, in the early days, it was all about the groove. It was also what set them apart: at shows, he’d observe the diversity of the crowd, and how people came just to have a good time and to dance, which wasn’t something you saw at every rock concert at the time.
In fact, it wasn’t really a thing at all. Back then, the rock community was about as siloed in certain spaces as it is now, with bands taking pride in attracting a specific type of audience, usually young men who got a bit rowdy after one too many cans, just to feel like they were in with the hardcore rock ‘n’ rollers in the scene.
This was usually the whole point: AC/DC’s Malcom Young even implied once that true rock ‘n’ roll bands were the less “flashy” ones whose crowds “would rather get drunk than just rock out and enjoy the show”. Zeppelin, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as straightforward, something Jones later took pride in when reflecting on their rise. “We were different in that way,” he said. “We used all our Black pop music influences as a key to the rock that went over the top.”
Those “Black pop music influences” also stemmed from one of the wilder, more explosive figures in the early rock ‘n’ roll boom itself, Jerry Lee Lewis. Such performers, who built their entire sound on Black music traditions, became a central component of Jones’ versatility, and in turn, a major facet of Zeppelin’s “groove”, both on stage and in the studio.
Further reading: From The Vault
And Lewis wasn’t someone Jones picked up along the way, either, nor was he a discovery he made once he’d already become an integral part of the scene himself. No, Lewis was the blueprint, his ‘Great Balls of Fire’ being the first record that Jones ever bought, which, if you lead with that in any conversation about the famous bassist, it’ll tell anyone everything they’ll ever need to know.
The day that Jones’ musical journey began, he wandered into a shop in Eltham, picked up a copy of the record, and realised the true power of good, authentic rock ‘n’ roll. From there, he also discovered songs like ‘Cathy’s Clown’ by the Everly Brothers, along with countless others who infiltrated Jones’ eclectic swirl of excellent musical tastes. The rest, as they say, is history.
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