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John Paul Jones wanting to leave Led Zeppelin to become a choirmaster? Well ... (interview part 9 of 22)

By Steve Sauer, www.LedZeppelinNews.com

Monday, December 10, 2001

This is the ninth part of the transcript of my interview with John Paul Jones, conducted Dec. 10, 2001.

SPS: Winchester Cathedral. I read that you wanted to be choirmaster there.

JPJ: It was a joke. Somebody said, "Do you like being on the road?" I said, "No, I'm… I'm…" You know. "I'm gonna… I saw this advert for a job for the organist out by the cathedral. I'm gonna bide for that. I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna apply for that." It was one of those things.

SPS: When that was supposed to happen coincided with that month that you took off from Led Zeppelin. It was December 1973. Is that a fabricated lie too? …Where you wanted to…?

JPJ: There was a point, yes, where I think I'd got fed up with it all, 'cause we were touring [a lot] and really working hard and I'd had enough of it for a while. And I wasn't going to get another job. [Laughing] I wouldn’t call [that] a job! 'Cause a cathedral organist, that was what I wanted to be when I was 16. I was too young to go to college so I went on the road instead.

SPS: So I guess if that stuff's not true, that you wanted to leave to be a choirmaster and all that…

JPJ: Should we be debunking all of this?

SPS: Yeah!

JPJ: …Because isn't that part of our whole thing? I mean, you don't really want to tell people… Wouldn't they rather believe that I left to be a choirmaster in Westminster?

SPS: There's a phrase that we have 'cause of the show The X Files, "The truth is out there." I think that…

JPJ: Oh, all right. Do you want to know the truth? If the truth was in here, there wouldn’t be more X files!

SPS: [Laughing] Yeah, true.

JPJ: [Laughing]

SPS: OK, I'll… I'll debate about whether I’m gonna…

JPJ: OK.

SPS: You played on an album by Jobriath. Am I pronouncing that right (joe BRY uth)?

JPJ: Yeah.

SPS: Do you know if that was his first or second album?

JPJ: Oh, I don't know.

SPS: And was it Eddie Kramer that got you involved in that?

JPJ: [Silence]

SPS: He was producing the album.

JPJ: Was he? Oh, Eddie was… Yes. Probably. ...

SPS: And Madeline Bell, you played on her album around that same time.

JPJ: I produced it.

SPS: I just wrote about that a couple of days ago. All this stuff was happening in December 1973, so it was a couple of days ago that I was writing about this for the mailing list.

JPJ: Oh, OK. I see. Yeah, she'd been a family friend forever.

SPS: She's the godmother of the children?

JPJ: That's right.

SPS: How's she doing then?

JPJ: She's great. She lives in Spain now.

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Led Zeppelin Reunion


Photo courtesy of Simon Keeping

The surviving members of Led Zeppelin regrouped in 2007, with Jason Bonham on drums, to perform a year-end tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. Their widely praised concert was witnessed in person by fewer than 20,000 people. It is likely never to be repeated, and there are no announced plans to release the concert for home viewing. However, clicking the image above will bring up multi-cam footage of the entire Led Zeppelin performance as it happened on Dec. 10, 2007, at the O2 arena in London.

Many posts on LedZeppelinNews.com have centered on the possibility of a full-scale Led Zeppelin reunion, noting particularly the inaccuracies reported by the popular press.

Page


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LedZeppelinNews.com provided a review of "It Might Get Loud" at that time.

"It Might Get Loud" will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on Dec. 22 in the United States. Click here to pre-order on DVD or Blu-Ray. Prior to this, "It Might Get Loud" will be available on iTunes for two weeks beginning Dec. 8.

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Plant


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Jason Bonham


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John Bonham's death in 1980 left such an impact on the surviving members of Led Zeppelin that they knew immediately they could not continue as they were. Yet Jason Bonham's familiarity with the band made him a shoe-in to join his father's bandmates on the few occasions reunion concerts have taken place.

This year marked the 20th anniversary of Bonham's most successful album release to date, the Platinum-certified disc The Disregard of Timekeeping released by his band, Bonham. To mark the milestone, he recently toured with a new band and played under the banner of "An Evening with Jason Bonham."

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