John Paul Jones explains what made Led Zeppelin “remarkable”
Controlled chaos is the best way to describe Led Zeppelin. For all the wild partying that kept biographers and journalists in business, the band had a meticulous business sense and a work ethic that stunned those who worked with them. That contradiction of being wild electric bluesmen and dedicated, serious artists presented itself constantly throughout their catalogue. Robert Plant could screech and wail, but it was always flawlessly executed, never lingering a second longer than it needed to.
Led Zep seemed to arrive knowing they would change the music landscape forever and carried themselves like they were sure of it. Jimmy Page and their manager, Peter Grant, financed their first album because they wanted no outside interference with their sound. Their debut was recorded after only 36 hours in the studio because they came prepped and ready after touring Scandinavia.
Their bassist, John Paul Jones, said that ruthless sense of vision allowed Zeppelin’s brilliance to fully unfold. While they were still shaking off the New Yardbirds title, they were demanding to be on Atlantic Records, not some unheard-of imprint, so they could be label-mates with Eric Clapton. They had their position in the music world pegged before everyone else, essentially insisting upon their own significance and then backing it up on every album.
“I think [our work ethic] was even more remarkable in light of the fact that we had no restraints over what we recorded,” Jones told Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page author Brad Tolinski. “As we never had anyone from Atlantic looking over our shoulders, it would have been incredibly easy to coast. But we never did.”
Richard Cole, who was their tour manager throughout most of their career, said the entire Zeppelin enterprise relied on conscientious people. He recalled a moment to Forbes that illustrated how important their worth ethic was to running the well-oiled machine.
He’s just started working under Grant, who’d asked him to look up something in the Yellow Pages, which, in 1967, he’d never heard of. “I remember saying, ‘Oh, I can’t,'” he remembered. “And he said, ‘Can’t? I never want to hear that word again.’ Grant told him in no uncertain terms that word didn’t exist in the Led Zeppelin vocabulary, and that was that”.
“If you were paid to do a job, you got it done, and that was all there was to it,” he added.
Naturally, it was rock and roll, so the ethos morphed into the tried and true: “Work hard, play hard” mentality, both elements Zeppelin managed with spectacular ease. As Jones put it, they were still remarkable even when those lines blurred. “At our very worst, we were better than most people,” he said. “And at our very best, we could just wipe the floor with the lot of them.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.