John Paul Jones’ honest appraisal of Led Zeppelin: “We weren’t friends”
Anyone who thinks being in a rock band is light work is quite frankly deluded. Though it is a labour of love and a dream vocation for many, being a touring musician is a nonstop lifestyle of rinse, repeat, excess and exhaustion. These factors are only heightened when your band is as big as Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin formed in 1968 from the ashes of The Yardbirds as Jimmy Page sought established virtuosic musicians to fill three crucial spaces. The guitarist fell on his feet with the induction of Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones, true experts in their respective fields. All four members had achieved mild levels of fame in British circles, but fame and glory were just around the corner, with two seminal albums arriving in 1969.
Each member loved nothing more than performing their music. However, doing so every night on US tours could make a dream a nightmare. By the mid-1970s, Bonham was well and truly sick of performing in intense stadium tours around the world and, on several occasions, stated his wishes to depart the group. With a family at home, his homesickness and struggles with fame were only exacerbated by a spiralling relationship with drugs and alcohol.
The band’s manager, Peter Grant, would always find a way of tempting Bonham back to the band before they headed out on tour, usually through monetary reward or with a shiny new Lamborghini. Yet money could do very little to prevent tension within the band amid the heady highs and crashing lows of rock star life in the 1970s.
In an interview I conducted with the esteemed photographer Carinthia West, who was a close friend of Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood through much of the 1970s and ’80s, I found it interesting to hear that she never saw much of Keith Richards or Charlie Watts. She explained that a rock band’s enduring familial relationship is often composed of smoke and mirrors. If The Beatles didn’t break up in 1970, they most certainly would have needed plenty of time apart to restore sanity and fond thoughts of one another.
Similar signs of disrepair appeared within Led Zeppelin in the mid-to-late-1970s, foreshadowing Bonham’s tragic demise. Bitterness between the four members rose to a boil while they worked on their final two albums, Presence and In Through The Out Door. Although cracks presented themselves in all combinations, the major rift seemed to split the band in half.
During this period, Page and Bonham tended to stay up late, enjoying a party lifestyle, while Plant and Jones appeared more committed to studio exploits, turning up to sessions on time and with unfettered consciousness. Passing like ships in the night, Page and Bonham would opt to record their parts during inefficient late-night sessions.
In a 2007 interview with Q, Jones reflected on his time with Led Zeppelin, revealing that, despite their on-stage chemistry, the group wasn’t particularly cohesive off-stage. “We get along fine,” he offered, regarding surviving members Plant and Page. “The thing is, we have never socialised. As soon as we left the road, we never saw each other, which I always thought contributed to the longevity and harmony of the band. We weren’t friends.”
For most of their time together, Led Zeppelin got on just fine. However, Jones seemed to liken his relationship with his bandmates as more akin to workmates than close friends. “We weren’t like a group that grew up together and made it big,” he said. “Led Zeppelin wasn’t manufactured exactly, but it was put together by Jimmy.”
Jones first met Page during their time working as session musicians long before forming Led Zeppelin. “Even though I’d see him in the studio every day, we never socialised,” Jones added, reflecting on this formative period. “The rule with studio sessions in those days was you didn’t book your mates.”
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