“Blow things up!”: why John Paul Jones called The Who “far worse” than Led Zeppelin
Being a bad boy in the rock and roll world may as well have been part of the job description when the genre began. Everyone might have their own ways of getting into more nefarious habits, but if a guitarist wasn’t caught swigging a bottle of Jack Daniel’s during their prime, most fans might have asked for their money back when seeing them live. But even for a band that had been known for excess like Led Zeppelin was, John Paul Jones knew that other acts made them look like glorified choir boys.
Granted, it’s hard to really ignore the band’s extracurriculars whenever they walked off the stage. Zeppelin had practically written the rulebook on every way to take things too far, and while some of them may have made for some good stories here and there, it often became too much for people to take and usually more than a little bit disgusting when looking at the female company they kept at the time.
Even for as much fun as it may have been, people forget that the reason why everything came to an end was because John Bonham finally bottomed out. The years of drinking and drug abuse were bound to do a number on anyone, and even if Jones got off with a better bill of health than his bandmates, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t privy to seeing some truly wild stuff when they were on the road.
You have to remember that Zeppelin was far from the first party band, and even by wild man standards, there were few who could match what Keith Moon was doing. Anyone who taught Joe Walsh the ropes in terms of room trashing had to have had some experience with everything, and hearing of their escapades feels like reading a slapstick comedy routine that never fully ends.
Since he joined the band by questioning The Who’s original drummer ability on the spot, Moon wasn’t lacking in confidence, so when he got the keys to the rock and roll kingdom, he became the glorified court jester trying to turn everything he could into some practical joke, even if it meant getting him into trouble. Not many people could claim to have been kicked out of almost every hotel that he stayed in, but Moon’s history with everything from explosives to driving cars into swimming pools is still the gold standard for every rockstar.
While Jones was still more than happy to talk about the excessive side of the band’s partying days, he figured that they were almost quaint compared to their competition, saying, “There were other bands that were far worse than us. The Who used to blow things up! The truth is always more boring than the myth. The truth is that being in Led Zeppelin was bloody hard work. We’d play for two or three hours, sometimes four hours. We were very focused.”
But even if those times were fun, the tragic part was that not everyone was able to find their way out. Zeppelin could have still been one of the biggest names in the world if Bonham had been able to sort himself out, and if Moon or AC/DC’s Bon Scott bothered to slow things down a bit, there’s no telling what they could have been making in their respective acts.
So despite every single rock and roll band having a history of sex and drugs, their tales aren’t about whether they survived them. It’s what they were able to learn along the way, and for Jonesy, the one thing worth remembering is how well every member sounded when they locked in on the right groove.
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