When Led Zeppelin first emerged onto the scene, some fans were convinced they were dealing in the dark arts. With Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and Robert Plant unleashing musical chaos onstage, it wasn’t hard to imagine they’d struck a deal with the devil. And then there was John Paul Jones—the calm in the storm, the one who, as the joke went, must’ve turned Satan down.
To the untrained eye, Jones might have seemed like the quiet, even dull, member of the group. But in reality, he was arguably the band’s backbone. Rush’s Geddy Lee once praised Jones for being the element that kept Zeppelin grounded. Without his steady hand, the rest of the band wouldn’t have had the freedom to push the limits on stage.
“The thing that held the whole thing down was John Paul Jones’ bass playing,” Lee once said. “So if you listen to ‘How Many More Times’, I mean, no matter how wild that song gets at times, there’s John Paul Jones just holding it all down in such a fluid way.”
Beyond his anchoring bass work, Jones had a sharp and creative mind for music. He was deeply involved in composing for Led Zeppelin, constantly pushing boundaries and challenging both his bandmates and their fans. One of his most impressive contributions came with the track ‘Black Dog’, which he wrote using two different time signatures—making it one of the band’s most technically demanding songs. The complexity of the track was so intense, some even speculated it was written just to show the world Zeppelin were the best musicians on the planet.
But while ‘Black Dog’ may be a technical marvel, it wasn’t the most difficult song Jones ever played. Some challenges came not from complexity but from time—decades, in fact—between performances.
“If you’re a Zep fan and really want to go see Zeppelin, you might as well go and see one of the better tribute bands,” Jones once remarked. “Even when we played the O2 we didn’t play the same as we did in the old days, because you just can’t. I like to think it’s because one is endlessly creative, but it’s more because you can’t remember things! It’s as simple as that.”
That became especially apparent during rehearsals for their long-awaited O2 Arena reunion show. After so many years, some songs had slipped from memory—particularly tracks that had never been performed live. The band ran into trouble with one such song: ‘For Your Life’, which made its live debut at the O2 concert.
“We played one number ‘For Your Life’ where I said: ‘Y’know, I really can’t remember what I’m supposed to play on this.’ Page went: ‘I’m finding this difficult too.
Jason [Bonham], why can’t we remember how to do this?’ And Jason just said: ‘Because you’ve never played it on stage before!’ We’d only played it once before, which was the day we recorded it – thirty-seven years ago.”
