“None of us wanted”: The album John Paul Jones considered a total embarrassment

Not every album is meant to withstand the test of time. As much as people look back fondly on all of the 1980s fashion that were popular back when MTV was still playing music videos, it’s easy to see why artists like Prince and Michael Jackson have stood the test of time and why bands like Flock of Seagulls aren’t given the time of day as much. Although John Paul Jones was always willing to learn about what new trends were going on in music, that didn’t mean that he had to enjoy every single project that he worked on in the past.

But before he was even being thought of for Led Zeppelin, Jonesy already had some moments in his past that weren’t something to be proud of. Any session player is known to take whatever gig they can to make ends meet, and while that can lead to some impressive string arrangements, the bassist had no problem saying that he hated working with The Rolling Stones when producing ‘She’s A Rainbow’ or didn’t have fond memories of those moments when sessions for no-name bands dragged on forever.

When Zeppelin got up and running, though, there were no limits to where Jones could go. He was more than happy to serve as a sideman when he needed to, but where else would someone have the opportunity to play the insane bass runs that happen in the middle of ‘Immigrant Song’ or make a riff that had so many different moving parts to it like in ‘Black Dog’?

All that was well and good when they got into the studio, but it’s a lot different when they started working their songs out live. John Bonham was already an animal whenever he stepped behind the drum kit, but judging by the insane speed Jimmy Page was playing at all the time, Jones was always the one keeping things together, playing the entire thing right up the middle so that everything stayed in check.

Even for a band that lived off of excess like Zeppelin did, there were bound to be moments that didn’t hold up over time, and The Song Remains the Same is still one of the strangest entries in their catalogue. The live album and accompanying movie do feature some fantastic moments of them tearing through tracks like ‘Dazed and Confused’, but all Jones could see after the fact was a pile of poorly-recorded schlock.

By the time that Jones was promoting How the West Was Won, he said that he wanted to make sure he wrote the wrongs of what happened on the band’s previous live record, saying, “What none of us wanted was another The Song Remains The Same, which has become largely an embarrassment over time. And all credit to Jimmy, because what we have on the DVD and live album far exceeds anything you see or hear in the original film.”

Then again, it’s hard to judge their choices back then, especially when it comes to the theatrical release of the album. None of them claimed to be the greatest directors in the world, and while the fantasy sequences they all made can come off as a little bit cringy, it only serves to mythologise them that much more in the eyes of the public.

Because by that point, none of the members of Zeppelin felt human anymore. They had ascended to the kind of superstardom that only seemed reserved for bands like The Beatles, and while it could come off as more than a little bit pompous in places, there are moments in between that make the film a monument to how far they had come in only a few years.