(Credits: Far Out / Led Zeppelin)
Wed 11 March 2026 0:00, UK
When John Bonham died, it was clear to everyone that Led Zeppelin couldn’t continue.
Part of that was obviously down to the intense personal grief of having lost their best friend, but also, it was down to the music as John Paul Jones always knew that his bass playing and Bonham’s drumming formed the backbone, stating, “Bonzo and I were great groovers, we really were”.
The value of the rhythm section cannot be understated, for it truly is the foundation of the song, keeping the rest of the band in time and tying it all together, but also, if you have a great rhythm section, it can be something special, taking a good song and making it great.
Or, in Led Zeppelin’s case, John Paul Jones said that they’d take a toe-tapping song, and make people dance to it, as he claimed, “In those days, we’d play concerts and people would dance to our music. There aren’t many hard rock bands these days that people dance to”.
But it was true; Led Zeppelin shows got the band moving as their intersection between rock and blues wasn’t just seductive and enticing, it was also endlessly groovy. It sweeps you up and takes you along, as even a song like ‘Whole Lotta Love’, while Page is going mental on the guitar, still has a foundation that makes you want to move your hips.
In Jones’ eyes, that came down to the two of them at the back of the stage, but mostly, it came down to his key influences and the three other bass players he’d forever looked up to. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill rock and roll answers of the same bass legends that have hung about forever, and instead, he was looking towards other genres, adding to the eclectic melting pot that was Led Zeppelin. First, he looked towards soul, and then onwards as he said, “I had always listened to Duck Dunn, and later, to Motown and James Jamerson, and Willie Weeks”.
Interestingly, all of Jones’ key influences were his peers, working at the same time as he was; he wasn’t a musician dusting off decades-old players, but instead seemed to get a lot out of looking at the music scene happening around him, just slightly removed in different genre realms. All three of his key ones were working hard in the 1960s and ‘70s, with his first pick, Duck Dunn, bringing the basslines to Booker T & the MG’s songs and then working as a session bassist for Stax Records, colouring countless of their iconic tunes from Otis Redding, Bill Withers, and even Elvis Presley.
James Jamerson, on the other hand, was the bass king of Motown, bringing in something different altogether, and arguably the most classical Jones ever got, leaning into something slightly more traditional while the band experimented around him. With Willie Weeks, things came back home slightly with a rock influence, and if one artist ties together the entire world of Led Zeppelin, it’s arguably Weeks, as he worked across rock, jazz, blues and country, summing up the group’s eclectic and vast world in four neat words.
Mix all that together, and you get John Paul Jones, and you get a rhythm section out to make you dance.