![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/John-Paul-Jones-Musician-Led-Zeppelin-1975-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Led Zeppelin)<\/p>\n
Wed 11 March 2026 0:00, UK <\/p>\n
When John Bonham died, it was clear to everyone that Led Zeppelin<\/a> couldn\u2019t continue. <\/p>\n 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\u2019s drumming formed the backbone, stating, \u201cBonzo and I were great groovers, we really were\u201d.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, it can be something special, taking a good song and making it great.<\/p>\n Or, in Led Zeppelin\u2019s case, John Paul Jones said that they\u2019d take a toe-tapping song, and make people dance to it, as he claimed, \u201cIn those days, we\u2019d play concerts and people would dance to our music. There aren\u2019t many hard rock bands these days that people dance to\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it was true; Led Zeppelin shows got the band moving as their intersection between rock and blues wasn\u2019t just seductive and enticing, it was also endlessly groovy. It sweeps you up and takes you along, as even a song like \u2018Whole Lotta Love\u2019, while Page is going mental on the guitar, still has a foundation that makes you want to move your hips.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Jones\u2019 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\u2019d forever looked up to.<\/a> These aren\u2019t 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, \u201cI had always listened to Duck Dunn, and later, to Motown and James Jamerson, and Willie Weeks\u201d.<\/p>\n Interestingly, all of Jones\u2019 key influences were his peers, working at the same time as he was; he wasn\u2019t 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 \u201870s, with his first pick, Duck Dunn, bringing the basslines to Booker T & the MG\u2019s songs and then working as a session bassist for Stax Records,<\/a> colouring countless of their iconic tunes from Otis Redding, Bill Withers, and even Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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\u2019s arguably Weeks, as he worked across rock, jazz, blues and country, summing up the group\u2019s eclectic and vast world in four neat words.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mix all that together, and you get John Paul Jones, and you get a rhythm section out to make you dance.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Led Zeppelin) Wed 11 March 2026 0:00, UK When John Bonham died, it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[43573,96,33124,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-468939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bass","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-john-paul-jones","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}