John Paul Jones explains trend of including bonus tracks on some international CDs (interview part 21 of 22)

This is the 21st part of the transcript of my interview with John Paul Jones, conducted Dec. 10, 2001.

SPS: How about some of the stuff that you did, like with "Easy," with Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana, that you recorded last year [in 2000].

JPJ: Oh, for the Sun Records thing.

SPS: Yeah. Whatever happened with that?

JPJ: Not a clue.

SPS: It’s just, you’re gonna be on, you’re gonna be on, [clap] you’re not on?

JPJ: Yeah. Yeah, and it was good too, but, you know…

SPS: "I Ain’t Got the Blues," that you recorded for The Thunderthief?

JPJ: I didn’t think it was good enough.

SPS: No? Might it come out?

JPJ: No. I don’t think. The song was good, but [I] didn’t like the performance as much. If it doesn’t get past me, it doesn’t get on the record. [laughing]

SPS: How about "Fanfare for the Millennium"? It came out on the Japanese edition of Zooma.

JPJ: That’s right, yes.

SPS: But we didn’t get it over here.

JPJ: Yeah, well… See, the Japanese thing is very strange because I think it’s to do… I think it’s the fact that if everything’s released at the same time everywhere, by the time it gets to Japan – because of their distribution or whatever, just the sheer distances – it arrives in Japan like weeks after it’s released everywhere else. So then everybody who orders it in Japan, it’s actually cheaper if you get the money for it, they buy the imports. In order to stop this, the Japanese record companies will not release it unless they get A.) either an extra track or B.) have it early. And what happened on The Thunderthief is that we had it set up… This particular record I both recorded and mixed, so I did everything, and I just ran past the deadline, and they’d done all the work on the promotion and everything in Japan. Of course it was gonna come up early anyway, and then I missed the deadline for that... So we said release it now or we’ll never hear from them again, because they simply won’t stop it short. That’s what happens. You know, when all the Christmas stuff comes ... then you get completely swamped. So I said, "Well, we know…" We couldn’t stop the Japan record, the Japanese release, because they’d done all the work. We couldn’t say, "Sorry, guys, stop and do it again." Now, if I were Prince or Michael Jackson, I could do it, but I’m not. [laughing] So what happened is…

SPS: But to me, you’re better than them.

JPJ: Thank you. So what happened is this got put forward until after Christmas, you know, in February, where in Japan it had been released already. [laughing] I guess you just have to live with it. But "Fanfare for the Millennium" I really liked! I thought it was a great piece.

SPS: Were there other ones that you recorded for Zooma that didn’t come out?

JPJ: No.

On to part 22: John Paul Jones on his management and record label.