John Paul Jones song title derived from Apple sound (interview part 19 of 22)

This is the 19th part of the transcript of my interview with John Paul Jones, conducted Dec. 10, 2001.

SPS: I was gonna say, "Nosumi Blues" – am I pronouncing that right, "No SUE me?"

JPJ: Yeah.

SPS: OK. What’s that title mean?

JPJ: It’s just a laugh, isn’t it? The idea came –

SPS: Don’t sue me?

JPJ: No! You can’t sue me! It’s… Apple had a sound. Do you know much about Apple computers?

SPS: Uh…

JPJ: Well, anyway, it’s a long story. I love these long, winding stories.

SPS: Go ahead.

JPJ: What actually happened was that Apple, when they first were called Apple, came up against the Beatles’ publishing company, and the Beatles said they could use the name Apple provided that they made no music at all. [laughing] OK, so, I mean… that’s kind of ridiculous. Apples don’t have MIDI, which is one of the most frustrating things to musicians.

SPS: That’s why!

JPJ: Yeah, I know. I said… [Screaming:] I cannot even begin to tell you, I cannot even come close, still I am up against the fact that Apple doesn’t have any proper MIDI drivers. And it just drives me mad that it wastes months of studio time sorting this out and that out, this isn’t compatible with that, that doesn’t work, this doesn’t work, time is running out, furious about that! So Apple came out with an alert, what it was was a simple [sings:] "Bonnnng." And it was only used as an alert, and they called it "Sosumi."

SPS: [Laughing] Yeah.

JPJ: S-O-S-U-M-I. And I just remembered it when I was looking for a title for the blues, and I said this isn’t really a blues. It’s come from nowhere except in the blues tradition. So I called it "Nosumi Blues." [Laughing] I don’t know how many people got it, but I didn’t care. I liked it. [Laughing]

SPS: I’d always wondered about that. Now how about "Shibuya Bop"?

JPJ: "Shibuya Bop." That’s much more prosaic. I just, I was walking around Shibuya [in Tokyo] on the last tour, and it just… I heard this techno track around the doorway, and I thought, "Geez, what was that?" And all these people around were just … the intensity of it, a really intense track… and so that’s where that came from. [laughing]

On to part 20: John Paul Jones on his singing.