John Paul Jones wanting to leave Led Zeppelin to become a choirmaster? Well ... (interview part 9 of 22)

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

SPS: Winchester Cathedral. I read that you wanted to be choirmaster there.

JPJ: It was a joke. Somebody said, "Do you like being on the road?" I said, "No, I'm… I'm…" You know. "I'm gonna… I saw this advert for a job for the organist out by the cathedral. I'm gonna bide for that. I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna apply for that." It was one of those things.

SPS: When that was supposed to happen coincided with that month that you took off from Led Zeppelin. It was December 1973. Is that a fabricated lie too? …Where you wanted to…?

JPJ: There was a point, yes, where I think I'd got fed up with it all, 'cause we were touring [a lot] and really working hard and I'd had enough of it for a while. And I wasn't going to get another job. [Laughing] I wouldn’t call [that] a job! 'Cause a cathedral organist, that was what I wanted to be when I was 16. I was too young to go to college so I went on the road instead.

SPS: So I guess if that stuff's not true, that you wanted to leave to be a choirmaster and all that…

JPJ: Should we be debunking all of this?

SPS: Yeah!

JPJ: …Because isn't that part of our whole thing? I mean, you don't really want to tell people… Wouldn't they rather believe that I left to be a choirmaster in Westminster?

SPS: There's a phrase that we have 'cause of the show The X Files, "The truth is out there." I think that…

JPJ: Oh, all right. Do you want to know the truth? If the truth was in here, there wouldn’t be more X files!

SPS: [Laughing] Yeah, true.

JPJ: [Laughing]

SPS: OK, I'll… I'll debate about whether I’m gonna…

JPJ: OK.

SPS: You played on an album by Jobriath. Am I pronouncing that right (joe BRY uth)?

JPJ: Yeah.

SPS: Do you know if that was his first or second album?

JPJ: Oh, I don't know.

SPS: And was it Eddie Kramer that got you involved in that?

JPJ: [Silence]

SPS: He was producing the album.

JPJ: Was he? Oh, Eddie was… Yes. Probably. ...

SPS: And Madeline Bell, you played on her album around that same time.

JPJ: I produced it.

SPS: I just wrote about that a couple of days ago. All this stuff was happening in December 1973, so it was a couple of days ago that I was writing about this for the mailing list.

JPJ: Oh, OK. I see. Yeah, she'd been a family friend forever.

SPS: She's the godmother of the children?

JPJ: That's right.

SPS: How's she doing then?

JPJ: She's great. She lives in Spain now.

On to part 10: John Paul Jones on touring with John Bonham.