John Paul Jones played a rare solo show on March 22 in Knoxville, Tennessee as part of the Big Ears music festival.
Jones began the performance by playing a Wurlitzer pipe organ, rising from the organ’s pit wearing a pair of metallic silver shoes and performing “Your Time Is Gonna Come” from Led Zeppelin’s debut album on the instrument that was originally installed in the theatre in 1928.
“It was such fun, I couldn’t resist it,” Jones said of playing the organ later in the show.
Here’s the setlist for the performance:
- Your Time Is Gonna Come (on Wurlitzer pipe organ)
- No Quarter (on grand piano)
- Down To The River To Pray (on triple neck electric mandolin)
- Ramble On (on bass guitar)
- Nosumi Blues (on lap steel guitar)
- When The Levee Breaks (on lap steel guitar with a snippet of In My Time Of Dying at the end)
- Since I’ve Been Loving You (on piano)
- Improvisation (on piano)
- Going To California (on mandolin)
- Bass solo
- No Quarter
The show began with Jones rising from the organ’s pit:
After the first song, Jones performed “No Quarter” on a Steinway grand piano.
Following “No Quarter”, Jones played “Down To The River To Pray” on a triple neck electric mandolin:
Jones then performed “Ramble On” playing a Fender Jazz Bass guitar. “I remember how this one works,” he quipped as he switched to the bass guitar.
“I was rabbit holing down the internet one day, as you do, and I see a thing that says John Paul Jones isolated bass. Isolated bass?! And it turns out that people use this software … it gets rid of all the less important things,” he said as he introduced the song. “So I listened to that … I thought, do you know? I’m sure nobody else has played an isolated bass part live.”
“Maybe the other parts were more important than I was letting on,” he joked afterwards.
Later in the show, Jones played “Nosumi Blues” from his 1999 album Zooma and then “When The Levee Breaks” on a lap steel guitar:
Jones also played “Going To California” on a mandolin. “This is what we used to call in Led Zeppelin ‘the acoustic set’,” he said. “I used to have 30 guys to do this stuff,” he said as he adjusted the microphone.
“Here’s a little number again, I used to do with other people. But here I am and here it is,” he said before the song.
Photographs posted online by attendees of the performance show Jones’ custom Manson triple neck guitar on stage along with a Fender Jazz Bass guitar, a Steinway grand piano and a laptop.
Check out other images of Jones at the show below:
Jones is scheduled to also perform at the festival on March 23 as part of Sons Of Chipotle and then on March 24 with Thurston Moore.
Nice job
welcome back john glad to see you ALIVE and well
I was there and this will forever live in my mind as the best concert I’ve ever been to. Second is Them Crooked Vultures – seeing a theme?
So many amazing moments, it’s difficult to pick one…but that entrance will live in my mind forever, and the segue into No Quarter was timely.
So thankful to have attended, to witness this talented, humble, charming man grace OUR presence.
Ramble on indeed, good sir.