It’s what rock’n’roll wet dreams are made of: Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and the legendary John Paul Jones joining forces. After having generated acres of online coverage this year, Them Crooked Vultures will finally be releasing their self-titled debut album this month before hitting Australia in January 2010.

It’s a second life for John Paul Jones. Them Crooked Vultures is shaping up to be the credible post-Zeppelin project that music lovers never thought they’d get, what with that old lemon-squeezer Robert Plant standing in the way of a full-fledged Zeppelin reunion, content crooning rocking chair-on-the-front-porch harmonies with country singer Alison Krauss. Them Crooked Vultures has all of the brutal power you’d expect from the talent on board, staying true to Jones’s part in the greatest hard rock band of the twentieth century.

We spoke to Jones last week about the formation of the new group, that other group he was in once, medieval-themed restaurants and playing the keytar.

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It’s fair to say that Them Crooked Vultures was Dave’s brainchild – how did he get the nerve to sign you up?

I’ve worked with him on and off for two or three years, and he came to London to present Zeppelin with the GQ Men of the Year Awards. After that, just last year, last September, he said he was going to do something with his old mate Josh Homme, and asked if I would be interested in coming over and seeing if we could come up with something. At the time I wasn’t quite sure what I was actually doing, but I called him up a few weeks later and asked him “Is it still on? You still want to do it?” He went, “Yeah!”

So I went over to Dave’s 40th birthday party at Medieval Times. Truly bizarre evening with knights and dragon soup and stuff like that. (Read Grohl's recollection of the night). He sat me next to Josh. Once Josh got over his embarrassment at having me there, along with people with strange accents and horses and stuff… Have you seen Medieval Times? Have you seen The Cable Guy?

Yeah, I remember it from a couple of movies.

Anyway, after Josh got over the initial trauma, we went over to his studio and literally just started playing. It all just grew from there.

Dave said that once you guys started jamming it took him all of one minute to realise that it was the “best fucking band” he’s ever been in… Was that your impression?

I felt pretty much the same. I thought, this could be a really good, really interesting, really rocky band. Dave really hits that instrument of his. It had all the things I liked in that sort of band, like Zeppelin: it’s rock’n’roll but it grooves. It’s sexy as well, you know. And Josh was a revelation. I was very aware of Queens of the Stone Age before and I always knew his singing and his songwriting, but I didn’t realise what a good guitarist he was too. And I thought, ah, this could actually turn into something.

You’ve always said “What band could I ever join that would be as good as Zeppelin…?”

Yeah. Well I’ve decided that my best career choice is to just always be in the best band in the world.

It’s worked well for you so far.

Yes, I think I’ve done it again.

Dave and Josh must have spent a lot of time just being stoked that they were in a band with you.

It’s just awful. They walk backwards out of my presence, they’re always on their knees, it’s pretty rough. But I toss them a few tidbits and compassion every now and again.

A few months after the 2007 Zeppelin concert in London, Robert Plant said that the trouble with getting Zeppelin back together is that it’s just too big – you lose the magic. Firstly, I wanted to ask if you feel the same way about it?

As you probably know Robert has said that he doesn’t want to do Zeppelin anymore. For a while Jimmy and I were going to start another band with Jason [Bonham], but then we realised everybody was going to call it Led Zeppelin…

How dreadful.

It was really boring. And then we couldn’t agree on a singer, and that went onto indefinite hold. In the meantime, I’m up for this. I’m very happy with this idea.

What I also wanted to ask was, with Them Crooked Vultures, are you reclaiming some of that ‘magic’ of just starting out?

There’s a lot in common between the two bands, especially in the early times. Like the whole word-of-mouth thing. I don’t know how we did it with Zeppelin – before the Internet. Maybe people used to phone their friends or write a letter. But before the press had even found us you’d turn up and there’d be a line right around the block – and that’s what’s happening now.
One of the nice things about keeping it a secret, there wasn’t a great ballyhoo about it – “it’s coming, it’s coming” – we just started doing shows before anybody really knew we were around. But there were people coming to the shows, you know. When we got to Amsterdam there were lines right the way round the block. So how did they know? They’d obviously heard the odd show that we’d done before was good, and thought they’ve got to hear it.

The secrecy has just fed into the excitement.

I think so, I think it has, yeah. One of the main reasons we kept it secret was to not have that pressure of speculation all the time. Obviously things started leaking out a bit, and we found that we could never turn up at any function at the same time. Only two members. All three of us couldn’t go to a gig, because people would say, “Hah, I see what you’re doing!” It was pretty hard to keep it a secret for that long. I have to apologise to all the people I didn’t tell who felt I should have told them. But it was good keeping it a secret, and it probably did no harm to the mystique of the band.

There were those fake clips too…

Oh god, that was awful. Did you actually hear the music?

Yeah.

I just wanted to say “Please! This is not us!” But I just thought, anyone with a discerning ear will know.

These last years you’ve tended to play most instruments yourself and stick to producing – what’s it like getting back to the coalface?

It’s just bloody nice. They’re good, attentive musicians. The secret of a good jam is to have everybody listen to everyone else, so that the best musical threads get amplified and get expanded on. As soon as you realise this is happening, you start grinning like an idiot. And then you start thinking, what else can we do? “Well, here are some chords, let’s work on those.” “All right then.”
 
Strangely for me I suppose, the record was actually written and recorded at the same time. We were in the studio, we were recording all the time: this bit will go great with that part, play them together, polish them up, overdubs and stuff like that…. The whole thing was this great organic process. And when you listen to stuff back, you’d think “Wow, that bit’s great”, and that will inspire you to do something else. That’s kind of new for me to do it that way. For me we’ve always done the songs live and then gone in and done the record.

Sounds like a very democratic collaboration too.

Some things are more one person than others, but the way we worked on the tracks, it’s not just about the songs, it’s about the performance and the parts. We’re just going to say that everything’s written by Them Crooked Vultures. Make it a bit easier. You can’t quantify anybody’s input into every bit of music.

Is Alain Johannes on the record at all?

He recorded some of the vocals and maybe one interlude, but basically it was the three of us in the studio. Basically the guitar parts are really complicated so we really needed someone else to take with us live. He also plays bass while I play mandolin, and he plays some of my keyboard parts when I play bass, and all that sort of stuff. It was just to make it as nearly a full a sound as the record.

And how did you come to strap on a keytar?

Ah ha. Well. How did that happen? We played one song around a loop that I discovered that I really liked. A loop from some obscure ’60s tune. Basically the loop went into the computer and we did the solo around it. And we thought, how on earth are we going to do this on stage? Rather than sit at a laptop, I thought, ah, let’s get a keytar on eBay, which I think I did. And hopefully we bring a smile to people’s faces. Keeping it in time, that’s the hard thing. Once you kick a sample off, off it goes, there’s nothing you can do about it. Hmm. Maybe I should give keytar lessons.

So just how close is that live mammoth rock sound to the sound of the studio album?

It’s pretty rocky, I have to say. [laughs] There’s one quieter tune but generally it’s pretty rocky. I still think they’re fairly dynamic. There’s tension and release. And we did about 18 songs that aren’t even on the record – maybe they’ll turn up on another record.

Not just a one-off thing then? You see yourself sticking together?

Yeah I hope so. I’m not planning anything. Eventually their bands will want them back I suppose.

You’re out of the shadow of that giant airship finally.

Yeah, you could put it that way. Nobody shouts for Zeppelin songs or Queens songs or Foo Fighters songs. It seems like the audience is behind us. They want to hear Them Crooked Vultures – and they’re happy to hear it.

Darryn King

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Them Crooked Vultures debut album is out now.

THEM CROOKED VULTURES - AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2010

January 19 - Perth, Challenge Stadium     
January 22 - Melbourne, Festival Hall
January 25 - Brisbane, Riverstange
January 26 - Sydney, Hodern Pavilion