John Jones Music

John Jones Music on Soundcloud

1 – Hide Your Love Away – December 24, 1993. The Dell, Hollywood.
2 – No More War II – 1985. With Dee Long. Fairlight at ESP in Buttonville.
3 – Are You Well – 1980. Fairlight at ESP in Buttonville.
4 – Second Stand – 1976 – With Steve Vaughan & Cam Hawkins at Toronto Sound.

It seems such a long time ago that we were celebrating my brother’s fourth birthday when the news came that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas! I was almost six, but the impact was huge on all of us, even those of us who were living in Ottawa, Canada at the time. And my Mother was just five days from delivering another son.

On a very cold morning in 2007, I visited Dallas, Texas. I parked the rental car as close to Dealey Plaza as I could. It was very confusing, but I got a parking meter a few blocks from the scene of the crime. Fortunately I did, because I might not have found any reference to Kennedy if I had landed in Dealey Plaza, where there is nothing but a very sad X in the middle of the westbound side of the road; the spot where the President of the United States was murdered on November 22, 1963.

The museum in the old School Book Depository has an effigy of Oswald in the top floor window. When you stand on the X and look up at that window, only 200 yards away, you can’t help but feel that something was terribly wrong with the investigation of the President’s murder.

What a great experience it was to make this track! It is one of the best I have been privileged to work on!

The original phone call came from Nick Rhodes, who suggested that we get the 2″ master tapes from EMI, for all of Duran Duran’s hit songs, and then sample/record the vocal and instrumental hooks, and then use those hooks to make a catchy promo-song for their upcoming Decade CD (greatest hits)

At the time, we were recording the Liberty album with Chris Kimsey and Chris Potter at Olympic Studio in Barnes. I was sorely missed over at AIR Studios in Oxford Circus where Dee Long was holding fort. But we couldn’t have asked for a better project or client than Duran Duran, so we got the list from EMI and ordered the two inch tapes of all the hits, and Dee got to work over in Studio 5, sampling and setting up the sounds across the keyboard for us to jam with!

It’s fair to say that Dee did this in a most musical way, which helped me come up with the basic track, which then grew with the input of Nick, Simon, and then the awesome bass playing of John Taylor, who knew instantly what he had to do to bring the whole picture together and make the song and the track gel!
All we had to do after that was steal Chris Potter away from the Liberty sessions long enough to get it mixed! Voila!

Sterling Campbell and Warren Cuccurullo in last frames.
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Emily recording at Grape Place

Here is a page that will play almost every song that I have worked on with Emily Richards over the past 15 years! There is also a link to some of the details of each track.

Emily Richards & John Jones Recording history playlist (spotify)

AIR Studios, located in the ballroom on the fourth floor at Oxford Circus

I scanned an article printed by AIR Studios in 1988 to promote their UK recording studio on Oxford Street in London. It is mostly an interview with then AIR manager Malcolm Atkin, who is now Chairman of the APRS.

The article is an excellent overview of the state of the art of recording equipment at that time, and includes a quote and a photo of me sitting at the desk in Studio 5.

UP IN THE AIR 1988 (a link to the official AIR Studios press release from 1988 in pdf)

1947 Blues standard “Stormy Monday” from T-Bone Walker!

The smoking gun!

A long time ago, in a land far away…more than 30 years ago…

Alice Cooper came to ESP Studios in Buttonville with Bob Ezrin, Dick Wagner, and Ringo Hrycyna to record DaDa.

Dee Long helped with the engineering and the Fairlight programming and I helped Dee and Alice.

Listen to it on Spotify here – Play DaDa here

March 11 is the 2nd anniversary of the Tohoku Earthquake tragedy in Japan, “the fourth largest earthquake in history”.

Proceeds from Nick Wood’s song Hope, that we recorded with Julian Lennon and Tetsuya Komuro for the first anniversary in 2012, go to the Beyond Tomorrow organisation who are dedicated to helping the orphaned children of the disaster.

Click here to go to Nick’s blog, where you will find links to the videos and to sites where you can purchase the song around the world.

Yes, Hitler Has Only Got One Ball by john jones, is available now on iTunes!

click to go to iTunes store

From the upcoming album History Sings, and based on the famous Colonel Bogey March.

During World War II, British school boys sang “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball”, in defiance of Nazi propaganda. Seventy years after Hitler’s death, his “long-lost medical notes seem to confirm that the Nazi leader suffered from cryptorchidism, or an undescended right testicle.”

Farm Fur rehearsal at Drumroll – Dean Deleo, Miles Joseph, Robert Deleo, Steve Ferrone, Brian Auger. A film clip by John Jones ©2005.