On the phone from his home in London, Jones, the former bassist from LED ZEPPELIN, tells Nova THEM CROOKED VULTURES - also featuring Dave Grohl (FOO FIGHTERS) and Josh Homme (QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE) - tried to steer clear of press and promo through the creative process to avoid unnecessary hype surrounding their highly anticipated release.
“We kept it quiet so there wasn’t all the speculation and the pressure. There was enough pressure between ourselves to do a really good record, and we did try to impress each other,” he says, laughing. “We just didn’t’ want everybody to go ‘What’s it like? What does it sound like? When’s it going to be out? What are they doing?’ There will be time for all that. We just wanted to get on and concentrate on the music.”
Whether intentional or not, the band’s hesitation to divulge details resulted in plenty of question marks and an incredible amount of interest. Jones says the way they chose to approach this album – and their current tour – flipped the usual record release conventions upside down, and proved to be a brilliant way to launch into their new musical journey.
“Touring’s been fantastic considering nobody really knows – apart from a few camera phone renditions on YouTube - what we’re doing. It’s 90 minutes now and it’s all new stuff. To have an audience just stand there and listen, and take it all in – it’s just amazing. They’re reacting really, really well and it’s new for them because normally they would have heard the record first and know the lyrics. It’s a new experience which they look like they’re enjoying and they sound like they’re enjoying, certainly.”
“It rocks like fuck," Jones adds. "What can I tell you? When people ask what it sounds like, it sounds like me playing bass and Dave playing drums and Josh singing and playing guitar. It’s very obvious. It’s just us – it’s straight ahead, it’s very honest and it really rocks. It’s multi-layered and sounds fantastic. We love it. We play it and we’re like ‘Wow, this is really good’.”
The trio started working on the album in February and have put it together pretty quickly. Jones says from the get-go everything fell into place, and the culmination of years of industry experience has proven to be invaluable through their creative process. “We all listen to each other. With the experience (we have) nobody has to explain anything to anybody else. If something’s not working, everybody knows it’s not working. And also, when you’re with experienced musicians, you can fail. You can try something out knowing that it might now work,” he says.
“There are so many parallels with the old Zeppelin days. Again, we’re making music that we want to make. You’re not thinking ‘What’s going to sell? What is everybody else going to like?’ We’re making music for ourselves and Zeppelin was exactly the same. We never thought ‘What’s the new record going to be like?’ We just got the songs together. It’s all an organic process. None of it’s manufactured.”
Read the entire interview here.
Them Crooked Vultures are streaming their self-titled debut album due out November 17 in the United States and Canada on DGC/Interscope Records, on YouTube below:
