Ritchie Yorke interviews John Paul Jones

Ritchie York, who goes back a long way with Zeppelin, (I have a book by him, The Led Zeppelin Biography, dated 1976) has an interview with John Paul Jones in which it is suggested Jones says - read his lips - no new tour!

The article in the Brisbane Times, Led Zeppelin's Back, features a sit down chat in London with Yorke and Jones. According to Yorke:

Unlike the various other bands currently squeezing superannuation funds from reunion tours, the Zep team (a) doesn't need the money, and (b) values far too deeply the extent of their creative contributions to rock 'n' roll to jeopardise it.

You could reasonably assert that it is the purity of their brand - not tarnished by hasty reunion efforts or other tawdry endeavors - that is responsible for the awesome 20-million on-line enquiries about ticket sales when the November 26 concert was announced.

While there is no direct quote from Jones regarding touring - We will not tour dammit - Jones does discuss how things are progressing:

Well yes, we are pretty excited about this and also a bit daunted...

But we know how to deal with it...

We're totally sure that this is the right thing to do, and we are taking it very seriously...

The only trouble we had at the first rehearsal last week was remembering in some songs 'did it go this way, or was there another chorus?'...

I don't want to be on stage at the Dome thinking like that. I want to be just so familiar with the material - so that we can give a proper performance rather than just remember how this or that song went...

Initially I was invited to join in a memorial concert for Ahmet in New York performing with the likes of Ben E King last January. Then Robert let it be known that he would rather do something for Ahmet in England...

Originally we were going to play the Royal Albert Hall, along with another night with some other acts. Then the Royal Albert was deemed too small and it moved to the Dome...

At first, we would be playing 40 minutes, then it went to an hour. I was a bit reluctant along the way because I wasn't sure whether I wanted to part of getting that whole circus on the road again. But I was persuaded to try out a rehearsal to see if we really wanted to play together...

That first rehearsal this month was just amazing, it took us back to that first meeting in '68. So we decided to go ahead and we will be putting in some serious rehearsal sessions right up until the show itself.

While Yorke is a credible Zeppelin source, nowhere in that article does Jones say "No Tour," although that by no means suggests he didn't say it.