This is the seventh part of the transcript of my interview with John Paul Jones, conducted Dec. 10, 2001.
SPS: Your relationship with Phil Carson. Did he actually fill in for you in Japan in about 1971?
JPJ: Fill in? [Laughs] No. He used to get him onstage. He was a bass player and used to play with Dusty Springfield. I mean, just for a laugh, on the encore. I think we used to do "Rock and Roll" as an encore or, maybe, or …
SPS: "Summertime Blues."
JPJ: Oh, right. So I used to go on piano and go, "Come on, Phil. Come play the bass." That was it. And he would love it! He would go, "Oh, all right, man." He could go… We knew he'd pretend to play well. He could just [repeats a single note on the bass, then another note], and it was just great! It was a laugh.
SPS: There was rumor – I guess it was proven to be incorrect – that you had taken some dates off in Japan. You were sick or something like that and that he filled in for you. But I'm like, "Wait, 'The Song Remains the Same'…"?
JPJ: No, you see, this … Exactly, this stuff becomes fact. Nobody thinks about, "Can this be true?" As you said, it came to be obviously rubbish!
SPS: Right. Now that we have almost every single concert out there [on bootleg audio], we listen and we go, "No, that can't be Phil Carson. [Laughs] That's freakin' Jonesy."
JPJ: Yeah. I don't think so, no. [Laughs] No! But you'll hear him right at the end on, as you say – what was that song again?
SPS: "Summertime Blues."
JPJ: "Summertime Blues."
On to part eight: John Paul Jones on the "drag queen" story.
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