John Paul Jones ( b7 )

 Following exhausting tours and extended periods of time away from his family, by late 1973 Jones was beginning to show signs of disillusionment. He considered quitting Led Zeppelin to spend more time with his family, but was talked into returning by the band's manager, Peter Grant. He joked that he was interested in becoming the choirmaster of Winchester Cathedral, which was reported as fact in several sources. Jones later explained his reservations:

I didn't want to harm the group, but I didn't want my family to fall apart either. We toured a huge amount in those early days. We were all very tired and under pressure and it just came to a head. When I first joined the band, I didn't think it would go on for that long, two or three years perhaps, and then I'd carry on with my career as a musician and doing movie music.

"Royal Orleans"

It is rumoured that the Led Zeppelin song "Royal Orleans", from their album Presence, is about an experience Jones once had on tour in the United States. The song is about a person who mistakenly takes a drag queen up to his hotel room, who then falls asleep with a joint of marijuana in hand, lighting the room on fire. "Royal Orleans" was the name of a hotel where the members of Led Zeppelin would stay when they visited New Orleans, because not as many people asked for autographs there. In an interview he gave to Mojo magazine in 2007, Jones clarified the reliability of this rumour, stating:

The transvestites were actually friends of Richard Cole's; normal friendly people and we were all at some bar. That I mistook a transvestite for a girl is rubbish; that happened in another country to somebody else ... Anyway 'Stephanie' ended up in my room and we rolled a joint or two and I fell asleep and set fire to the hotel room, as you do, ha ha, and when I woke up it was full of firemen!

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