Bob Rock's Work With Led Zeppelin Soundalike 'Insulted' John Paul Jones

Legendary producer Bob Rock has helped bring to life some of the biggest albums of the '80s and '90s.

But his resume of influential records didn't intrigue Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones as much as his work with the hugely successful but widely-skewered German Led Zeppelin soundalike Kingdom Come.

Rock tells Tone-Talk that his once-in-a-lifetime meeting with the Led Zeppelin bassist/keyboardist/arranger went south after Jones realized his connection to Kingdom Come.

"I went for dinner with him," Rock said of his summit with Jones. "And we were talking about all sorts of things. And we ended up going to this house of the A&R guy [Derek Shulman], and we had had a couple of bottles of win. And [Jones] found out I did Kingdom Come, and he started ragging on me and I had to leave. He was so insulted that I did Kingdom Come. And I was going, 'Dude, you don't get it. We did this because we love you guys so much.' It was horrible."

Kingdom Come's self-titled 1988 debut album went gold on the strength of international hits "What Love Can Be" and "Get It On" — songs which bear striking similarities to Led Zeppelin's "Since I've Been Loving You" and "Kashmir," respectively.

Rock says the band wanted to capture a Zeppelin-like sound in the studio — something different from what most of their contemporaries were going for at the time — so they "tried to get as close as we could."

Kingdom Come's debut didn't sit well with Jimmy Page either. Page once suggested that the band's sound crossed the line between "being a compliment" and "ripping riffs right off."

Photo: Getty Images


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