A number of big-name artists were on hand to pay tribute to Led Zeppelin at Sunday night’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony, and surely many more would have lined up for the chance to perform the band’s music with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones (not to mention President Obama) in attendance. 

But only one of those artists at the Kennedy Center, other than Plant and Page, has called John Paul Jones “bandmate.” That would be Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl (who was actually playing drums at the ceremony).  Grohl, along with Josh Homme (frontman of hard rock band Queens Of The Stone Age), played with Jones in a group called Them Crooked Vultures.  The band put out a self titled album in 2009 and toured for a few months after that. 

Jones had played on the Foo Fighters’ 2005 album In Your Honor (playing mandolin on “Another Round” and piano on “Miracle”), and at the 2008 GRAMMYS, he conducted an orchestra that backed the Foo Fighters on their performance of “The Pretender.” But Grohl tells CBS Local that actually being in a band with the man meant a great deal to him.  

“It was one of the highlights of my life when John Paul Jones said, ‘Now I’ve been in two great bands.’ That was a huge deal for me!”  

These days, Jones stays busy with a number of projects: he’s worked with bluegrass singer/fiddler Sara Watkins, gut-bucket blues legend Seasick Steve and noise rock icons Sonic Youth in recent years.  Grohl, of course, has the Foo Fighters and just directed his first documentary, Sound City. But he says that Them Crooked Vultures will fly again. “We’ve talked about it, I know that someday we’ll get back together and do stuff, because we love playing with each other.”