keithsgirl
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Re: Brian.........part 16a
Reply #14 - Apr 15th, 2008 at 12:48am
Old interview/article I found on the archives at novogate.
Western Daily Press
MY BRIAN WAS A NICE BOY . . . THE TERRIBLE THINGS THEY SAID ABOUT HIM HURT ME
09:30 - 05 July 2005 It wasn't the best chat-up line in history, but it broke the ice with the cool Scandinavian beauty. "Where do you come from?" rock star Brian Jones asked mini-skirted Anna Wohlin as she danced the night away in the Soho nightclub.
It was enough to start a long relationship with the dark-haired children's nanny with searing Baltic blue eyes. And it would end only with the brutal murder of the Rolling Stone two years later.
It was 1967 and the Sixties were well and truly swinging. Anna had studied English in Swansea as a 17-year-old and loved Britain so much she had now come back to live in Hampstead, north London, above The Witches' Cauldron.
It was a dive bar that had launched the careers of Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry among scores of others.
The owner capitalised on his success and opened the infamous Speakeasy and Revolution clubs.
It was in the Speakeasy that Anna was approached by the diminutive rock star.
"I didn't know much about the Stones then," says Anna, breaking a silence of 35 years to talk to the Western Daily Press.
"I was having a great time and didn't want to go out with him. I wanted to be free and do what I wanted, when I wanted.
"He was nice and very polite and wellmannered, but quite shy. And I was 21 and in London to have a good time.
"Brian was very persistent after that but I made him work very hard before I went out with him."
Jones, the multi-talented Cheltenham enfant terrible who formed the world's greatest rock band, was just a few years older but already had five children by five different women.
And he had recently been dating Anita Pallenberg, another Swedish bombshell.
In those days a rock star wasn't taken seriously if he didn't have a Scandinavian beauty on his arm.
Anna, from a wealthy Stockholm family might have been young, but she knew the score. And she fast realised that Brian Jones had a reputation for fast cars, even faster women and a destructive taste for drink and drugs.
Yet within two years they were living together in Cotchford Farm, Sussex, the former home of Winnie the Pooh creator AA Milne.
And now, tragically just weeks before his mysterious death by drowning, Jones had asked Anna to marry him.
"Brian had totally cleaned himself up," Anna says as she sips a red wine overlooking a lake close to her home in the upmarket Stockholm suburb of Bromma.
"If anything I was the bad one. I was doing a little amphetamine then, but Brian wasn't doing any drugs at all.
"And he told me to stop doing speed. He was absolutely petrified about being busted by the police and ending up in prison.
"He knew he wouldn't be able to cope with that. And he was also worried about not being allowed into America because of a drugs conviction.
"And he didn't drink much either then. I know he has always had a terrible reputation and that has hurt me. Then he had changed.
We were looking to the future and he wanted us to start a family.
"He said the farm was meant for children and that is what we planned. He also wanted to start breeding horses, which he loved. He was a real country boy, from his background in the West of England.
"He had done his wild stuff, that was before me. The Brian I knew was very calm and content. He was upset that he had left the Stones, but understood, because it was like a divorce.
"He still loved Mick and the rest and they loved him. They weren't at war." Jones, the brains behind the band and the co-writer of many of the Stones' greatest early hits, was beginning to work more and more with his best pal, John Lennon.
Lennon had been troubled by his relationship with The Beatles and found a soul-mate in Jones.
Often Lennon would travel to the farm to spend time with Jones and Anna. "John was a perfect gentleman," Anna recalls. "He was so polite and so witty. But very relaxed and quiet.
"The two boys would go into Brian's music room to try songs out while I went to the pool to sunbathe or swim. I was young, I didn't care about the music.
"But afterwards I would collate all the tapes they had recorded and put them into order. There were dozens of them.
"Goodness knows where they went. After Brian died (she believes he was drowned by his in-house builder Frank Thoroughgood) everything was taken away. All our possessions vanished. I was heartbroken, Brian was the love of my life and we had planned the future together.
"In an instant my whole world changed." At the weekend a bust of Jones was unveiled in Cheltenham town centre.
Anna has never given an interview before but she has written a book called: The Murder of Brian Jones, released by Blake Publishing.
"I just feel the truth should be told because Brian has been demonised and cannot speak for himself," says Anna.
"I loved him and still do. It was an awful thing that happened that night. A total tragedy."
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