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New Brian Jones book (Read 2,090 times)
KMC
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New Brian Jones book
Oct 10th, 2014 at 6:26pm
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Just out this week and began reading mine today. Expected it to be a rehash of previous info, but so far find it to be the most detailed account of Brian Jones start in music and some new insights into the formation of the Stones.

http://www.amazon.com/Brian-Jones-Making-Rolling-Stones/dp/0670014745/ref=pd_ys_...
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Re: New Brian Jones book
Reply #1 - Oct 11th, 2014 at 1:06pm
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WOW two new books about Brian, not sure how big is the market for this subject

Here's a repost from the Brian Jones thread:

Sympathy for an angel: Brian Jones from The Stones Sympathy for the Devil: The Birth of the Rolling Stones and the Death of Brian Jones

by Paul Trynka. Bantam Press, hdbk, 368 pages, €24.99

...
19-year-old actress Anita Pallenberg with Brian Jones, guitarist and founder member of the Rolling Stones at Heathrow Airport.


George Byrne on a book which says the angelic looking Brian Jones never got the credit he deserved in The Rolling Stones

Any teenager now looking back at early photos of The Beatles or The Rolling Stones could be forgiven for wondering how on earth these people were ever considered a threat to society, the former seeming like a jolly bunch of lads and the latter looking like trainee accountants. Yet that wave of British acts were at the cusp of the Generation Gap, born with Luftwaffe bombs falling on their native cities and hitting their late teens just as their parents wondered why they'd ever bothered fighting Hitler in the first place if this was how the young lot were going to turn out.

And if ever a story told the tale of a seismic schism in society then it's that of Brian Jones.

Born in 1942 in Cheltenham, Lewis Brian Jones was an angelic-looking but asthmatic child. Growing up in a household with a domineering, repressed father and submissive mother, Jones took up clarinet at an early age and soon proved to be a natural musician, moving to guitar and developing an interest in jazz, rock'n'roll and, particularly, the blues.

His mastery of electric slide guitar made him a musician to watch and a move to London was inevitable, not least because he had two legal firms in Cheltenham on his case trying to get him out of town, young Brian having got at least four girls pregnant by the time he was 19. Veteran British r'n'b bandleader Alexis Korner was sceptical of Brian's claim that the blues could become a mainstream, popular music but by the time The Rolling Stones played their first gig at the Marquee in July 1962, Jones was convinced that his musical destiny was in his hands.

Make no mistake, it's quite clear that for the first three years of their existence, the Stones were Brian's band. He was the musical director, showed Keith Richards how to achieve his unique tuning (Richards later claimed otherwise), chose much of the material and passed his harmonica tips on to Mick Jagger. And after all this he was eventually shafted.

Author Paul Trynka is a former editor of Mojo magazine and one thing which you certainly couldn't accuse him of is glorifying the subjects here. It's quite clear that The Rolling Stones were an appalling bunch of people to be around, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman excepted. When Jones was inviting Jagger and Richards to join the band, Korner advised 'take one, don't take them both', rightly reckoning that the two Dartford schoolchums would eventually gang up on the leader.

Things really got nasty when young chancer Andrew Loog Oldham took over the band's management, riding roughshod over a previous arrangement they'd had, sidelining original member Ian 'Stu' Stewart and intent on alienating Jones in favour of the Jagger/Richards axis.

One of Brian's early girlfriends, Pat Andrews, describes a 'sexually predatory atmosphere' surrounding the band, with members continually trying to shift each other's girlfriends in a bizarre litany of sexual one-upmanship. In later years this would see Keith steal Anita Pallenberg from Brian, after Jagger had slept with her on the set of Performance, while by way of revenge Keith shared a night of passion (and, more than likely, drugs) with Mick's partner Marianne Faithfull. God, you would not want to have been anywhere next nor near these people.

And yet, while all this carry-on was happening, the band were still making great music, aided in no small part by Jones' expertise as a multi-instrumentalist and arranger. His contributions to 'Under My Thumb', 'Lady Jane', 'Paint it Black' and 'Ruby Tuesday' effectively made those songs yet all the credit - and the royalties - went to Jagger and Richards.

Yet while Brian could be a venal monster with a vicious streak and 'a horrible attitude to women', according to London scenester Barry Miles, he did truly love the music he'd grown up with. Just look at the smile on his face as he introduces blues legend Howlin' Wolf on US TV show Shindig in 1965. This was a black blues musician being granted access to mainstream American television audiences courtesy of a pasty-faced chap from Cheltenham at a time when America was tearing itself apart with racial tensions. That's some achievement.

Brian's decline, when it came, was swift and not particularly pretty. In Jean-Luc Godard's One plus One from 1968 he's practically unrecognisable as the band try to work up a version of 'Sympathy for the Devil' and clearly a liability in the studio. Indeed, he'd be gone from the band in six months.

Being kicked out of your own band would be hard enough to take for most people, far less someone who was emotionally fragile, paranoid that the police were out to get him and taking far too many drugs.

It all came to an end on the night of July 2, 1969 when he drowned in his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm, East Sussex. There have been several shadowy conspiracy theories that Jones was murdered but Trynka dismisses these as nonsense and I reckon he's right to do so, given that there's no evidence whatsoever to back any of them up.

Bran Jones was a fabulous musician if deeply flawed human being and there's a great, cautionary tale to be found in these pages. Interestingly enough, when the Rolling Stones played Hyde Park this year there wasn't a single mention of or nod to the man who founded the band over 50 years ago. Reading Sympathy for the Devil, that won't come as any great surprise.

Available with free P&P on www.kennys.ie or by calling 091 709350
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Re: New Brian Jones book
Reply #2 - Oct 12th, 2014 at 8:49am
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Just realized, think we're talking about the same book.
Same author, different titles. Looks like one is the English release, the one I referred to is the American version with different cover picture and later release date.
Both are available on Amazon.
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Re: New Brian Jones book
Reply #3 - Oct 14th, 2014 at 11:39am
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Yes, two releases, one in USA and same book with different title in UK. I've just started reading it, and it is different from most of the other Brian books. In a positive way. It's not as full of
"sensational~ism" .  It is a very informative biography.
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Reply #4 - Oct 15th, 2014 at 6:25pm
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Interesting as I've always seen Brian as a good guy at what he did best, but in terms arrangement and so on he played everything sorta half-assed (except for horns and Mellotron - he WAS really damn good at these - it's no wonder that although I'm not much of an Aftermath fan, my fave record with the Stones with him is hands down Between the Buttons (the one that Jagger dislikes the most and is quoted as saying something to the effect of, concerning "Ruby Tuesday": "Beautiful song...I've had nothing to do with it") and my third Satanic Majesties (that album in mono is something to behold) (and well, the second is No. 2 - plenty of Brian in there too, in his prime) (plus aside from the US OOOH, I don't like the US discography at all, what with shit albums like 12X5 coming out after something so fuckin' tube as their first album and the same with December's Children and Flowers) (same thing with the Fab Four - love Yesterday and Today (actual real stereo copies such as my 1966 reel tape and sans that uglyass butcher cover that everybody bakes a cake over for no clear reason at all, but I digress) but loathe the rest.

Anyways, with or without sensationalistic shit I think the real truth lies somewhere in between. As in: Brian COULD be an asshole OR NOT, whenever he wanted to, and while I'm sure he went uncredited on a lot of stuff, he wasn't too good enough to do any more than the arrangement part - not knocking the guy; that in and of itself ALREADY shows hints that he could have more than a thing or two to do with the songs he arranged than just arrangements. (And I'm pretty sure that Ruby Tuesday is not only his and Keith's work solely - Bill had a hand on it too other than just that shifty half assed explaining that both he and Keith worked on bowing the doublebass)

But facts are facts and Brian did his share of doublecrossing the guys (extra payments at the beginning since he was the leader behind everyone's back; playing "Jingle Bells" on guitar in some random song by the time the shit hit the fan for good in '66 and '67 (heck, there's OFFICIAL proof of him sabotaging a Rolling Stones song live - "The Last Time" on GLIYWI, anyone?))

And then again there's shit like the doubt on whether he was thrown out or quit the band; heck, he spent more time around Jimi Hendrix than the Stones by '68; doesn't that spell "I don't give a fuck anymore" rather than "Brian was too out of it, drugged out on mandies and shit"?

Like I've said, everything should be taken with a grain of salt and if I may repeat myself, the truth lies somewhere in between.

That Keith was equally an asshole when he wanted, and so was Jagger (Mick T's stolen songs, and the way Keith treated Taylor, anyone?) is pretty obvious - it took me reading Keith's autobiography to conclude "Yeah, I'd hang around with the guy for a jam or something once in a blue moon, but hell if I wanted to be a friend of this asshole", and that's HIS book with HIS own words on it. The more I read it, the more facetious it seemed to me, and well, I'm pretty sure he's a great guy when it comes to music, but suffers from some really shiity and debatable personality traits, and HE gave a clue to that to me on his official autobiography.

Point is, sick fucks in bands from the 60's are anywhere - even the Beatles (especially John, who I actually give the benefit of the doubt, but then again he was who I wanted to be as a kid, so my judgement is clouded about this, but make no mistake: he could be one sad and sorry motherfucker, that I know for a fact, and let's not even mention Sir Macca) and the Beach Boys, who I love - the Stones are pansies compared to how much of a virulent and nasty, decadent sick bunch the Beach Boys were (and are, given that they're just Mike Love and Bruce "Butters" Johnston with a bunch of backup musicians nowadays).

Books about bands and their members aren't so good at portraying anything accurately since by default the writer WILL be biased when writing them.

Stick with the word of mouth; rumors and bullshit aplenty to filter, but that's where the REAL accurate info is. Say, that latest book about Malcolm, George and Angus Young "reveals the truth" about them - my ASS it does.
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‘Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones,’ a Biography
Reply #5 - Nov 17th, 2014 at 12:27pm
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