The legacy of Brian Jones lives on
By JOHN KRYK -- Sun Media
June 28.2009
Article w/vidoeos
http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/R/Rolling_Stones/2009/06/24/9913351-sun.html In 1962 Brian Jones formed the Rolling Stones, named the band the Rolling Stones, picked the songs the Rolling Stones played, hustled all the gigs for the Rolling Stones, chartered the musical direction and non-conformist vision for the Rolling Stones -- and was the unquestioned leader of the Rolling Stones.
Seven years later, he was fired by the Rolling Stones.
A month after that, he was dead.
Of all the 40-year-anniversary musical and cultural milestones you'll be blasted with this summer, the story of the enigmatic Jones -- who died 40 years ago this week -- is one you probably won't read much about elsewhere.
Magnetic, sympathetic, adorable, deplorable, handsome, heartless, self-assured, self-absorbed, talent-rich but insecure -- Brian Jones was all these things rolled into one. Out of all that, he became arguably the first patron saint of "sex, drugs and rock and roll."
Sex? He fathered three children out of wedlock before even forming the Stones, then quickly had another, all before age 20. He once claimed to have bedded 64 groupies in one month. Sixty-four!
Drugs? He was the first Stone to try all the hard ones, and he was burned out before most people had even heard of Timothy Leary.
Rock and roll? Well, Jones formed the Stones as a blues and R&B band. But later, when singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards began producing their own rock compositions, Jones contributed some of the most memorable rock sounds of the 1960s.
Jones also was a fashion pioneer, paving the way for the gender-blurred glam-rock statements of the early 1970s.
He even beat Jimi, Janis, Jim, Duane and all the rest up the stairway to rock 'n' roll heaven.
But back to the band's beginning.
It was in April 1962 when Mick Jagger, a university economics major who sang blues only on weekends, and his quiet, ambition-free friend Keith Richards first laid their eyes and ears on Brian Jones. It was at a blues gig, and Jones was showing off his acumen as the first great slide guitar player in England.
Mick and Keith were awestruck by Jones that day, and were ecstatic to be asked by Jones to join the blues band he was forming. The trio eventually lived together in squalor in a seedy London flat, as Jones started pulling the whole thing together. He and Keith were the tight ones, while Jagger attended classes or studied. By December 1962, Jones allowed bassist Bill Wyman to join. A month later, Jones' pestering paid off when highly regarded jazz and blues drummer Charlie Watts agreed to come aboard.
By May 1963, the Stones were the hottest London-based band. And Jones was getting as many squeals from the girls as Jagger.
Young hotshot producer/promoter Andrew Loog Oldham signed the Stones to Decca, and Stones-mania in England began in earnest. These were the absolute best of times for Brian Jones.
But by the end of 1963 the power base within the band began to shift, thanks to two situations.
First, at an October tour stop in Liverpool, Jones let it slip to the other Stones that he was planning on staying in a nicer hotel than the rest of them.
"He had an arrangement ... that, as leader of the band, he was entitled to this extra (five pounds a week) payment," Richards recalled. "When we discovered this, everybody freaked out, and that was the beginning of the decline of Brian."
Second, producer Oldham correctly was panicking that the Stones' shelf-life would be short if they couldn't come up with original material, like the Beatles. Jones, Richards and Jagger all tried to write bluesy pop songs and failed miserably. Jones especially struggled. As the legend goes, Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen until they produced a decent song. The Glimmer Twins were born.
Over the next two years the Stones shot to worldwide fame, thanks in large part to their 1965 monster hit (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction -- a Jagger/Richards composition. It was a song on which Jones had almost no musical role, which pained him. Jones would act out, screwing over the others in little ways, but also in big ways, such as missing concerts and recording sessions.
By the end of 1965, with Mick clearly the leader on stage and in the press, and Keith now the leader in the studio, Jones was becoming an after-thought. Crestfallen, he turned to drink.
"Brian was in bad shape, far away from the rest of the band," Richards told Playboy in 1989. "He needed to be in a f---ing hospital. He needed help. Then he turned up with Anita."
That would be Anita Pallenberg.
A drop-dead gorgeous actress from Germany, Pallenberg defined blond ambition in Swinging London. Jagger, Richards and just about everyone else wanted her badly, but she threw in with Jones, giving him a great boost of confidence at the exact time he needed it.
Unable to write hit songs himself, Jones resolved to embellish the Jagger/Richards pop-rock compositions by learning to play any instrument he could procure. With his immense talent, he added vital, exotic, fresh sounds to the Stones' musical pallet -- from sitar (Paint It Black) to marimbas (Under My Thumb) to Japanese koto (Mother's Little Helper) to dulcimer (Lady Jane) to accordion (Backstreet Girl) to recorder and cello (Ruby Tuesday).
By the end of '66, the Stones -- like the Beatles before them -- quit touring after three gruelling years. Richards and Jones became tight again. Brian and Anita's flat was party central for the coolest artists.
But Jones' renaissance was short-lived.
On a group trip to Morocco in March 1967, he sensed Pallenberg was falling in love with Richards and, in an insane attempt to show her who was boss, insisted she join him in bed with a couple of Moroccan prostitutes. When she declined, Jones beat her up.
The next day, Richards and Pallenberg made their dramatic escape, fleeing the country together. In one fell swoop, Jones lost his best friend, the love of his life to that best friend, and any last chance he'd ever have to retake control of his band. Triple catastrophe.
The final two years of his life were, in a word, ruinous. Many photos of him in '67, '68 and '69 are painful to look at.
Drugs became his grieving soul's salve, but he couldn't handle them. He took LSD, pot and cocaine, yes, but mostly he gobbled uppers and downers -- "prescription death," as Pallenberg later called it. Washed down by lots of alcohol.
Occasionally he could pull himself together long enough to add splashes of brilliance in the studio -- such as his otherworldly mellotron on 2000 Light Years From Home, or his whole new style of country slide guitar phrasing on No Expectations. More often, it got to the point that Jagger and Richards sometimes wouldn't even turn on the tape machine in the studio as Jones strummed away on some guitar part that sounded good only in his head. "He became something you just sat in the corner," Richards said.
No shortage of people reached out to try to help. But it was a chore.
"He ended up the kind of guy that you'd dread when he'd come on the phone," John Lennon said in the '70s. "He was really in a lot of pain ... He was one of them guys that disintegrated in front of you."
By April 1969 Jones was no longer bothering to show up at recording sessions. A month later, guitarist Mick Taylor was picked to replace him. In early June, Jagger, Richards and Watts drove to Jones' rural estate to inform him they were kicking him out of, well, his band. He made it easy for them.
Over the next few weeks, Jones talked excitedly about forming a new band that would play upbeat, raw, rootsy rock like Credence Clearwater Revival. Some think former Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell was on board.
But on the night of July 3, 1969, Brian Jones was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was 27.
The coroner ruled it an accident -- death by misadventure -- after Jones had consumed a large quantity of downers and alcohol. Rumours and, later, authors alleged he was murdered. No proof.
Years later, after Richards eventually dumped her, Pallenberg remarked that even though Jones died, his personas have lived on in the forms of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Think about it: A serious student before he met Jones, Jagger seemingly becomes more and more hung up on topping Jones' roguish sexual exploits (Mick is up to seven children by four women) -- while Richards, a shy, confidence-lacking layabout before he met Jones, relishes his rep as rock's baddest bad boy and champion drug-taker.
More than three decades later, Bill Wyman summed up the original Rolling Stone this way:
"Brian was weak, had hang-ups and at times was a pain in the arse. But he named us, we were his idea and he chose what we first played ...
"Brian Jones is a legend and his legacy is there for all to hear. While the Rolling Stones damaged all of us in some way, Brian was the only one who died."
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