Being Brian Jones's son is the greatest thing that never happened to me
By SCOTT JONES
Last updated at 10:01 PM on 5th February 2011
The Rolling Stone's secret son breaks a 45-year silence to tell the astonishing story of how his quest to find his true identity ended in heartbreak - and why he is CERTAIN his rock star father was murdered.
The son and the Stone: John, pictured left in his teens, and his father Brian, right, look remarkably similar
The black car always came on a Wednesday to take the newborn babies away from the home for unmarried mothers. Nobody would speak. People kept out of the way. Then, afterwards, you would hear the women's anguished cries.
Throughout the Sixties, Beechwood, a large Victorian house in Putney, South-West London, was a conveyor belt of human sadness.
In an upstairs room there were ten beds where young women, trembling with fear and guilt, would give birth and then say the goodbye that would tear them apart from their children.
'The Stones gave my mother £700 - and said she must never talk about me'
In March 1965, one of those women was 19-year-old Dawn Molloy. The budding model had been a regular at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond-upon-Thames, the venue where the Rolling Stones started out in 1963.
And it was there that Dawn met Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Now she was at Beechwood, in a cold and silent bed, waiting for the black car to arrive...
When John Maynard finally saw his birth certificate, and in particular the details about his father, one word stood out. 'It just said musician - there was no name.'
John, a senior manager at the Ford plant in Dagenham, Essex, always knew he was adopted. 'My parents told me when I was young. They have always been very supportive - Mum and Dad have always been there for me.'
One of the band: Dawn Molloy, far right next to lover Brian, with the rest of the Rolling Stones and a friend
He knew that the couple kept a box of letters and documents relating to his birth, ready for him to open when he was 18, if he wanted to. But John was 29 when he finally looked inside.
'When you're adopted, there's what they call a primal wound and I didn't want to go there,' he says. 'I didn't want to open that box and open that wound.
'But when my wife and I had our first child, a daughter, something inside me changed. I stood there in the maternity suite watching this incredible bond develop between mother and daughter and I thought, "How on Earth could anyone ever give a child away?"
'I got books to read about him and looked at pictures to see the resemblance'
'So I called Mum and Dad and said, "OK, it's time for me to look at those papers." I saw that my real mother was called Dawn Molloy, and my original name was Paul Molloy, but there was nothing about my real father. There was no name on the birth certificate - it just said " musician". I never thought...'
Who would? There was nothing to suggest that this anonymous musician was the founder of the Rolling Stones, a fashion icon, a rebel who scared the Establishment with his appetite for drink and drugs, a man who was found dead in his swimming pool in July 1969, aged just 27.
So all John had was the desire to look for his 'flesh and blood'. He had no idea of the tragic and surreal story that was about to unfold, as he traced his journey from growing up with his adoptive family in Devon back to the mayhem of the Stones.
I first spoke to John a few years ago, not long after I started looking into circumstances surrounding Brian Jones's death. Although Jones and I are not related, I have long been intrigued by the enduring mystery of his untimely demise.
Doomed affair: John's mother Dawn and Brian on stage with the Rolling Stones just after John was born in 1965
According to Sussex Police, Brian drowned in his swimming pool during a late-night swim while under the influence of drink and drugs. But in The Mail on Sunday in 2008, I revealed that the police had neglected - possibly deliberately - crucial evidence that Jones died at the hands of Frank Thorogood, a builder-cum-minder who is now dead himself.
The evidence came from unseen police files held at the National Archives and from people who were at Jones's house that night.
John and I have been in touch quite a lot over the years by phone, email and text, so I had a good sense of his character. But until recently, he didn't feel ready to have his true identity known in public, so we had never met face-to-face.
The moment we did finally meet and I saw the striking resemblance between him and his father - the hair colour, the skin tone, the look in his eye - I went cold and realised just how raw and emotional his story really is. From Brian Jones's tragic end to John Maynard's tragic beginning, it still shapes his life today.
Love letter: One of the postcards guitarist Brian sent to John's mother Dawn
'It's a strange world I live in,' he says. 'On one hand I've got a normal life - a good job, a beautiful wife and three great kids. On the other hand, I'm the son of Brian Jones, one of the most famous names in rock 'n' roll. He started the Rolling Stones. And wherever you hear a song such as Paint It Black on the radio, you think, "God, that sitar...that's Brian."
'Once I was flying back from Las Vegas. It was a beautiful night and I was looking down on the towns and cities, and I thought to myself, "All those people down there will have heard of the Rolling Stones. And my dad started that band." It's weird. Being Brian's son is the greatest thing that never happened to me.'
'I think it's disgusting how Brian's family has refused to acknowledge me. I'm not after any money - this is about who I am...'
John's search for his birth parents began 16 years ago. He contacted an agency that helps people trace their birth mother but he stalled at the first stage.
'They wanted £1,500 and I couldn't afford that at the time. But years later, when we had our second child, our son, I again saw that bond between mother and baby. I had just made some money restoring an old Ford Mustang so I went back to the agency and said, "I'm ready."
'They came back with a telephone number for a Dawn Molloy, who was living in the United States. I called the number and said, "Hello, is that Dawn? It's Paul," and she said "I know." I said, "How do you know?" She replied, "Because I always knew you'd call one day." We started chatting. I told her that I was doing OK, that I was married with kids.
'Dawn told me she had married in 1965, not long after she had me - she and her husband are still together. They'd had a child who was born ten months after me, but that child died suddenly, aged four. Dawn thought she was being punished for what she had done to me.
Brian's boy: John, aged nine, on holiday in North Yorkshire in 1974
'I asked, "Who is my father?" and Dawn said, "God, don't you know?" When I said I didn't, Dawn said, "He was really famous. It was Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones." '
Dawn became pregnant during a ten-month affair with the guitarist. But when Jones found out that Dawn was carrying his child, he dumped her.
'I went straight down to the library, getting books to read about him, looking at pictures to see the resemblance. The search for your birth parents is always painful and emotionally draining but for me it was twice as hard,' says John.
'Finding my real mother led straight to another emotional roller coaster - finding out my father was not only a world-famous rock star but that he was dead.'
It felt like a cruel game of snakes and ladders. John had found Dawn but lost Brian for ever. To feel close to his father, all he had were the official records and the memories of people who knew Brian.
'I went along to the adoption agency in Chelsea, where they kept the papers relating to my case,' John told me.
'The first thing they did was offer me counselling but I said, "No thanks, I'm fine." Then I saw a team of officials who asked, "Do you know who your father was?" I said, "Yes, I do. It was Brian Jones." They said, "OK. Good."
'I asked why they had asked me and they said, "Well, we had Roger Daltrey's daughter in here last week, and nobody had ever told her who her real father was." So with the children of famous people they were checking upfront that people knew before handing over the records.
'There were letters from Dawn to me that she thought had been passed on. She wrote a letter to the adoption agency on the day Brian died saying-"Please let Paul know - it's my utmost wish that he knows his father is now dead." But I didn't get them.'
Looking through the bundle of documents and photographs, John got his first glimpse of Brian and Dawn's time together. There are black and white photos of Dawn, wearing white trousers and a tight jumper, her large dark eyes looking straight at the camera lens - a mix of American beatnik and convent school prim, attesting to her Roman Catholic schooling in the Norfolk seaside town of Great Yarmouth.
In one colour photo, Dawn and another girl are with the Stones in an open-top car, parked in a leafy driveway. Dawn is at the back next to Brian, her head slightly bowed.
There are postcards, too, sent by Brian during the Stones' US tour in 1964. Writing from Chicago, he says: 'Dearest Dawn, I haven't forgotten you. I'm sorry I haven't written before now. America's the greatest country. We've been absolutely knocked out. Lots of love, Brian.'
John says: 'Brian found time to write to Dawn, so she must have meant something to him.' Through his conversations with his mother, John has found out more about Brian, the time he shared with Dawn and the reactions of her family and the band to the pregnancy.
'He said he wanted to marry Dawn - but that's what Brian said, and then he moved on to the next one.'
Reunited: John with his mother Dawn and former Stones star Bill Wyman
Dawn later explained to her son that she was 17 when she first met Brian in 1963. She and a friend would regularly watch the Stones at the Crawdaddy Club and became friendly with the band members.
'Before the start of one gig, Dawn saw Brian fussing over a white poodle,' says John. 'She took the puppy from him and their eyes met. Brian asked her to stand at the side of the stage during the show and afterwards they sat talking all night. Dawn said it was if they had known each other forever. They saw each other for about ten months before Dawn became pregnant.'
'I'd punch him first and then buy him a coffee'
That discovery would spell the end of their relationship. John says: 'Dawn went to where the Rolling Stones were playing, I think in Blackpool in October 1964, when she was four months pregnant with me.
She said she was told that the Stones' manager had ruled Brian couldn't see her any more because it would be bad for the band. When Brian was told she was pregnant, he was out of there. The relationship was over. Dawn broke down in tears. Bill Wyman went and sat with her on the beach. He put his arm around her and just held her.'
Flicking through the bundle chronologically, you find the handwritten postcards are soon replaced by a new, chilling trail of typed, official-looking documents, including an adoption form listing the birth as 'illegitimate' and the father as 'Brian Jones, Guitarist (Musician)'. There are also letters marked 'Confidential' and 'Important', showing how Dawn was left to cope with her pregnancy alone in Sixties Britain.
Rock and rollers: (L-R) Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Brian, Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger pose on a movie-set staircase in Los Angeles
Dawn's father had been a musician in the Band of the Grenadier Guards before becoming the manager of a block of flats in London's Belgravia, which is where she was living when she became pregnant. Her mother was a singer before she married, and Dawn's brother had followed his father into the Army.
'My mother was browbeaten and brainwashed by her family into giving me up,' John says. 'The letters she wrote while at the adoption centre just before I was given away show what she went through.
'It was impossible for young single women in the Sixties to keep a child. And the Stones' management drew up a contract to stop Dawn from talking to the Press or the public about me, Brian's illegitimate son. The Stones paid £700 for Dawn's silence.'
When Dawn handed her baby over, she made one simple request that linked her baby back to Brian Jones. The documents state: 'Dawn would like her baby to go to people who are musical or who appreciate music.' In the same adoption papers, Dawn defends Jones, pointing out that he had a 'grammar school education' and 'good manners'.
New love: Model Anita Pallenberg with Brian in 1965
These papers resonate with the unbearable pain that Dawn went through in 1965 and, from talking to John, I sense that although he wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially his own mother, her deep sadness is somehow reassuring for him.
Today John and Dawn are close, even though she has lived in America since 1983. They speak on the phone every week and often send each other emails.
Dawn summed up her experience of meeting Brian through to the trauma of John being adopted in a brief email.
'I met Brian in the early Sixties. Parents and society did not support unmarried mothers back then. I was forced to relinquish my son - and it changed the course of my life for ever.'
John says: 'Dawn told me one of the most haunting things she experienced was when she was taking off from Heathrow to move to the United States in 1983. She flew over all these houses and was looking down thinking, "Paul's down there somewhere - and now I'm leaving the country." She felt like she was leaving me all over again.'
After Dawn gave birth, she remained in contact with Bill Wyman. They still talk and email each other today. This connection gave John the chance to spend a day with the band's former bass player during one of Dawn's visits to London. John wanted to ask Bill all about Brian but ended up getting a much clearer picture of what life is like for a rock star.
'We were walking along the King's Road in Chelsea. People started to notice who he was - "Look, that's Bill Wyman" - and they came up taking photos and asking for autographs. When we were eating in a cafe, there were Japanese tourists taking pictures of Bill through the window.
'Bill and Dawn were chatting, reminiscing. I asked Bill about Brian but he didn't want to talk about him. He said, "Consider yourself lucky you're out of all this - that you had a normal life. You're best out of it." '
By now John was coming up against this wall of silence from all quarters, even from Brian's own family. 'I went to Brian's parents' house one day, because I wanted to meet them. I wanted to say hello. These are my grandparents, my flesh and blood. But they refused to acknowledge me.
'I think it's disgusting how the Jones family has responded to me. I'm not after any money - I'm doing all right. This is about who I am. Being acknowledged is a fundamental part of life. If you sit down at a bar, you expect to be served. If you leave a message for someone, you hope they call you back. To be ignored is an awful thing and that's what the Jones family is doing to me. That really hurts.'
And now that same silence has fallen on the police review of Brian Jones's death, which came as a result of the evidence I had gathered. John, for the first time in years, thought he was getting close to the answers he wants about what really happened to his father on July 2, 1969.
Global superstars: The Rolling Stones - Brian with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts
But at the end of last year, the police announced they would not be reopening the case or changing the official inquest verdict. John believes strongly that both the original investigation and the police review ignored conclusive evidence that shows Brian was murdered by Frank Thorogood.
'My father's death has never been properly looked into by the police. It's become the JFK of rock 'n' roll. But to me, it's flesh and blood - it's my dad - and I want a thorough, fair and open police investigation. I want the truth.
'I defy anyone to read the evidence and think my father drowned in his swimming pool. He didn't. Brian Jones was killed in a fight.'
John is the first family member to publicly criticise how the police have handled this case. 'I want to know exactly what this police review made of all the evidence that points towards Frank Thorogood killing my father.
Tragedy: Was Brian murdered?
'I want to know why Sussex Police today are relying on witness statements that we now know were written by the police and not by the witnesses. And I want to know what role the Home Office played in making sure Thorogood walked away a free man, so drink and drugs could take the blame.'
Until the police are prepared to give him the answers to these vital questions, all John has is the 'memories' of the father he never met.
'I sail a lot and the other day I went to the Isle of Wight. Near Freshwater, I came across this statue of Jimi Hendrix,' he says.
'Hendrix was a big mate of my dad's. I've got a picture of the two of them together at the Monterey Pop Festival in California as my computer screensaver at work.
'Pete Townshend from The Who wrote a song about my dad. David Bowie says Brian Jones was one of his main idols. Everywhere you go you hear the Stones...it haunts me.
'I remember once going to see the Stones and I had to pay at the door - how strange that felt. I wasn't after a free lunch but my father started the band for God's sake and I had to pay!
'I met some people last summer and was invited on to their boat.
'It turned out they were the biggest Stones fans, so I had to listen to Paint It Black and Sympathy For The Devil and so on, while they jigged around and talked about the Stones. I didn't say a word. What's the point? It's almost as if I'm silenced too.'
I wondered what John would do if his father were here today.
'First, I'd probably hit him for what he did to Dawn. Then I'd brush him down and ask him if he wanted a coffee. I'd like to chat with him. To get to know him and for him to get to know me. He'd like me, I know he would. I'd want him to be proud of me. To be honest, I'd just want him to be my dad.'
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