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The Rolling Stones – The Brian Jones Era Part One (Full Documentary)
This is the independent critical review of the Rolling Stones in 1963-1965, when they were helmed by their charismatic leader and founder Brian Jones. Here w...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on July 3, 1969, English musician Brian Jones who was the founder of the Rolling Stones drowned to death at the age of 27.
The Rolling Stones – The Brian Jones Era Part One (Full Documentary)
This is the independent critical review of the Rolling Stones in 1963-1965, when they were helmed by their charismatic leader and founder Brian Jones. Here we look at his impact on the music and the legacy of the Stones; using in depth critique and exclusive contemporary footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPXsJWJ3Tuw
Images:
1. Brian Jones in his heyday (Image: Redferns)
2. Brian Jones was infamous for his drink and drug-fueled exploits with the Rolling Stones
3. Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones
4. From left, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones on the TV show 'Hullabaloo' in 1965.Credit...Bob Bonis
Biographies
1. imdb.com/name/nm0427627/bio
2. allmusic.com/artist/brian-jones-mn [login to see] /biography
1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0427627/bio]}
Brian Jones Biography
Overview (4)
Born February 28, 1942 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, UK
Died July 3, 1969 in Hartfield, Sussex, England, UK (drowned)
Birth Name Lewis Brian Hopkin-Jones
Height 5' 6" (1.68 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Jones was born on 28 February, 1942, to Lewis and Louise Jones. He had two sisters, Pamela and Barbara. Pamela died when Brian was still a child. He fathered his first of several children in high school and was subsequently made to leave. In the early 1960s, Brian formed the legendary group, The Rolling Stones. He even gave the group their name and booked their first gigs, working also as their manager for a short time. In 1965, Brian met and fell for stunning model Anita Pallenberg. They began a torrid affair. He composed the music to her film debut, Degree of Murder (1967) ("Degree of Murder"). He also began drinking and experimenting with drugs. In 1967, Anita left Brian for his bandmate, Keith Richards. Brian fell deeper into drugs and depression. Brian was slowly withdrawing from his social life and his band into isolation. In November 1968, Brian purchased "Cotchford Farm", the house was formerly occupied by A.A. Milne, author of the "Winnie-the-Pooh" tales. The following month, he made his last public appearance with the Stones for their "Rock and Roll Circus" special. In June of 1969, Brian and the Stones parted ways. By then, Brian had started to clean up and was planning on forming another group. But on the 3rd of July, Brian was dragged unconscious from his swimming pool and later pronounced dead. He was 27. Mystery still surrounds his untimely death. Some believe it was drugs, some believe an asthma attack, and some even believe he was murdered. In 1999, Brian's ex-girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, who was with him on the night he died, wrote a book stating that Brian was murdered by a friend who had been doing some work to his property. In 1996, some of Brian's fans and friends collaborated and founded the "Brian Jones Fan Club".
- IMDb Mini Biography By: [login to see]
Trade Mark (3)
Shoulder-length blonde hair
Known for to be a multi-instrumentalist. He played folk or traditional instruments on some Roling Stones' songs, as "Paint it black" (he played a sitar) or "Under my thumb" (he played a marimba).
Gibson Firebird and Vox Mark III electric guitars.
Trivia (14)
1. Interred at Priory Road Cemetery, Prestbury, Gloucestershire, England, plot #V11393.
2. Guitarist for The Rolling Stones.
3. Played sparto sax on The Beatles song, "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)".
4. Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne once lived in the house Brian now lives in.
5. Fathered Julian Brian Jones with Linda Lawrence, who married Donovan in 1970.
6. Son, Julian, is the half-brother of Astrella Celeste and Oriole Nebula Leitch.
7. Elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 (as a member of The Rolling Stones).
8. Was fired from The Rolling Stones because of his heavy drug use. The band also wanted to tour the United States in 1969 and felt that, if he didn't clean up, he would die because of his poor condition before the tour was finished.
9. Although never a key songwriter, he was the original founder and namer of The Rolling Stones.
10. Reputed to have fathered many illegitimate offspring, but only five are definitely known. His first two children, a son and a daughter, were born in 1959 and 1960 respectively. Neither name has been revealed, and the son was later given up for adoption. He then had a son by Pat Andrews named Julian Mark Jones, born 22 October 1961. A second son, Julian Brian Jones, by Linda Lawrence, was born 23 July 1964. Finally he had a third son named John Paul Andrew Jones, by Dawn Molloy, born 24 March 1965. He named two of his sons after jazz musician Julian Cannonball Adderley.
11. Is portrayed by Leo Gregory in Stoned (2005) and by Rafe McDonald in The Linda McCartney Story (2000).
12. Died at 27 years old, making him a member of the "27 Club"; The 27 Club is a group of prominent musicians that died at the age of 27. Other members include guitarist Jimi Hendrix, singer Janis Joplin, The Doors frontman Jim Morrison and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
13. Early in the process of forming what would become The Rolling Stones, Brian approached a singer named Paul Jones (no relation) about joining his band as a vocalist but he declined, later becoming lead vocalist with rival British band Manfred Mann.
14. The cause of his death still remains a mystery, regarding the cause. It has been believed that Jones was murdered by members of a Mafia family.
Personal Quotes (4)
1. Jimi Hendrix was the most exciting guitarist I've ever heard.
2. The Loch Ness monster doesn't exist either. Loch Ness is just not big enough to hide a thirty foot amphibian or reptile for hundreds of years.
3. I am going to have a cup of tea, like any good Englishman.
4. Something to remember on your birthday..Forget the past, it can't be changed..And, forget the present because I didn't get you one.
2. Background from {[https://www.allmusic.com/artist/brian-jones-mn [login to see] /biography]}
Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger
Brian Jones was second guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in the Rolling Stones from their formation in 1962 until just a few weeks before his death in mid-1969. He did not receive any individual songwriting credits for songs that the Rolling Stones recorded; he did not sing lead vocals on any of their records; and he was not a star guitar soloist. Nevertheless, he is more famous than any of the Rolling Stones except Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and for good reasons. His attitude and stage presence did a good deal to help define the Rolling Stones' image in the 1960s, and his skills on a variety of instruments lent many of their records a diversity and eclecticism that the group would never match after his departure. He also did a couple of little-known recordings under his own name, although those were ones in which he was a composer or a documentarian, as opposed to a featured performer.
Jones was already a rebel who embodied the more flamboyant aspects of the Rolling Stones' lifestyle even before the Rolling Stones formed. As a teenager he got into trouble by fathering illegitimate children, and despite his high IQ, he shunned academic studies in favor of his passions for playing jazz and blues. In the early 1960s he was spotted by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger playing Elmore James-styled guitar while sitting in at an Alexis Korner gig. Jones moved to London and joined forces with Richards and Jagger to form a band, the Rolling Stones, who played their first shows in 1962. By most accounts Jones, a bit older than the others and more musically experienced, was at this point the band's leader and most important musical force.
By the time they made their first single in 1963, the Stones had settled into the five-man lineup that would carry them through most of the 1960s. In the first year or so of their recording career, Jones would continue to be the leader, if anyone was. Keith Richards was the band's lead guitarist, but Jones was less a rhythm guitarist than a second guitarist whose chords and riffs were counterpoints as much as support. Jones was also a good harmonica player (who helped teach Mick Jagger how to play the instrument), an excellent slide guitarist (best heard on the Stones' 1964 British chart-topper "Little Red Rooster"), and in the very early days a backup vocalist, although he would rarely function in that role after the mid-'60s. As the handsomest and most photogenic member of the group, he was also important to their image and making the band commercially viable. Jones was so determined to think of himself as the Stones' leader that he arranged to have himself paid five pounds more per week than the others for a while in 1963, which didn't go over well with the rest of the gang.
Brian Jones' influence in the Rolling Stones began to diminish in the mid-'60s, when Jagger and Richards began to establish themselves as the band's songwriters. Jones probably contributed to the several early Rolling Stones originals that were credited to the group pseudonym of Nanker-Phelge, but he never did have a song that he wrote, or co-wrote, under his own name recorded by the band. As a womanizer and heavy substance sampler, he helped set the pace for the Stones' bad-boy persona, but he also began to miss some performances and recording dates due to ill health and erratic behavior. His truly important contributions to the band lay in his facilities for learning numerous instruments and adding unusual, creative touches to Stones recordings that gave them a pop appeal, in the best sense. These included the sitar on "Paint It Black"; the dulcimer on "Lady Jane"; the marimba on "Under My Thumb"; the recorder on "Ruby Tuesday"; the piano on "Let's Spend the Night Together"; and the Mellotron on "2000 Light Years From Home."
Jones did a couple of low-profile solo projects, one of which was not released until after his death. He composed the soundtrack for the 1967 film A Degree of Murder, starring his then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, playing sitar, organ, dulcimer, autoharp, and harmonica. He also recorded traditional Moroccan musicians at the Rites of Pan Festival in Morocco in 1968. Excerpts of these were released in 1971 as Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. His interest in Moroccan music in all probability influenced the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request album, which occasionally employed African-style percussion and flutes. He was one of the first rock musicians to help expose this sort of music to Europe and North America, although it wouldn't be until the 1980s and 1990s that it gained an appreciable audience there. Jones also did some scattered guest appearances on other artists' records, the most famous by far of which is his jazzy saxophone solo near the end of the Beatles' "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)."
In the late '60s, Jones became further estranged from the rest of the band as some personal and physical problems made it more difficult for him to carry his weight on-stage and in the studio. A hand injury in 1966 affected his guitar playing, and although he did not go to jail for drug busts, because of his police record it was feared that he (and, thus, the band) would be unable to tour the United States. He lost his glamorous girlfriend, actress Anita Pallenberg, to Keith Richards. It is thought that his general ability to function was so impaired that he did not play on some of the sessions that produced the Rolling Stones' 1968 album Beggars Banquet, although that's probably him on slide guitar on "No Expectations."
Jones played on a little bit of Let It Bleed, but before that album was finished, he left the Rolling Stones. On June 8, it was announced that he had decided to leave for musical reasons, although biographers have speculated that he was in fact fired by the rest of the group. Jones apparently had ambitions to form a band of his own, but on July 3, he drowned in his own swimming pool. The cloudy circumstances of his death have been the subjects of various theories over the years; some feel that he was murdered, other evidence indicates that it was an accident that might have been brought on by unwise combinations of substances and medications. The Rolling Stones, with Mick Taylor as Jones' replacement, went ahead with their planned free concert in London's Hyde Park on July 5, 1969, staging it as a tribute to Jones."
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The Rolling Stones – The Brian Jones Era Part One (Full Documentary)
This is the independent critical review of the Rolling Stones in 1963-1965, when they were helmed by their charismatic leader and founder Brian Jones. Here we look at his impact on the music and the legacy of the Stones; using in depth critique and exclusive contemporary footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPXsJWJ3Tuw
Images:
1. Brian Jones in his heyday (Image: Redferns)
2. Brian Jones was infamous for his drink and drug-fueled exploits with the Rolling Stones
3. Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones
4. From left, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones on the TV show 'Hullabaloo' in 1965.Credit...Bob Bonis
Biographies
1. imdb.com/name/nm0427627/bio
2. allmusic.com/artist/brian-jones-mn [login to see] /biography
1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0427627/bio]}
Brian Jones Biography
Overview (4)
Born February 28, 1942 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, UK
Died July 3, 1969 in Hartfield, Sussex, England, UK (drowned)
Birth Name Lewis Brian Hopkin-Jones
Height 5' 6" (1.68 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Jones was born on 28 February, 1942, to Lewis and Louise Jones. He had two sisters, Pamela and Barbara. Pamela died when Brian was still a child. He fathered his first of several children in high school and was subsequently made to leave. In the early 1960s, Brian formed the legendary group, The Rolling Stones. He even gave the group their name and booked their first gigs, working also as their manager for a short time. In 1965, Brian met and fell for stunning model Anita Pallenberg. They began a torrid affair. He composed the music to her film debut, Degree of Murder (1967) ("Degree of Murder"). He also began drinking and experimenting with drugs. In 1967, Anita left Brian for his bandmate, Keith Richards. Brian fell deeper into drugs and depression. Brian was slowly withdrawing from his social life and his band into isolation. In November 1968, Brian purchased "Cotchford Farm", the house was formerly occupied by A.A. Milne, author of the "Winnie-the-Pooh" tales. The following month, he made his last public appearance with the Stones for their "Rock and Roll Circus" special. In June of 1969, Brian and the Stones parted ways. By then, Brian had started to clean up and was planning on forming another group. But on the 3rd of July, Brian was dragged unconscious from his swimming pool and later pronounced dead. He was 27. Mystery still surrounds his untimely death. Some believe it was drugs, some believe an asthma attack, and some even believe he was murdered. In 1999, Brian's ex-girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, who was with him on the night he died, wrote a book stating that Brian was murdered by a friend who had been doing some work to his property. In 1996, some of Brian's fans and friends collaborated and founded the "Brian Jones Fan Club".
- IMDb Mini Biography By: [login to see]
Trade Mark (3)
Shoulder-length blonde hair
Known for to be a multi-instrumentalist. He played folk or traditional instruments on some Roling Stones' songs, as "Paint it black" (he played a sitar) or "Under my thumb" (he played a marimba).
Gibson Firebird and Vox Mark III electric guitars.
Trivia (14)
1. Interred at Priory Road Cemetery, Prestbury, Gloucestershire, England, plot #V11393.
2. Guitarist for The Rolling Stones.
3. Played sparto sax on The Beatles song, "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)".
4. Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne once lived in the house Brian now lives in.
5. Fathered Julian Brian Jones with Linda Lawrence, who married Donovan in 1970.
6. Son, Julian, is the half-brother of Astrella Celeste and Oriole Nebula Leitch.
7. Elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 (as a member of The Rolling Stones).
8. Was fired from The Rolling Stones because of his heavy drug use. The band also wanted to tour the United States in 1969 and felt that, if he didn't clean up, he would die because of his poor condition before the tour was finished.
9. Although never a key songwriter, he was the original founder and namer of The Rolling Stones.
10. Reputed to have fathered many illegitimate offspring, but only five are definitely known. His first two children, a son and a daughter, were born in 1959 and 1960 respectively. Neither name has been revealed, and the son was later given up for adoption. He then had a son by Pat Andrews named Julian Mark Jones, born 22 October 1961. A second son, Julian Brian Jones, by Linda Lawrence, was born 23 July 1964. Finally he had a third son named John Paul Andrew Jones, by Dawn Molloy, born 24 March 1965. He named two of his sons after jazz musician Julian Cannonball Adderley.
11. Is portrayed by Leo Gregory in Stoned (2005) and by Rafe McDonald in The Linda McCartney Story (2000).
12. Died at 27 years old, making him a member of the "27 Club"; The 27 Club is a group of prominent musicians that died at the age of 27. Other members include guitarist Jimi Hendrix, singer Janis Joplin, The Doors frontman Jim Morrison and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
13. Early in the process of forming what would become The Rolling Stones, Brian approached a singer named Paul Jones (no relation) about joining his band as a vocalist but he declined, later becoming lead vocalist with rival British band Manfred Mann.
14. The cause of his death still remains a mystery, regarding the cause. It has been believed that Jones was murdered by members of a Mafia family.
Personal Quotes (4)
1. Jimi Hendrix was the most exciting guitarist I've ever heard.
2. The Loch Ness monster doesn't exist either. Loch Ness is just not big enough to hide a thirty foot amphibian or reptile for hundreds of years.
3. I am going to have a cup of tea, like any good Englishman.
4. Something to remember on your birthday..Forget the past, it can't be changed..And, forget the present because I didn't get you one.
2. Background from {[https://www.allmusic.com/artist/brian-jones-mn [login to see] /biography]}
Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger
Brian Jones was second guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in the Rolling Stones from their formation in 1962 until just a few weeks before his death in mid-1969. He did not receive any individual songwriting credits for songs that the Rolling Stones recorded; he did not sing lead vocals on any of their records; and he was not a star guitar soloist. Nevertheless, he is more famous than any of the Rolling Stones except Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and for good reasons. His attitude and stage presence did a good deal to help define the Rolling Stones' image in the 1960s, and his skills on a variety of instruments lent many of their records a diversity and eclecticism that the group would never match after his departure. He also did a couple of little-known recordings under his own name, although those were ones in which he was a composer or a documentarian, as opposed to a featured performer.
Jones was already a rebel who embodied the more flamboyant aspects of the Rolling Stones' lifestyle even before the Rolling Stones formed. As a teenager he got into trouble by fathering illegitimate children, and despite his high IQ, he shunned academic studies in favor of his passions for playing jazz and blues. In the early 1960s he was spotted by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger playing Elmore James-styled guitar while sitting in at an Alexis Korner gig. Jones moved to London and joined forces with Richards and Jagger to form a band, the Rolling Stones, who played their first shows in 1962. By most accounts Jones, a bit older than the others and more musically experienced, was at this point the band's leader and most important musical force.
By the time they made their first single in 1963, the Stones had settled into the five-man lineup that would carry them through most of the 1960s. In the first year or so of their recording career, Jones would continue to be the leader, if anyone was. Keith Richards was the band's lead guitarist, but Jones was less a rhythm guitarist than a second guitarist whose chords and riffs were counterpoints as much as support. Jones was also a good harmonica player (who helped teach Mick Jagger how to play the instrument), an excellent slide guitarist (best heard on the Stones' 1964 British chart-topper "Little Red Rooster"), and in the very early days a backup vocalist, although he would rarely function in that role after the mid-'60s. As the handsomest and most photogenic member of the group, he was also important to their image and making the band commercially viable. Jones was so determined to think of himself as the Stones' leader that he arranged to have himself paid five pounds more per week than the others for a while in 1963, which didn't go over well with the rest of the gang.
Brian Jones' influence in the Rolling Stones began to diminish in the mid-'60s, when Jagger and Richards began to establish themselves as the band's songwriters. Jones probably contributed to the several early Rolling Stones originals that were credited to the group pseudonym of Nanker-Phelge, but he never did have a song that he wrote, or co-wrote, under his own name recorded by the band. As a womanizer and heavy substance sampler, he helped set the pace for the Stones' bad-boy persona, but he also began to miss some performances and recording dates due to ill health and erratic behavior. His truly important contributions to the band lay in his facilities for learning numerous instruments and adding unusual, creative touches to Stones recordings that gave them a pop appeal, in the best sense. These included the sitar on "Paint It Black"; the dulcimer on "Lady Jane"; the marimba on "Under My Thumb"; the recorder on "Ruby Tuesday"; the piano on "Let's Spend the Night Together"; and the Mellotron on "2000 Light Years From Home."
Jones did a couple of low-profile solo projects, one of which was not released until after his death. He composed the soundtrack for the 1967 film A Degree of Murder, starring his then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, playing sitar, organ, dulcimer, autoharp, and harmonica. He also recorded traditional Moroccan musicians at the Rites of Pan Festival in Morocco in 1968. Excerpts of these were released in 1971 as Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. His interest in Moroccan music in all probability influenced the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request album, which occasionally employed African-style percussion and flutes. He was one of the first rock musicians to help expose this sort of music to Europe and North America, although it wouldn't be until the 1980s and 1990s that it gained an appreciable audience there. Jones also did some scattered guest appearances on other artists' records, the most famous by far of which is his jazzy saxophone solo near the end of the Beatles' "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)."
In the late '60s, Jones became further estranged from the rest of the band as some personal and physical problems made it more difficult for him to carry his weight on-stage and in the studio. A hand injury in 1966 affected his guitar playing, and although he did not go to jail for drug busts, because of his police record it was feared that he (and, thus, the band) would be unable to tour the United States. He lost his glamorous girlfriend, actress Anita Pallenberg, to Keith Richards. It is thought that his general ability to function was so impaired that he did not play on some of the sessions that produced the Rolling Stones' 1968 album Beggars Banquet, although that's probably him on slide guitar on "No Expectations."
Jones played on a little bit of Let It Bleed, but before that album was finished, he left the Rolling Stones. On June 8, it was announced that he had decided to leave for musical reasons, although biographers have speculated that he was in fact fired by the rest of the group. Jones apparently had ambitions to form a band of his own, but on July 3, he drowned in his own swimming pool. The cloudy circumstances of his death have been the subjects of various theories over the years; some feel that he was murdered, other evidence indicates that it was an accident that might have been brought on by unwise combinations of substances and medications. The Rolling Stones, with Mick Taylor as Jones' replacement, went ahead with their planned free concert in London's Hyde Park on July 5, 1969, staging it as a tribute to Jones."
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LTC Stephen F.
Crimewatch footage from 1994 looking into the death of Brian Jones, featuring Frank Thorogood and Tom Keylock at Cotchford Farm
Brian Jones - Crimewatch 1994
Crimewatch footage from 1994 looking into the death of Brian Jones, featuring Frank Thorogood and Tom Keylock at Cotchford Farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8qaKtAu8HA
Images:
1. On the 50th anniversary of the death of The Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jone's daughter Barbera Wolf, lay flowers on his grave at the Cheltenham cemetery (Image - Avalon.red)
2. Frank Thorogood comforts Brian Jones' girlfriend Anna Wohlin (Image - Mirrorpix)
3. Brian Jones drowned in his farmhouse swimming pool in Hartfield Sussex (Image - Mirrorpix)
4. Brian Jones
Background from {[https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/daughter-rolling-stones-wild-child-17479033]}
Daughter of Rolling Stones wild child Brian Jones believes he was murdered
EXCLUSIVE: Barbara Marion is demanding answers over his death 50 years on
It was around 9pm on one of rock music’s most infamous nights that 16-year-old Pauline Hallet heard a single piercing scream.
It was joined by a chorus of other cries and wails which ripped through the humid air 50 years ago this week.
Then, as a crescendo, came the screech¬¬ing of departing cars, which had earlier crowded the grassy verges of the lane, followed by a cloak of silence, intensified by the thundery electricity in the air.
Pauline had been hanging from her bedroom window on July 2 1969, listening avidly to the exciting music crashing through the still atmosphere up the nar¬¬¬row country road.
A party was in full flight next door at Cotchford Farm, a party that had been going on in the east Sussex village since Rolling Stone Brian Jones bought the cottage formerly owned by Winnie the Pooh author AA Milne.
If anything, the partying had been harder since the group’s founder and guitarist had quit – or been sacked, depending on the teller of the tale – from the band a month beforehand.
That day, as the sun burned hotter and higher, so, it seemed, did the revellers.
They included Brian’s girlfriend, Swedish dancer Anna Wohlin, his minder, Tom Keylock, Keylock’s girlfriend, Janet Lawson, and a troop of builders led by Frank Thorogood, who had been renovating the house.
Their hedonistic voices spiralled to a frenzy as wine bottles emptied.
Pauline later told investigative journalist Terry Rawlings it was not until around midnight, three hours later, that the heavy silence was shattered again when the police finally, inexplicably late, arrived.
• Rolling Stones 'were not ready' for Mick Jagger's heart op, says Ronnie Wood
The news spread quickly – blond, beautiful guitarist Brian Jones, 27, was dead, found floating in his swimming pool.
Death by misadventure, the coroner ruled – “drowning under the influence of drink and drugs”.
But there was something about that night, something – many things – that just didn’t add up, according to investigators, journalists and authors like Terry.
He first wrote about the mystery in his 1994 book Brian Jones: Who Killed Christopher Robin? He is now involved in a TV documentary based on his findings.
Something about the nervousness of witnesses, the twit¬ches, the fear when probed, even today, of saying anything out of line. Was this the accidental death of a troubled addict or, more bluntly, murder?
One person who wants an answer once and for all is Brian’s daughter, Barbara Marion.
Giving her first in-depth in¬¬-ter¬¬view after visiting her father’s Cheltenham grave to mark the anniversary of his death, she admits she has now been convinced by numerous strands of evi¬¬dence that the circumstances surrounding his death were sinister.
The 50-year-old says: “I carry a sense of unfinished business, I want an answer.
“I believe someone knows something. Someone has got away with murder.”
• Rolling Stones filthiest sex scandals revealed - threesomes, teen sex and sharing women
Her words are chilling but Barbara, a clinical hypnotist from Chicago, has become so convinced that the need for answers consumes her despite never knowing Brian. She is even unsure if he ever knew of her existence.
Her mother, a model she will only identify as Elizabeth, was visiting from America in 1968 and, despite being married, had a fling with the rock star.
Barbara was born in the US in 1969, five months before Brian’s death and wasn’t told the truth about her parent until she was 33.
Despite all this, she feels a “connection” to the dad she resembles so closely, and deeply “cares” about what happened. She says: “I have been cheated of a father. I want police to re-open this.”
So what of the official narrative of events at the time? The police were called around midnight, as Pauline’s account suggests, with the first officers arriving at 12.15am.
Just three guests were reported present – Thorogood, Wohlin, and Lawson.
They gave statements saying Brian had been drinking and Lawson adding he had been taking sleeping tablets, too. All three said they had been nowhere near the pool and seen nothing.
Thorogood was taken to hospital with an injured wrist but again nothing seems to have been made of that odd detail.
However, the jigsaw of evidence Terry and numerous others have gathered over the years, although far from conclusive, challenges the official version.
For one thing it places many more people at the party – as the teenage neighbour’s description suggests.
Even Det Chief Insp Bob Marshall, head of the investigation, admitted “six or so” friends were present.
Yet disturbingly, police never got to the bottom of a concrete number.
Terry is certain it was builder Thorogood who killed Brian, accidentally, during a row.
The gaffer and his team had been renovating the farm but were increasingly taking advantage of a vulnerable Brian, who had been cut adrift from the band he started – and even named. Bassist Bill Wyman once famously said: “No Jones, no Stones.”
Yet Brian’s caustic personality, combined with new manager Andrew Loog Oldham wanting Mick Jagger as the main man and then Keith Richards running off with Brian’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, saw him out of his own band.
He was paid off with £100,000 – almost £2million in today’s money – and £20,000 a year for the rest of the band’s life.
Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham described the guitarist’s life as becoming “more desperate for him day by day” due to substance abuse, paranoia, and rows.
Builder Thorogood and his team – who originally worked for Keith Richards but had been sacked – were reportedly taking liberties, even though Brian had paid them handsomely – £18,000 or £291,000 in today’s money, since the previous winter. He had had enough and that day had decided to stop their wages before sacking them, too.
Terry says Brian would have started drinking “white wine at midday as usual” and with the booze and heat the party became a “melting pot of tension”.
“I think it was a scuffle that went wrong,” he says – a theory which daughter Barbara also buys.
She says: “I don’t think it was planned but they were a rough bunch who tried to teach him a lesson.”
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror from her US home in Idaho, Brian’s ex-girlfriend Dawn Young, nee Molloy, also agrees with the theory.
She admits she never for a moment believed Brian drowned by accident.
Dawn, 73, says: “Brian was a strong swimmer and only had a pint of beer in his system according to the autopsy. I can’t see how it would happen without some kind of help.”
In 1965 the former hairdresser had a son, John, with Brian, who also never knew his dad.
Fifteen years ago he tried to get police to re-open the case.
Mum Dawn says: “It seemed weird to him, he wanted to know. Brian was going to start a new life, a new band, and then this happened.”
There are a number of later interviews that back this belief. Ten years ago, minder’s girlfriend Janet Lawson spoke out for the first time. She said she went to fetch an inhaler for Brian, and when she returned builder Frank Thorogood “came in a lather. His hands were shaking.
“He was in a terrible state...When I saw Brian on the bottom of the pool and was calling for help, Frank initially did nothing.”
Girlfriend Anna Wohlin too, also made the same revelation in her own later book on the subject. “I don’t know if Frank meant to kill Brian. Maybe it was horseplay in the pool that went wrong,” she said. “But I knew all along he did not die a natural death.”
Wohlin even alleges that the Stones’ management “knew I knew what really happened”.
Most damningly, Terry says he was approached by minder Tom Keylock before his death in 2009 and, in a recorded interview to be shown as part of the documentary, he finally admitted that he too, was at the scene at the time, saw Thorogood kill Brian and then made the snap decision to create the ruse of an accident.
The minder harboured resentments towards Brian – he had spent years cleaning up after his debauchery.
Terry believes “he wit¬¬nessed the murder, he panicked, and covered it up, and then had to stick to it.”
He phoned the police hours after the incident so everyone could leave or get their stories straight. Helpful, possibly, was the fact his brother was a senior policeman.
Questions have been asked about Jones’ death since that night and Sussex Police have even reviewed their own investigation in 1984, 1994, and 2009.
Barbara has visited her father’s grave three times now. She also visited Cotchford Farm. “It was very peaceful,” she admits.
“I could see why he loved it. But the swimming pool was still there,” she adds, slowly. “I didn’t go over there.”
She’s not angry, just weighed down with wondering. The man who fathered six children with different women, who barely saw his kids, and who could be violent, was clearly “not a good dad”, she concedes.
“But I believe if he had not died he would hopefully have changed and been present for his children, eventually,” she adds.
She will never know but sighs: “I think Brian deserves to have an answer. His legacy deserves that.”
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Crimewatch footage from 1994 looking into the death of Brian Jones, featuring Frank Thorogood and Tom Keylock at Cotchford Farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8qaKtAu8HA
Images:
1. On the 50th anniversary of the death of The Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jone's daughter Barbera Wolf, lay flowers on his grave at the Cheltenham cemetery (Image - Avalon.red)
2. Frank Thorogood comforts Brian Jones' girlfriend Anna Wohlin (Image - Mirrorpix)
3. Brian Jones drowned in his farmhouse swimming pool in Hartfield Sussex (Image - Mirrorpix)
4. Brian Jones
Background from {[https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/daughter-rolling-stones-wild-child-17479033]}
Daughter of Rolling Stones wild child Brian Jones believes he was murdered
EXCLUSIVE: Barbara Marion is demanding answers over his death 50 years on
It was around 9pm on one of rock music’s most infamous nights that 16-year-old Pauline Hallet heard a single piercing scream.
It was joined by a chorus of other cries and wails which ripped through the humid air 50 years ago this week.
Then, as a crescendo, came the screech¬¬ing of departing cars, which had earlier crowded the grassy verges of the lane, followed by a cloak of silence, intensified by the thundery electricity in the air.
Pauline had been hanging from her bedroom window on July 2 1969, listening avidly to the exciting music crashing through the still atmosphere up the nar¬¬¬row country road.
A party was in full flight next door at Cotchford Farm, a party that had been going on in the east Sussex village since Rolling Stone Brian Jones bought the cottage formerly owned by Winnie the Pooh author AA Milne.
If anything, the partying had been harder since the group’s founder and guitarist had quit – or been sacked, depending on the teller of the tale – from the band a month beforehand.
That day, as the sun burned hotter and higher, so, it seemed, did the revellers.
They included Brian’s girlfriend, Swedish dancer Anna Wohlin, his minder, Tom Keylock, Keylock’s girlfriend, Janet Lawson, and a troop of builders led by Frank Thorogood, who had been renovating the house.
Their hedonistic voices spiralled to a frenzy as wine bottles emptied.
Pauline later told investigative journalist Terry Rawlings it was not until around midnight, three hours later, that the heavy silence was shattered again when the police finally, inexplicably late, arrived.
• Rolling Stones 'were not ready' for Mick Jagger's heart op, says Ronnie Wood
The news spread quickly – blond, beautiful guitarist Brian Jones, 27, was dead, found floating in his swimming pool.
Death by misadventure, the coroner ruled – “drowning under the influence of drink and drugs”.
But there was something about that night, something – many things – that just didn’t add up, according to investigators, journalists and authors like Terry.
He first wrote about the mystery in his 1994 book Brian Jones: Who Killed Christopher Robin? He is now involved in a TV documentary based on his findings.
Something about the nervousness of witnesses, the twit¬ches, the fear when probed, even today, of saying anything out of line. Was this the accidental death of a troubled addict or, more bluntly, murder?
One person who wants an answer once and for all is Brian’s daughter, Barbara Marion.
Giving her first in-depth in¬¬-ter¬¬view after visiting her father’s Cheltenham grave to mark the anniversary of his death, she admits she has now been convinced by numerous strands of evi¬¬dence that the circumstances surrounding his death were sinister.
The 50-year-old says: “I carry a sense of unfinished business, I want an answer.
“I believe someone knows something. Someone has got away with murder.”
• Rolling Stones filthiest sex scandals revealed - threesomes, teen sex and sharing women
Her words are chilling but Barbara, a clinical hypnotist from Chicago, has become so convinced that the need for answers consumes her despite never knowing Brian. She is even unsure if he ever knew of her existence.
Her mother, a model she will only identify as Elizabeth, was visiting from America in 1968 and, despite being married, had a fling with the rock star.
Barbara was born in the US in 1969, five months before Brian’s death and wasn’t told the truth about her parent until she was 33.
Despite all this, she feels a “connection” to the dad she resembles so closely, and deeply “cares” about what happened. She says: “I have been cheated of a father. I want police to re-open this.”
So what of the official narrative of events at the time? The police were called around midnight, as Pauline’s account suggests, with the first officers arriving at 12.15am.
Just three guests were reported present – Thorogood, Wohlin, and Lawson.
They gave statements saying Brian had been drinking and Lawson adding he had been taking sleeping tablets, too. All three said they had been nowhere near the pool and seen nothing.
Thorogood was taken to hospital with an injured wrist but again nothing seems to have been made of that odd detail.
However, the jigsaw of evidence Terry and numerous others have gathered over the years, although far from conclusive, challenges the official version.
For one thing it places many more people at the party – as the teenage neighbour’s description suggests.
Even Det Chief Insp Bob Marshall, head of the investigation, admitted “six or so” friends were present.
Yet disturbingly, police never got to the bottom of a concrete number.
Terry is certain it was builder Thorogood who killed Brian, accidentally, during a row.
The gaffer and his team had been renovating the farm but were increasingly taking advantage of a vulnerable Brian, who had been cut adrift from the band he started – and even named. Bassist Bill Wyman once famously said: “No Jones, no Stones.”
Yet Brian’s caustic personality, combined with new manager Andrew Loog Oldham wanting Mick Jagger as the main man and then Keith Richards running off with Brian’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, saw him out of his own band.
He was paid off with £100,000 – almost £2million in today’s money – and £20,000 a year for the rest of the band’s life.
Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham described the guitarist’s life as becoming “more desperate for him day by day” due to substance abuse, paranoia, and rows.
Builder Thorogood and his team – who originally worked for Keith Richards but had been sacked – were reportedly taking liberties, even though Brian had paid them handsomely – £18,000 or £291,000 in today’s money, since the previous winter. He had had enough and that day had decided to stop their wages before sacking them, too.
Terry says Brian would have started drinking “white wine at midday as usual” and with the booze and heat the party became a “melting pot of tension”.
“I think it was a scuffle that went wrong,” he says – a theory which daughter Barbara also buys.
She says: “I don’t think it was planned but they were a rough bunch who tried to teach him a lesson.”
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror from her US home in Idaho, Brian’s ex-girlfriend Dawn Young, nee Molloy, also agrees with the theory.
She admits she never for a moment believed Brian drowned by accident.
Dawn, 73, says: “Brian was a strong swimmer and only had a pint of beer in his system according to the autopsy. I can’t see how it would happen without some kind of help.”
In 1965 the former hairdresser had a son, John, with Brian, who also never knew his dad.
Fifteen years ago he tried to get police to re-open the case.
Mum Dawn says: “It seemed weird to him, he wanted to know. Brian was going to start a new life, a new band, and then this happened.”
There are a number of later interviews that back this belief. Ten years ago, minder’s girlfriend Janet Lawson spoke out for the first time. She said she went to fetch an inhaler for Brian, and when she returned builder Frank Thorogood “came in a lather. His hands were shaking.
“He was in a terrible state...When I saw Brian on the bottom of the pool and was calling for help, Frank initially did nothing.”
Girlfriend Anna Wohlin too, also made the same revelation in her own later book on the subject. “I don’t know if Frank meant to kill Brian. Maybe it was horseplay in the pool that went wrong,” she said. “But I knew all along he did not die a natural death.”
Wohlin even alleges that the Stones’ management “knew I knew what really happened”.
Most damningly, Terry says he was approached by minder Tom Keylock before his death in 2009 and, in a recorded interview to be shown as part of the documentary, he finally admitted that he too, was at the scene at the time, saw Thorogood kill Brian and then made the snap decision to create the ruse of an accident.
The minder harboured resentments towards Brian – he had spent years cleaning up after his debauchery.
Terry believes “he wit¬¬nessed the murder, he panicked, and covered it up, and then had to stick to it.”
He phoned the police hours after the incident so everyone could leave or get their stories straight. Helpful, possibly, was the fact his brother was a senior policeman.
Questions have been asked about Jones’ death since that night and Sussex Police have even reviewed their own investigation in 1984, 1994, and 2009.
Barbara has visited her father’s grave three times now. She also visited Cotchford Farm. “It was very peaceful,” she admits.
“I could see why he loved it. But the swimming pool was still there,” she adds, slowly. “I didn’t go over there.”
She’s not angry, just weighed down with wondering. The man who fathered six children with different women, who barely saw his kids, and who could be violent, was clearly “not a good dad”, she concedes.
“But I believe if he had not died he would hopefully have changed and been present for his children, eventually,” she adds.
She will never know but sighs: “I think Brian deserves to have an answer. His legacy deserves that.”
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Chris Bayner-Cwik MSG Andrew White Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. CPT Paul WhitmerLTC Greg Henning SGT Gregory Lawritson SP5 Mark Kuzinski CWO3 (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC (Join to see)CWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell TSgt David L.PO1 Robert GeorgeSSG Robert Mark Odom Cynthia CroftSPC Russ BoltonSGT Robert R.SSG William Jones
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LTC Stephen F.
The Rolling Stones with or without Brian Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTRz2djRnV8&app=desktop
Image: The daughter of the original member of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, still wants answers 50 years on from hid death
Background from {[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/arts/brian-jones-the-making-of-the-rolling-stones-a-biography.html]}
By Larry Rohter
Nov. 16, 2014
Brian Jones is to the Rolling Stones what Leon Trotsky was to the Russian Revolution: organizer, ideologist and victim of a power struggle. Jones founded the group, gave it its name and recruited the schoolboys Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who then marginalized him, eventually expelling him from the band. Since his death in 1969, a month after he was forced out, Jones has largely been airbrushed from the group’s history.
Paul Trynka’s biography “Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones” challenges the standard version of events, focused on Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, in favor of something far more nuanced. Though Mr. Trynka sometimes overstates Jones’s long-term cultural impact, his is revisionist history of the best kind — scrupulously researched and cogently argued — and should be unfailingly interesting to any Stones fan.
Specifically, “Brian Jones” seems designed as a corrective to “Life,” Keith Richards’s 2010 memoir. Mr. Trynka, the author of biographies of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and a former editor of the British music magazines Mojo and Guitar, has interviewed Mr. Richards several times over the years and obviously likes him, but also considers his memory of events highly unreliable.
“History is written by the victors, and in recent years we’ve seen the proprietors of the modern Rolling Stones describe their genesis, their discovery of the blues, without even mentioning their founder,” Mr. Trynka remarks in the introduction. Without naming Mr. Richards, he also expresses his distaste for an assessment that appears in “Life,” that Brian Jones was “a kind of rotting attachment.”
The portrait of Jones that Mr. Trynka offers here is bifurcated. Though he is impressed with Jones’s “disciplined, honed sense of musical direction” and his dexterity on guitar and many other instruments, he does not hesitate to point out his subject’s more unpleasant personality traits: He was narcissistic, manipulative, misogynistic, conniving and dishonest about money. It’s not accidental that this book is called “Sympathy for the Devil” in Britain.
Mr. Trynka attributes Jones’s downfall to a conjunction of factors, some related to those character flaws but others external to him. Much has been written about the drug busts that swept up Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards in the mid-1960s and their court battles, though Jones seems to have been even more of a target, because he was such a dandy and so successful with women.
But as Mr. Trynka tells it, Jones did not receive strong legal advice or fight charges as hard or as successfully as the Jagger-Richards team. After his first arrest, he pleaded guilty, which drove a wedge between him and other band members, who feared it would mean they could no longer tour abroad, all of which left him feeling crushed, isolated and vulnerable. That, in turn, increased his consumption of drugs and alcohol and made him less productive as a musician.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trynka demonstrates convincingly that the original Rolling Stones were Jones’s band and reflected his look, tastes and interests, not just the blues but also renaissance music and what today would be called world music. (He recorded the master musicians of Joujouka in the mountains of Morocco.) In “Life,” Mr. Richards describes his discovery of the blues-tinged open G guitar tuning, familiar from hits like “Honky Tonk Women” and “Start Me Up,” as life changing, and says it came to him via Ry Cooder in the late 1960s. But Mr. Trynka notes that Jones often played in that tuning from the band’s earliest days and quotes Dick Taylor, an original member of the Stones, as saying, “Keith watched Brian play that tuning, and certainly knew all about it.”
Some of Mr. Trynka’s account is not new, having appeared in “Stone Alone,” the often overlooked 1990 memoir of the Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, or other books written by band outsiders. What makes Mr. Trynka’s book fresh and interesting, and gives it credibility, is the length he has gone to find witnesses to corroborate and elaborate on those stories.
It’s not just that Mr. Trynka has sought out those who worked with the band on the creative side, such as the singer Marianne Faithfull, the arranger Jack Nitzsche and the recording engineers Eddie Kramer, Glyn Johns and George Chkiantz. He has also interviewed those with more of a worm’s-eye view: drivers, roadies, office staff, old girlfriends and former roommates like James Phelge, whose surname the band would appropriate to designate songs that were group compositions rather than Jagger-Richard numbers.
“Brian Jones was the main man in the Stones; Jagger got everything from him,” the drummer Ginger Baker, who played in the band at some of its earliest shows and went on to become famous as a member of Cream, says in the book. “Brian was much more of a musician than Jagger will ever be — although Jagger’s a great economist.”
Citing those present at the creation, Mr. Trynka contends that Jones had a hand in composing some well-known Stones tracks, including “Paint It, Black” and “Under My Thumb.” He also claims that “Ruby Tuesday,” a No. 1 hit early in 1967, is actually a Jones-Richards collaboration — written not by Mr. Richards in a burst of inspiration and heartbreak in a Los Angeles hotel room, which is how the story is told in “Life” and elsewhere, but, according to Ms. Faithfull and Mr. Kramer, “labored over” by the pair in London for weeks.
“I used to say to Brain, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ ” Stan Blackbourne, the accountant for the Rolling Stones at their mid-1960s peak, recalls in the book. “ ‘You write some of these songs, and you give the name over as if Mick Jagger has done it. Do you understand, you’re giving ’em thousands of pounds!’ All the time I used to tell him, ‘You’re writing a blank check.’ ”
Mr. Trynka also looks into the circumstances of Jones’s death, on July 3, 1969, in the swimming pool at his home in East Sussex, once owned by A. A. Milne, but after all the Sturm und Drang that has come before, the subject is somewhat anticlimactic. In numerous books and in films like “Stoned,” it has been suggested that Jones was murdered, but Mr. Trynka painstakingly examines the flaws in each of the theories, and ends up close to the official verdict, “death by misadventure,” because of drug and alcohol consumption.
“The official coroner’s verdict on Brian’s death was perfunctory and lazy,” Mr. Trynka concludes. Nonetheless, “I’ve come to share their belief that Brian’s death was most likely a tragic accident” and to believe that “many of the existing theories that his death was in fact murder rely on unreliable witnesses.”
In the end, with the advantage of 45 years’ perspective, Mr. Trynka maintains, it is Jones’s music that matters. “It’s understandable why the survivors resent Brian Jones beyond the grave,” given his founder’s role, he argues, and also writes: “Brian Jones got many things wrong in his life, but the most important thing he got right.”
BRIAN JONES
The Making of the Rolling Stones By Paul Trynka
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTRz2djRnV8&app=desktop
Image: The daughter of the original member of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, still wants answers 50 years on from hid death
Background from {[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/arts/brian-jones-the-making-of-the-rolling-stones-a-biography.html]}
By Larry Rohter
Nov. 16, 2014
Brian Jones is to the Rolling Stones what Leon Trotsky was to the Russian Revolution: organizer, ideologist and victim of a power struggle. Jones founded the group, gave it its name and recruited the schoolboys Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who then marginalized him, eventually expelling him from the band. Since his death in 1969, a month after he was forced out, Jones has largely been airbrushed from the group’s history.
Paul Trynka’s biography “Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones” challenges the standard version of events, focused on Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, in favor of something far more nuanced. Though Mr. Trynka sometimes overstates Jones’s long-term cultural impact, his is revisionist history of the best kind — scrupulously researched and cogently argued — and should be unfailingly interesting to any Stones fan.
Specifically, “Brian Jones” seems designed as a corrective to “Life,” Keith Richards’s 2010 memoir. Mr. Trynka, the author of biographies of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and a former editor of the British music magazines Mojo and Guitar, has interviewed Mr. Richards several times over the years and obviously likes him, but also considers his memory of events highly unreliable.
“History is written by the victors, and in recent years we’ve seen the proprietors of the modern Rolling Stones describe their genesis, their discovery of the blues, without even mentioning their founder,” Mr. Trynka remarks in the introduction. Without naming Mr. Richards, he also expresses his distaste for an assessment that appears in “Life,” that Brian Jones was “a kind of rotting attachment.”
The portrait of Jones that Mr. Trynka offers here is bifurcated. Though he is impressed with Jones’s “disciplined, honed sense of musical direction” and his dexterity on guitar and many other instruments, he does not hesitate to point out his subject’s more unpleasant personality traits: He was narcissistic, manipulative, misogynistic, conniving and dishonest about money. It’s not accidental that this book is called “Sympathy for the Devil” in Britain.
Mr. Trynka attributes Jones’s downfall to a conjunction of factors, some related to those character flaws but others external to him. Much has been written about the drug busts that swept up Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards in the mid-1960s and their court battles, though Jones seems to have been even more of a target, because he was such a dandy and so successful with women.
But as Mr. Trynka tells it, Jones did not receive strong legal advice or fight charges as hard or as successfully as the Jagger-Richards team. After his first arrest, he pleaded guilty, which drove a wedge between him and other band members, who feared it would mean they could no longer tour abroad, all of which left him feeling crushed, isolated and vulnerable. That, in turn, increased his consumption of drugs and alcohol and made him less productive as a musician.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trynka demonstrates convincingly that the original Rolling Stones were Jones’s band and reflected his look, tastes and interests, not just the blues but also renaissance music and what today would be called world music. (He recorded the master musicians of Joujouka in the mountains of Morocco.) In “Life,” Mr. Richards describes his discovery of the blues-tinged open G guitar tuning, familiar from hits like “Honky Tonk Women” and “Start Me Up,” as life changing, and says it came to him via Ry Cooder in the late 1960s. But Mr. Trynka notes that Jones often played in that tuning from the band’s earliest days and quotes Dick Taylor, an original member of the Stones, as saying, “Keith watched Brian play that tuning, and certainly knew all about it.”
Some of Mr. Trynka’s account is not new, having appeared in “Stone Alone,” the often overlooked 1990 memoir of the Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, or other books written by band outsiders. What makes Mr. Trynka’s book fresh and interesting, and gives it credibility, is the length he has gone to find witnesses to corroborate and elaborate on those stories.
It’s not just that Mr. Trynka has sought out those who worked with the band on the creative side, such as the singer Marianne Faithfull, the arranger Jack Nitzsche and the recording engineers Eddie Kramer, Glyn Johns and George Chkiantz. He has also interviewed those with more of a worm’s-eye view: drivers, roadies, office staff, old girlfriends and former roommates like James Phelge, whose surname the band would appropriate to designate songs that were group compositions rather than Jagger-Richard numbers.
“Brian Jones was the main man in the Stones; Jagger got everything from him,” the drummer Ginger Baker, who played in the band at some of its earliest shows and went on to become famous as a member of Cream, says in the book. “Brian was much more of a musician than Jagger will ever be — although Jagger’s a great economist.”
Citing those present at the creation, Mr. Trynka contends that Jones had a hand in composing some well-known Stones tracks, including “Paint It, Black” and “Under My Thumb.” He also claims that “Ruby Tuesday,” a No. 1 hit early in 1967, is actually a Jones-Richards collaboration — written not by Mr. Richards in a burst of inspiration and heartbreak in a Los Angeles hotel room, which is how the story is told in “Life” and elsewhere, but, according to Ms. Faithfull and Mr. Kramer, “labored over” by the pair in London for weeks.
“I used to say to Brain, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ ” Stan Blackbourne, the accountant for the Rolling Stones at their mid-1960s peak, recalls in the book. “ ‘You write some of these songs, and you give the name over as if Mick Jagger has done it. Do you understand, you’re giving ’em thousands of pounds!’ All the time I used to tell him, ‘You’re writing a blank check.’ ”
Mr. Trynka also looks into the circumstances of Jones’s death, on July 3, 1969, in the swimming pool at his home in East Sussex, once owned by A. A. Milne, but after all the Sturm und Drang that has come before, the subject is somewhat anticlimactic. In numerous books and in films like “Stoned,” it has been suggested that Jones was murdered, but Mr. Trynka painstakingly examines the flaws in each of the theories, and ends up close to the official verdict, “death by misadventure,” because of drug and alcohol consumption.
“The official coroner’s verdict on Brian’s death was perfunctory and lazy,” Mr. Trynka concludes. Nonetheless, “I’ve come to share their belief that Brian’s death was most likely a tragic accident” and to believe that “many of the existing theories that his death was in fact murder rely on unreliable witnesses.”
In the end, with the advantage of 45 years’ perspective, Mr. Trynka maintains, it is Jones’s music that matters. “It’s understandable why the survivors resent Brian Jones beyond the grave,” given his founder’s role, he argues, and also writes: “Brian Jones got many things wrong in his life, but the most important thing he got right.”
BRIAN JONES
The Making of the Rolling Stones By Paul Trynka
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