The Stones And Brian Jones

[Lord Reith]

Watched this new Arena documentary the other day about the founder of the Rolling Stones. Didn't really know anything about the guy so it was fairly interesting. Actually what I enjoyed most was Bill Wyman's contributions, who always has interesting stuff to say. I especially loved his reaction when they talked about the tape of Brian jamming with Hendrix, to which he replied "No one's supposed to know about that!" and then turns to someone off-camera and says "What do I say?" They then played a bit of the tape.

Didn't know Brian was a huge Beatles fans and played their records all the time. That was nice to know. And Paul got to tell the You Know My name story.

All in all though I can't say I warmed to the guy at all. He really seems to have been a self-centred asshole who drove everyone around him mad. Granted, he was a pretty good musician but it was Mick and Keith who really made the Stones the success they became. I guess the more he came to realise this, the more depressed he became.

Worth seeing if you get the chance. The BBC's standards have now fallen so far that they are using webcams to do interviews rather than actually send a crew, but if you can put up with the ropey quality most of the key participants have a lot of interesting things to say.

[IFeelFine]

I watched it a while ago and I agree he comes across as very self-centered.
His treatment of the women in his life was pretty abysmal from even before he became famous.
His group just left him behind and he begrudged that and with his prodigious drug taking he seems to have entered a downward depressive spiral.
Look at him during Rock n' Roll Circus and you can see how utterly spaced out he was.
No wonder his bandmates finally lost patience with him.

[Bumblebee]

It’s a good documentary, already bootlegged by FAB. Jones was an interesting character, really driven as far as the blues goes. You can see how his look inspired a whole host of sixties bands, particularly in the USA - just look at the Byrds when they first started out.

Lennon claimed to have pulled a stunt on Jones; he was being driven through London in his Rolls Royce when he spotted Jones being chauffeured in his car. Lennon said that his Rolls was fitted with external speakers, so he started to make announcements through the car speakers that Jones was being followed by the police. If true, this no doubt did little to help Jones ever increasing paranoia.

The Hendrix jam referred to by Bill Wyman has been available for years, it’s called ‘Little One’ and there were two takes of it. Jones is on sitar, he might be on one or two other things as well. For a long time there was a rumour that Jones had left a whole cache of tapes secreted at Cotchford Farm, his last home, including songs he’d written. Alas it was wishful thinking and nothing has ever materialised. The closest has been a track called Dust My Pyramids, a wonderfully titled piece that later turned out to be a misidentified BBC session track.

The use of webcams in the documentary might be down to the fact that the film was being made in lockdown; regardless, it’s not necessarily a deliberate move by the BBC to lower its standards more a result of swingeing budget cuts.

[Lord Reith]

Thanks. I kind of got the impression from the website that it was new, guess it is quite old now.

Not too sure about the Lennon story though! Pretty hard not to notice you're being tailed by a psychedleic Rolls, unless he was out of it and thought it was part of the trip!

Sad stuff with his dad. Hate to see stuff like that never be resolved.

[Choking Smoker]

I went to a funeral just outside Cheltenham about 15 years ago. As we left the main building into the graveyard a headstone caught my eye, It was Brian Jones's. I was kind of aware he came from Cheltenham but had no idea he was buried there.

[Bumblebee]

Thanks. I kind of got the impression from the website that it was new, guess it is quite old now.

Not too sure about the Lennon story though! Pretty hard not to notice you're being tailed by a psychedleic Rolls, unless he was out of it and thought it was part of the trip!

Sad stuff with his dad. Hate to see stuff like that never be resolved.

It is fairly new, first broadcast about nine months ago.

I’m struggling to recall where the Lennon story came from. Pete Townshend might have been involved which would put it to December 1968 and the Rock n Roll Circus. Famous quote from Pete when Jones died, ‘Brian died every day’.

I was kind of intrigued by the pre publicity at the time which referred to Jones as the forgotten Stone whereas, to me, he was what made the band something different. It seems that he could turn his hand to any musical instrument and in him the Stones had someone that other groups, including the Beatles, didn’t have. Just listen to what Jones brought to Under My Thumb (marimba), Paint It Black (sitar) and Ruby Tuesday (that beautiful, gossamer recorder he plays). I’d also hazard a guess that it was Brian who handled a lot of the music on Satanic Majesties, flawed though it is.

He left his mark on the Stones, maybe more than he’s given credit for. I read an interesting interview with Ron Wood where he was recounting his early tenure with the group in the mid seventies. The band were rehearsing for the 1978 Some Girls tour in a soundstage attached to which was the storage area where the bands gear was kept. Wood said that he was surprised to find in there Brian’s Vox Teardrop guitar which he retrieved and walked out to Keith with but before he could start playing it Richards tore him a strip off. Told him to put it back and to never touch it again. Wood said he got the impression that there was still some hoodoo around the whole Brian thing that never got discussed.

[hallucalation]

That Little One jam with Hendrix have nothing to do with Brian - it's Dave Mason from the Traffic. Surprised that Bill didn't know that. Tape has been mislabeled for years.

Here is his actual "jam" with Hendrix during All Along The Watchtower and it's pretty abysmal.

[Bumblebee]

That Little One jam with Hendrix have nothing to do with Brian - it's Dave Mason from the Traffic. Surprised that Bill didn't know that. Tape has been mislabeled for years.

Here is his actual "jam" with Hendrix during All Along The Watchtower and it's pretty abysmal.

Don’t know about that, I always took it to be Brian:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/brian-jone ... i-hendrix/

[hallucalation]

No, it wasn't and checked with Nico Nzengraf - it's not even in his datebase https://www.nzentgraf.de/

All Along The Watchtower have Brian. Olympic engineer remembers that session when Hendrix was desperate to finish song quickly and Brian just arrived drunk and they didn't know how to get rid of him.

[C90]

Sad stuff with his dad. Hate to see stuff like that never be resolved.

Brian's parents came to accept his appeal to music fans, at least in later years.
An old friend of mine, a Stones fan, travelled to Cheltenham in the early/mid 1980s specifically to check out Brian's old haunts, and found his parents' address. He simply went and knocked on the door, and had a chat with them about their son.
He said they were very polite and engaging - and gave him an old tie from the 1960s, which they said belonged to Brian!

(the friend passed away a few years ago, and I have no idea what happened to the tie)