Among so much brilliance, the kingdom of rock abounds in sad stories, a retelling of tragedies that add patina to the beauty of art. Among them, one of the most painful, one of the most resounding, has at its center the man who this February 28 should have been 80 years old. But Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones He was far from old age. Crystallized in the ’60s, a symbol and at the same time a victim of the swinging sixties. Founder of a world-renowned rock brand who might hardly enjoy that achievement. An artist of enormous talent who, preceding the famous sentence of Neil Young, burned rather than slowly fade away. Beautiful and refined, but consumed by inner demons: the Stone that was and was not.
What happened between 1962 and 1969 had the intensity of an unrepeatable time, and the amazement of everything that was being built from scratch. Well, not out of nowhere: Brian Jones was a fervent admirer of rhythm’n’blues that came from the United States, but at the same time he pushed to broaden those horizons. Maybe because every instrument that fell into his hands came to life, string, percussion, wind. Perhaps because the art world gave him the freedom that he never found in the rigid British schools where he only received warnings, punishments, predictions of inevitable failure.
Beyond all the diplomatic statements of his former colleagues in the years that followed his death, Brian Jones remains an awkward page in Stone history. A brick that never finished fitting into the solid wall that he himself began to build. May 2, 1962, when he posted an ad looking for musicians for his new project. He came from playing with little monsters of the scene like Alexis Korner y Jack Bruce, but needed something new. A pianist called Ian Stewart and the singer Michael Philip Jaggerwho brought his friend Keith Richards. It took a bit for The Rollin’ Stones they will add a “g” to their name already Bill Wyman y Charlie Watts to the formation, but what sounded had enough convincing power.
Just as rigor should not be reinforced in the trial towards the role of Jagger / Richards in the expulsion of Jones years later, there is no exaggeration in pointing out the fundamental role played by the blond multi-instrumentalist in the design of the rock colossus in force until today. disks like Aftermath (1966), Between the Buttons, Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) and Beggars Banquet (1968) abound in sound examples of what Brian meant in the sound of those Stones. Even more: between Jones and Richards patented a style of guitar collaboration which Keith would retort with Mick Taylor y Ron Woodthe guitar weaving that confuses the instrumentalists into a single unit that does not distinguish between the soloist and the accompanist. A form of exchange not so usual in times that consecrated the guitar hero in the figures of Eric Clapton O Jimmy Page.
Put bluntly: without Brian Jones there would have been no Rolling Stones.
Of course, everything that came following was due to the survivors, and the arrival of Andrew Loog Oldham It was another necessary event. But Oldham and Jones mightn’t stand each other, and beyond that acrimony, the producer also knew how to exploit the potential of the Glimmer Twins: he put Lennon and McCartney as an example and pushed them to write together (an area in which Brian was not so prominent), stimulated Jagger as frontman, worked on a new image and other roles in the band.
Brian collaborated in this slow retreat from the band he had founded. He was the first architect of his own decline. The ’60s were a continuous supply of new and tempting drugs, with very little information on their effects in the medium term. And Jones already had one volatile personality: In his autobiography, Bill Wyman refers to the “two faces” of his partner, who might be charming one moment and insufferable the next. A boy who lived at full speed, who impregnated four girlfriends and, when he seemed to settle down more seriously with Anita Pallenberghe had already entered a spiral of mental and physical degradation that worsened when his girlfriend left him for… Richards.
But none of that would have taken him away from his musical creature: in fact, his companions weren’t exactly babes at heart, but they somehow managed to muster the energy to continue nurturing a band that was already much more than a secret of English bowling alleys. . Out of confusion or boredom, Brian Jones turned into a shadow, a character lost in the corners of studies where Jagger and Richards took the reins. He had taught Mick to play the harmonica, but he didn’t play it anymore. He had promoted the deformity of inserting marimbas in “Under My Thumb” and sitar in “Paint it Black” and “Street Fighting Man”, but at the height of Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed (1969) it was already hard to get him to strum the guitar. At Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus, the musicians of Jethro Tull and The Who, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, had the sensation of being in the presence of a ghost. It is not that the others were much better: for something that Stones performance was shelved for 25 years.
But the others managed to raise their heads. Keith learned to function even in his cloud of heroin. Jagger began to take the place of boss, a path in which he would also become an athlete. Watts walked away from the drink. Brian was never able to regain control that Oldham had taken from him. Everything was spinning out of reach. He had been arrested in 1967 and 1968 with all kinds of substances, and there was no way the United States would grant him the necessary visa for the Stones’ 1969 tour. Those who had responded to the 1962 ad, who had celebrated his idea of a name that paid tribute to Muddy WatersThey were the ones who now kept rolling while he got bogged down in a thickening mold. One night in May 1969 he crashed into a shop window on his motorcycle. He was miraculously saved.
On June 8, Jagger, Richards and Watts visited a Brian who might barely hold his attention to inform him that I was out of the band. That’s where you start to avoid summary judgment on Mick & Keith: yes, firing doesn’t sound very nice, but the Stones were already too serious a project to take any effort, and Jones was actually already outside. It is less justifiable that only Wyman and Watts were to appear at the funeral, or that the Hyde Park show on July 5, which was to be the official presentation of Mick Taylorbecame a forced tribute to Brian.
Because less than a month following being kicked out of his gang, Brian Jones was dead in the pool at his home on Cotchford Farm. Theories regarding murder they come back cyclically, but the autopsy showed that his body was no longer enough, that no bricklayer was necessary, enraged by an argument over money. With him the sinister opened jacks poker of the change of decade, and the doors of the club of 27: in September 1970 he died Jimi Hendrix; in October of that same year, Janis Joplin; in July 1971, Jim Morrison, who had dedicated a poem to Brian as soon as he learned of his death. All at 27 years old, all paying a high price for living several lives in one. With the unfortunate fortune of still being there, eternally young. Authors of pages of history with capital letters, condemned not to be able to enjoy it.