It’d be excusable for anybody under the age of 50 to have never heard of Brian Jones. For while the apparently eternal dual protagonists of the Rolling Stones have survived to embark upon their ninth decade, the uniquely charismatic guitarist/multiinstrumentalist, with whom they formed the band in ’62, never even lived to see 28.
Jones’s sad, pathetic ‘death by misadventure’ (drowned at the bottom of his swimming pool shortly after being dismissed from the Stones in the summer of ’69) was the first shocking indication the Dionysian Sixties dream was over. Yet despite predating the deaths of Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison and the Tate/LaBianca slayings and Altamont, his loss and legacy are regarded as a footnote by comparison to that of his close chum Jimi. But why? Brian, all blond bangs, sexual magnestism, cruel, De Sadean soul and dandy demeanour was the Stones’ original leader, who received the bulk of their fan mail… Maybe we’ve answered our own question.
The Stones
