This is a story about a very unsure, depressed, anxious young man who just happened to form the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
I’m a fan. I’ve been a fan of The Rolling Stones since I can remember. Like The Beatles, they’ve always been in my orbit. As a child of the 90s and 00s growing up with parents who were children of the 60s and 70s, their music was always in the atmosphere. I’ve watched the documentaries, read the authorised biographies, Keith’s immense book “Life”, and the unauthorised ones. I’ve screenshotted the photos for the fashion and bought the Stones t-shirts.
Mick and Keith were childhood friends who bumped into each other at a train station when they were teenagers. Keith was going to art school at the time, and Mick was studying at the London School of Economics.
Keith spied a couple of records Mick had under his arm. A Muddy Waters LP and Chuck Berry’s greatest hits were all it took for the greatest rock and roll duos to come together. The glimmer twins were born.
Mick and Keith started hanging out at the jazz bars in London, where they met Charlie Watts and Brian Jones. The boys formed a band. They advertised for a bass player, and Bill Wyman answered the call. And then the well-known dot points that go something like;
An English cover band for American Rhythm and Blues, hanging with the Beatles, Satisfaction, Marianne Faithful, drug busts, rock and roll circus, Sympathy for the Devil, Anita Pallenberg, Brian dies, Mick Taylor joins, Hyde Park, Hells Angels, exiled in France; Bianca Jagger, more drug busts, fashion, America, Keith arrested in Canada, rehabilitated, Ronnie Wood, stadium band, middle-aged rockers, Jerry Hall, older rockers, greatest hits albums, Sir Mick, Martin Scorsese, crossfire hurricane, 50th anniversary, tour tour tour, Charlie passes away. And here we are in the present.
Brian Jones has always been a dot point in music history.
For a band that’s been going on for as long as the stones have, 2024 coming up to 62 years – they’re official date of conception being 1962 – the interest in their story, music and the passion of their fans is a beautiful thing. They continue to be the soundtrack to countless generations, producing a best-selling studio album as recent as 2023, Hackney Diamonds. The Rolling Stones have always been relevant. It’s hard to think of them as new and up-and-coming. Especially with the inclusion of Bill Wyman in the documentary, now an old man in his 80s.
Brian Jones and the Stones is not an in-depth portrait compared to others, like “Crossfire Hurricane,” but it does give an intriguing look at Brian Jones.
I knew Brian was the catalyst in getting the stones together, and I knew he came up with the name after Muddy Water’s song “Rollin’ Stone” This was his vision for The Rolling Stones, being a cover band of Muddy Water, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson. It’s not a pop band performing their own compositions about Satisfaction or Jumping Jack Flash. Which is such a crazy notion for us fans. You can see why Mick and Keith and the rest of the band couldn’t see Brian’s blinkered view on this. The Stones were hit makers, no question about that. And I wouldn’t be so brash as to call Beggars Banquet or Between the Buttons ‘pop’. This is Rock, albeit popular rock.
Through this film, Brian’s complexities are explored in a melancholy way. Many friends and comrades describe him as a sweet guy, an immensely talented musician, and a gentleman. And then, as success grows, money comes in, opportunities for debauchery come, and his other side comes to the fore. He was a complicated guy before being a Rolling Stone.
His parents kicked him out as a young man for getting his girlfriend pregnant. And a pattern emerges. He charms his way into the homes and families of each new girlfriend he acquires before he is 25—five on the filmmaker’s count. Five children were born to five different women. The first is put up for adoption. The film takes the girls’ point of view as the narrators of Brian’s story, which is a great take, I think. The love he showed them mixed with the abandonment. He’d move in with the girlfriend’s family, get her pregnant and casually move on. Back on tour, back as a Rolling Stone.
One of his girlfriends describes him as a gentleman who would open doors for her and be loving. “When he met my mother, he kissed her hand. Who does that?” Well, most people would say a guy who knows how to play the field does that. A guy who was without a home or loving family and needed one to live with. Sadly.
One unhappy tale comes from Linda Lawrence, mother of his son Julian. Linda needed money from Brian, raising their son on her own, and Brian just laughed at her from his balcony. Brian was with Anita Pallenberg by this time. Perhaps not the best influence on a guy with crippling low self-esteem. Anita Pallenberg, who later went on to date and have children with Keith Richards, is no shrinking violet.
Humans all have the capability of good and evil, and Linda believes that Anita Pallenberg brought out Brian’s vicious side—teasing people and spiking their drinks. When you mix that with fame, money, every available drug in his system, and his band growing tired of his moods and unreliability, Brian’s fate feels like a foregone conclusion.
This is a documentary for the fans. Vintage Stones on the big screen. Their early, unpolished performances in black and white in little theatres across England and Europe, Mick Jagger becoming THE Mick Jagger, singing in a turtleneck jumper, well before the jumpsuits and lavish costumes. We’re taken back to London in the 60’s, a promised land that will always be rhapsodised and always looks cool to those of us who were never there.
Brian was a lost soul with a glimmer of hope to reach his full potential with the stones. A boy who longed for his parents’ approval, the parents who kicked him out before he was making money. When the drug busts were happening in 1967, Brian sent a note to his parents asking, “please don’t think badly of me”. Heartbreaking. Especially with the letter from his father found years after Brains death.
Brian needed to escape something: a pain, a deep insecurity, the five children he had but didn’t know, the girls he abandoned. And drugs were his way to do that. I came away feeling not in awe, just desperately sad for him. An interviewer asks him about his songwriting. You see Mick and Keith stop their pretend chatting in the background and shoot their gaze over to see what Brian was going to say. To Brian’s credit he says it’s not him who writes the hits, it’s Mick and Keith.
“What would you do differently now that you know how hard you have to work?” is the next question for Brian. “I’d do it all the same, 100 times over.”
Brian Jones. Gone but not forgotten.
The British Film Festival 2024 runs from Nov – Dec 8. To book tickets to this or other films click https://britishfilmfestival.com.au/ for session and venue details.
