27: Brian Jones (2 page)

The year was 1959. To the good burghers of the respectable, uptight spa town of Cheltenham, Brian was considered the lowest of the low. This was despite his educational achievements: he had nine O-levels, and distinguished A-level passes in chemistry and physics. A figure of shame to the area's nattering nabobs of negativism, he was given no emotional support whatsoever by his family. And there came a further shock: Brian had also impregnated a local married woman, who bore him a daughter the following year.

Virtually run out of town, a shamefaced Brian left Cheltenham. Armed with a guitar and a little money, he hitchhiked through Germany and Scandinavia in the new style of the beatnik. He suffered many difficult experiences, partly because he spoke none of the appropriate languages. Attempting to earn a crust, he would play music in bars and cafes.

When he returned to Cheltenham in 1960, the spa town had undergone a cultural shift. Coffee bars, with their gurgling Gaggia froth-making machines, were suddenly commonplace, a suggestion of the beginnings of a new youth culture. Around Christmas that year Brian met a pretty 16-year-old girl called Pat Andrews. She was working class, and therefore not good enough for his parents. Pat was attracted to Brian because of his bad reputation. On getting to know him, however, she was amazed by his knowledge of music. ‘He was so up and down,' she later recalled. ‘Seventy-five per cent of the time Brian was miserable because he was so thwarted musically at home. He felt deeply that he got no encouragement.'
[10]

Brian took a job as a coalman. But then he landed on a post more appropriate for someone of his educational qualifications – as a junior assistant in the architects' department of Gloucestershire County Council.
[11]
Although he was hardly regular in his attendance at this job, he still applied to enter Cheltenham School of Architecture. He was refused.

Yet Brian's musical interests predominated, and he found himself involved with local groups: he played with the Cheltone Six and had begun playing alto sax with the Ramrods, who – in the manner of the times – played instrumental rock 'n' roll.

Finally finding a cheap flat to rent, and therefore time to himself, Brian at last discovered American rhythm and blues, adoring the music of such artists as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. He would hunker down in his small flat, assiduously trying to figure out how, say, Elmore James played slide guitar – eventually he found a piece of piping in a plumber's yard that fitted his finger. Speaking to BBC Radio One, years later, Bill Wyman eulogized about Brian's slide playing: ‘He was a brilliant slide guitar player and the first slide guitar player in England that ever was.'

In 1961 the white British blues musician Alexis Korner came to play at Cheltenham Town Hall. When Brian managed to meet him, the blues maestro was impressed with Brian's knowledge of the genre. He urged him to move to London, offering to let him sleep on his floor. For a time Brian hitchhiked to London every weekend, staying at Korner's Bayswater home. Korner had distinct memories of their first meeting:
[12]
‘This pent-up ball of obsessive energy, talking away nineteen to the dozen in an incredibly intense manner … I vividly recall the first time I met Brian, but I can't for the life of me remember where I first met Mick.'

Brian's weekend trips to London, inevitably involving staying up late jamming with Alexis, frequently left him exhausted. After missing Monday work one too many times, he was fired. Instead, he took a job as a bus conductor. Inevitably sacked from that employment, he took a more appropriate position, working behind the record counter at Cheltenham's branch of the Curry's electrical chain store.

But life was about to spring a surprise: Pat Andrews, aged sixteen, became pregnant, giving birth to a baby boy on 23 October 1961. To purchase a substantial flower arrangement for his girlfriend, Brian, penniless as ever, sold four of his precious record albums. The boy was named Julian Mark, in tribute to Julian ‘Cannonball' Adderley, the bop saxophonist, but was more commonly known simply as Mark.

At a new flat he had taken, Brian began to entertain visiting jazz and blues musicians: Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were among those whose noisy visits, sometimes attracting attention from the local police, scandalized the neighbours in this quintessentially Conservative town.

Brian made a decision: he had to move to London. Yet the controlling hand of his father was hard to avoid: clearly still misreading his son, Lewis Jones arranged for him to study at the London College of Applied Optics.
[13]
While briefly there, miserably whiling away his days, Brian set about exploring London by night.

*

At that first meeting at the G Club, Keith Richards especially was extremely impressed by Brian Jones. ‘Brian was really fantastic, the first person I ever heard playing slide electric guitar,' said Keith. ‘Mick and I thought he was incredible. He mentioned he was forming a band. He could easily have joined another group but he wanted to form his own. The Rolling Stones was Brian's baby.' Quickly they discovered a deep empathy between the three of them; like Keith and Mick, Brian thought he was the only white musician in the world who was into that music.

A Blues Incorporated splinter group emerged, which included Korner, but mainly featured members of the Blue Boys – Jagger, Richards, and Dick Taylor. Brian Jones would sometimes sit in, and occasionally another vocalist was employed, a callow youth nicknamed Plimsolls because of his footwear. Although Plimsolls could hardly play at all, he was known to have a reasonably moneyed background that allowed him to be the possessor of a new Kay guitar. He had another sobriquet, Eric the Mod, and would soon enjoy greater success when he transferred all his attentions to the guitar and reverted to his full name of Eric Clapton. For now, however, whenever Keith's or Brian's guitar went on the blink, they would talk to Plimsolls and borrow his nice new instrument.

In May 1962 Brian Jones placed an advertisement in
Jazz News
, asking for musicians interested in forming a group with him. Ian ‘Stu' Stewart, who had an administrative job at Imperial Chemicals Industries, was the first person to respond to the audition that Brian held on the second floor of the Bricklayer's Arms in Soho's Berwick Street. When Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Dick Taylor turned up at the Bricklayer's, Stu was there, playing piano in leather shorts.

That was the first rehearsal by the core of the group that became the Rolling Stones. Ian Stewart noted the immediate empathy between Brian and Mick, and that this seemed to intimidate Keith. But Stu also could see that despite the relationship springing up between Mick and Brian, Mick and Keith were set in stone as a double act. For example, whenever there were opportunities for a ‘blow' with other musicians, including Brian, at a couple of Soho locations – a pub in Lyle Street, a joint in a Wardour Street alley – Mick always announced, ‘I'm not doin' it unless Keith's doin' it.'

But things were moving on for all concerned. Tucked away in the news pages of the 19 May 1962 edition of
Disc
, a tabloid music paper, was a small headline, ‘Singer joins Korner's Blues Inc.' This was the first mention in the British music press of the name Mick Jagger, and inevitably it was accompanied by that of Keith Richards, sharing the guitarist billing with Brian ‘Elmo Lewis' Jones.

At this stage ‘the Rollin' Stones' – to all intents and purposes a splinter group from Blues Incorporated – were very definitely Brian Jones's group, and he was not at all happy about such a prominent billing for Mick Jagger. ‘Brian came up with the name,' said Keith Richards. ‘It was a phone call – which cost money – and we were down to pennies. We'd got no gas and we were freezing our balls off, no water, everything was cut off. We got a gig at last, so we said “Call up
Jazz News
. Put in an advert.” So Brian gaily dials away – and they say “Who?” We hadn't got a name and every second was costing a precious farthing. There's a Muddy Waters record face down –
The Best of Muddy Waters
– and the first song was “Rollin' Stone Blues”. Brian had a panicked look on his face – he said “I don't know … the Rollin' Stones.” That's the reason we're called the Rollin' Stones, because if he didn't open his mouth immediately we were going to strangle him and cut him off. Not a lot of thought went into it, in other words.'

In June 1962 Mick made a final break with Korner to join up with Brian Jones, Ian Stewart and guitarist Geoff Bradford, who was into ethnic blues of the ilk of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. (‘The idealism of Geoff Bradford was to be a key part in Brian's musical education,' said Bill Wyman later, ‘and in the policy of the Stones.' A blues purist, Geoff Bradford considered Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed to be commercial exploiters of the form.) With him Mick brought Keith Richards and Dick Taylor.

In July 1962 Blues Incorporated were booked to appear on
Jazz Club
, on the BBC's Light Programme. The booking was for the same day as the group's regular night at the Marquee club on Oxford Street. To fill in for Korner's group, Mick Jagger agreed to play with Brian, Keith, Stu, Dick Taylor and a drummer called Mick Avory, later of the Kinks. Harold Pendleton, who ran the Marquee, said he would acquiesce only if John Baldry's group could top the bill, with the Stones playing support, for which they would be paid a fee of £20. Jagger immediately agreed, and a small story appeared in the next issue of
Jazz News
: ‘Mick Jagger, R & B vocalist, is taking a rhythm and blues group into the Marquee tomorrow night while Blues Incorporated does its Jazz Club radio broadcast gig.'

The Marquee gig was set for Thursday 12 July 1962, a night steamy with summer heat. The very first set played by the group under the name of the Rollin' Stones at the Marquee ran as follows: ‘Kansas City', ‘Honey What's Wrong', ‘Confessin' the Blues', ‘Bright Lights, Big City', ‘Dust My Broom', ‘Down the Road Apiece', ‘I Want to Love You', ‘Bad Boy', ‘I Ain't Got You', ‘Hush Hush', ‘Ride 'Em on Down', ‘Back in the USA', ‘Up All Night', ‘Tell Me That You Love Me' and ‘Happy Home' – all within the space of fifty minutes.

*

All that summer the Rollin' Stones assiduously rehearsed. ‘Brian really got into Jimmy Reed,' remembered Keith. ‘He would sit around for hours and hours, working out how Reed's sound was put together. He'd work at it and work at it. He'd really get it down. Brian didn't consider [Chuck] Berry to be in the same class, but when we proved to him that he was, he really started to dig him. He'd work with me on Berry things. We really got into that. We were working out the guitar parts and the rhythm, which was 4/4 swing beat, not a rock beat at all. It was jazz swing beat, except there would be another guitar playing. He was a good guitar player then. He had the touch and was just peaking. He was really working at it. He said that we were just amateurs, but we dug to play.'

Brian Jones had a job as a sales assistant at the Civil Service store in Victoria, eagerly filching cash from the till. He found a place to stay in Powis Square in London's Notting Hill – precisely where Mick Jagger's character lived in the film
Performance
. According to Keith, it was at this time that Mick once went round to Brian's flat when Brian wasn't there, and ‘screwed Brian's old lady'. Pat Andrews, the ‘old lady' in question, adamantly denied this.
[14]
Mick had turned up there, drunk, in the middle of the night, having been to a party and unable to return to Dartford. The next morning, when Brian went off to work at the Civil Service store, Mick was still asleep. ‘I made him coffee and sat on the edge of the settee to give him the mug,' recalled Pat Andrews. ‘Mick swung up grinning. He put his arm around me and made a pass. I wasn't interested. Brian was a very jealous man, but I had never been unfaithful to him and I wasn't about to start with Mick. I loved Brian.'
[15]
Mick Jagger stuck around until Brian returned at the end of the day. Needing a ‘babysitter' for the evening so they could all go out, Mick had an idea who to ask. ‘That was the night I first met Keith,' Pat Andrews remembered. ‘I never liked Keith. He was lazy, slovenly … compared to Brian, Keith had no class.'
[16]

Soon, however, Pat Andrews made a decision. She realized that Brian was not prepared to give up the Rollin' Stones and become a good family man. Leaving only a note, one day in September 1962, she took Brian's son Mark and departed their Powis Square home.

At this point Brian Jones moved into a new flat that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had found, at 102 Edith Grove, on the border between Chelsea and Fulham. Brian also left the Civil Service store to work in a similar capacity in the electrical department at Whiteley's department store in Bayswater, which sold records. Soon, however, he was sacked for stealing money. He only avoided a criminal prosecution by claiming he had become mentally unhinged due to the break-up of his relationship.

Having lost his job, Brian was at 102 Edith Grove most of the time. Unemployed and presumably unemployable, Keith also had nowhere else to spend his days. The pair would pass each day playing together, ‘figuring out Jimmy Reed and stuff,' according to Keith. ‘This was an intense learning period. We would love to make records, but we're not in that league. We wanted to sell records for Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf. We were missionaries, disciples, Jesuits. We thought, “If we can turn people on to that, then that's enough.” That was the whole total aim … the original aim. There was no thought of attaining rock 'n' roll stardom.'
[17]