brian jones - really?

Although Mick Taylor was "better" chops-wise, Brian had a soul dredged straight outta Clarksdale. Ron Wood will spend the rest of his life trying (and failing) to capture a moment as mournful as "No Expectations."

He sure plays it nice on "Rock and Roll Circus."

The Master Musicians of Jajouka.

what is their link to the Stones? and what should i know about them?

I think the first famous westerner to "discover" the Master Musicians of Jajouka was Brion Gysin, or possibly Paul Bowles. Anyway, there is a whole beat/expat. connection to them. This is covered in great detail all over the place, which is one reason I'm being so vague. It shouldn't be hard to track something down about it.

and no, rockist scientist, yer not the only ILmer with a shamefully large knowledge of Psychic TV ;-p

And even though Brian may not have written songs, that didn't mean that he didn't have massive creative input. He was a genius in terms of texture and arrangement - he was the multi-instrumentalist that dragged in sitars and mellotrons and cellos and recorders. The Brian Jones period was the musical heyday of the Stones, when they were actually adventurous and interesting and yet also downright pop - without him, they descended into self parody of being just another above-average bar blues band. Ironic, considering that Brian was the most pure "rhtyhm and blues" enthusiast of them all.

He didn't write any of the songs (really) (Sure, Jagger Richards "stole" from lots of blues musicians, but not Brian Jones). He could play just about any instrument on sight, but never stuck with any of them long enough to add more than atmospherics. The band produced all of its best work (ie, Beggars Banquet-Exile) without him. (He had very little to do with Beggars, nothing to do with the rest. Just watch them recording Sympathy for the Devil in Godard's One Plus One; Brian is off in a corner strumming away in a dope haze--they weren't recording him.) He couldn't handle fame, or touring (which is why he got kicked out in the end). He had an enormous, brittle ego which was destroyed by drugs. He was deceptive and a control freak (couldn't handle Mick getting all the attention).

What he really did was invent the Stones image. He was always ahead of Mick and Keith fashion/taste/experience-wise. Ultimately they sucked his persona out of him and incorporated it into their own (this is what they did steal from him). Sad, but he wasn't exactly a saint. Also, Joujuka is a great album and arguably presaged ethno-techno (not necessarily something you want to take credit for, but anyway...) The conspiracy theory is that the builders who were working on his house drowned him.

five children by five different people by the time he was 23!!

brian jones, use a fucking condom lol

Lot of horseshit itt

BJ gets hard done by in the artistic genre of "shit illustrated renderings of the 27 Club", you always get Jimi, Janis, Jim, Amy and Kurt but he's pottering around in the background if he's lucky.

Also his work on punching women gets downplayed a lot

The more I hear about him, the less I like him, seems to have been a truly unpleasant individual.

The mid period rules so hard, I think I'm starting to like the era more than the later era, he had great instincts for sounds

Sounds like he was piece of shit but you know, he was in the Rolling Stones

even compared to other members of the roling stones he was a cunt

the only thing in his favor is his interest in musical instruments/sounds outside of traditional blues/rock, a lot of their “far out” sounds seem like they were largely his doing

aside from that he seems like the cuntiest twattiest hobgoblin to have ever drawn breath

oh man, i know nothing at all about him as a person. sounds like i don't want to find out. i revived this thread because i've been listening to Between the Buttons so much recently, just on repeat. i don't know the particulars of which songs he played on during the 67-69 era. i know it went downhill for him quickly and that he just kind of drugged himself out of the band. and then there's the people upthread offering contradicting takes on his role on beggar's banquet. seems like consensus is that he's barely there at all for let it bleed.

but Between the Buttons. I just kind of assume he's all over that, because it has a very different sound that the stones never consistently went back to. it's very poppy, a range of styles! the beach boys influence is clear (the harmony vocals on Yesterday's Papers), and there's still this raw early rock and roll vibe, like on "Complicated". i'm just humming the main part of Yesterday's Papers, and the little harpsichord-sounding thing and the marimba counterpoint at the end of each line...that sounds like a lot of Brian Jones to me, if i had to guess.

but i don't really know. it seems conspicuous, though, that they would have all these more light and melodic and adventurous songs and that it went away with Brian Jones

sorry, vibraphone on Yesterday's Papers, not marimba

listening to BtB so much, i'm thinking of it kind of as the answer to Revolver. both recorded in 1966, with revolver coming out in august '66 and BtB in jan '67. Revolver is 11.5 out of 10, BtB is a 10. it only suffers in comparison to the beatles. but both of them are my favorite stage of that group. there was something in the air, or maybe it was that they were still working with so few tracks in the studio

and on She Smiled Sweetly - is there anything else besides Brian Jones and the drums? or is that someone else playing the organ part? there's a sweetness to jagger's singing on that song that i don't really hard much later on

don't really _hear_ much later on, although i'm definitely far from well-versed in their post-Jones music. i know their big four, i love some girls, i like emotional and tattoo you and goat's head

was just listening to Between the Buttons again and was really struck by "She Smiled Sweetly;" I hadn't remembered the lyrics and found them surprisingly earnest and confessional.

KM, I love that you're posting about Between the Buttons on every Rolling Stones thread except the Between the Buttons one; I keep thinking about reviving that thread but I don't want to ruin your streak.

Mick & Keith's 50+ year PR campaign of minimizing his contributions has been very effective

oh lily you should do it! that would be perfect. i think it's because i keep thinking i'm about to move beyond that one, and i go back to aftermath, or i forward to flowers again, but then i just really need to hear "complicated" again at top volume. that's the one that gets me. the "yeah" parts from mick, especially, holy cow.

holy SHIT, the best part about "connection" is the bass (imo), and i see now that keith richards played it on that one. makes sense. it's just 8th notes but it is popping

anyway, having finally visited the wikipedia page for Between the Buttons, i feel validated that brian jones seemed essential to the proceedings. these are his credits for the US version:

Brian Jones – organ (1, 5, 10), electric guitar (1, 11), accordion (3), recorder (3, 7), vibraphone (2), piano (2), tambourine (4), harmonica (9), dulcimer (6), kazoo (6), backing vocals (2,3) tuba, trombone, trumpet (12)

the tuba, the trombone, AND the trumpet on "Something Happened to Me Yesterday". everyone was like Brian, your lips, they're all blown out, you have to stop

sorry -- i know this is a lot of posts in a row --

but maybe the shift in direction after between the buttons has to do with the oldham leaving, too? i don't really know the producer history of the stones that much. from the godard footage it kind of always seemed to me that the 68-72 configuration was just kind of in exalted rock star world and could do whatever they felt like at that point. maybe that's why oldham had to go? because he'd push them into a pop direction or something? i don't know. BJ, do u know?

The photo shoot for the album cover took place in November 1966 on Primrose Hill in North London. The photographer was Gered Mankowitz, who also shot the band photos for the cover of Out of Our Heads. The shoot took place at 5:30 in the morning following an all night recording session at Olympic Studios. Using a home-made camera filter constructed of black card, glass and Vaseline, Mankowitz created the effect of the Stones dissolving into their surroundings. The goal of the shoot was, in Mankowitz's words, "to capture the ethereal, druggy feel of the time; that feeling at the end of the night when dawn was breaking and they'd been up all night making music, stoned."[7] Brian Jones' disheveled and gaunt appearance on the cover disturbed many of his fans, and critic David Dalton wrote that he looked "like a doomed albino raccoon."[4]

lol, but also, as someone who often looks "disheveled and gaunt", fuck you David Dalton!

"Brian [Jones] was lurking in his collar", Mankowitz commented years later, "I was frustrated because it felt like we were on the verge of something really special and he was messing it up. But the way Brian appeared to not give a shit is exactly what the band was about."

mankowitz otm

https://i.imgur.com/WBfnoeM.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ZkQQW48.png

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https://i.imgur.com/X3aFqnv.png

Brian was already going down, but somehow comes off as most ready for the Spiders From Mars in the JJF promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyxMAyh9XVQ

far out maaan

I recall reading in Stanley Booth’s booth that Brian actually relished getting mobbed by fans and would kind of go towards dangerous situations when he ended up getting crushed and clothes mangled and shit, weird fucked up dude

True Adventurous of the Rolling Stones by Booth remains essential, he saw right through them

gd they really did make some dope pre-MTV videos

but I’m the guy who’ll watch “Hey Negrita” and just smile like an idiot

Jagger in 1995:

Can we talk about Brian Jones for a second here?

Sure. The thing about Brian is that he was an extremely difficult person. You don’t really feel like talking bad about someone that’s had such a miserable time. But he did give everyone else an extremely miserable ride. Anyway, there was something very, very disturbed about him. He was very unhappy with life, very frustrated. He was very talented, but he was a very paranoid personality and not at all suited to be in show business.

Hmm. Show business killed him?
Yeah. Well, he killed himself, but he should’ve been playing trad-jazz weekends and teaching in school; he probably would have been better off.

What was Brian’s contribution to the band?

Well, he had a huge contribution in the early days. He was very obsessed with it, which you always need.

Obsessed with the band?

Yeah, getting it going and its personality and how it should be. He was obsessed. Too obsessed for me. There’s a certain enthusiasm, and after that it becomes obsession. I go back to my thing about collecting: It’s nice to collect stamps, but if it becomes obsessive, and you start stealing for your stamps, it becomes too much. He was obsessed about the image of the band, and he was very exclusionary. He saw the Stones as a blues band based on Muddy Waters, Elmore James and that tradition.

I don’t think he really liked playing Chuck Berry songs. He was very purist. He was real middle class; he came from one of the most middle-class towns in England, Cheltenham, which was one of the most genteel towns in the most genteel area of England. So his whole outlook and upbringing was even worse in the gentility fashion than mine.

What did he have talent for?

He was a guitar player, and he also diverted his talent on other instruments. His original instrument was the clarinet. So he played harmonica because he was familiar with wind instruments.

Did he give the band a sound?

Yes. He played the slide guitar at a time when no one really played it. He played in the style of Elmore James, and he had this very lyrical touch. He evolved into more of an experimental musician, but he lost touch with the guitar, and always as a musician you must have one thing you do well. He dabbled too much.

I watched this over the weekend, pretty low-budget (no licensed music but I'd imagine they wouldn't have done it for any price), anyway some good stuff here and there (great stuff from Sam Cutler, who stole the show in the 4-part Grateful Dead doc on Prime)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10229846/

was fairly standard at the end, they definitely didn't shy away from having people talk about how intolerable he could be

the last 20 minutes gets a little wild, they go deep into a "Brian was murdered" conspiracy thing -- not by Mick and Keith as the old rumor goes, but by either this manager/hanger-on/mob ties dude who was living there w/Brian or these workmen who had been doing construction on the house and not been paid

Something i've always struggled to understand about this guy was that everybody said, oh, he was the most concerned about the Stones being a real blues band. Elmore James, slide guitar, etc. And I've seen interviews where Jones says stuff like this i.e. 'we were the most authentic blues band in Soho.' And on the other hand, he was clearly responsible for the poppy AND the avant-garde end of their early/middle phases. As others have said, once he goes, all that stuff goes and the Stones become more of a bar-rock blues machine.

yeah that is a weird dichotomy

Jones' peak in the band coincided with the Beatles' own studio experiments, which also kinda ceased after 1968. I wonder if The Band, Clapton, John Wesley Harding, etc. redeemed the quest for authenticity.

^ Was gonna say, Brian Jones’ trajectory mirrored George Harrison’s, they both more or less gave up guitar in 1967 for exotica, but later came back to it after they’d heard The Band and CCR

The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast recently had an episode which had a fair bit about Jones and some awful shit he did.

https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-129-i-cant-get-no-satisfaction-by-the-rolling-stones/

There's a transcript on the page, it's the last four or five paragraphs which are relevant here.

holy shit

ugh wow, i'd always heard oblique references and rumors... but wow. even if that's not 100% accurate that is still horrifying.

A Nico biography from several years ago had similar stories.

jesus that's horrific

The only competition in the Elegant Dirtbag department was Alain Delon.

yeah, that's fucking terrible. and it makes you think about what they didn't know about, or didn't act on.

it is consistent among the women who ever had any interaction with him … there are zero stories about him being anything less than awful as his drug use increased. he was unpleasant early on, but as time wore on (forgive the glib cliche) the sadistic violence became a feature, not a bug.

keith and mick arent making up stories about brian to make themselves feel better about kicking him out of the band. it’s not jealous propaganda because he was more talented & or theyre annoyed that he’s the rolling stone that everyone thinks they like the best because he was “interesting”.
they saw what everyone close to him saw.

In that Rolling Stone I excerpted, Jagger makes it clear he didn't much like him.

Makes sense Genesis P-Orridge would relate to him.

The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast recently had an episode which had a fair bit about Jones and some awful shit he did.

https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-129-i-cant-get-no-satisfaction-by-the-rolling-stones🕸/

There's a transcript on the page, it's the last four or five paragraphs which are relevant here.

I listened to the one on The Yardbirds' "For Your Love" and learned some things I'd never heard before. Subscribed.

urgh that Brian Jones story... I never liked him in general, I always found him lame and creepy, and regarding their music, I much prefer the Beggars/Exile years to the early years (although I enjoy some tracks).
But thanks for the podcast : it seems great indeed !

Glad you all like 500 Songs, thought Andrew was ILM-adjacent, even if I've never seen him on here he seems to be in the same circles on Twitter.

You can thank him to recorder on Rub yTuesday!

also
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Along_the_Watchtower#The_Jimi_Hendrix_Experience_version";

He is popping up mischevioiusly everywhere playing odd instruments!

Saw this (theatre) this afternoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MtS2t1KQ7c

Some good footage of '64-65 hysteria (e.g., a riot at an Australian airport), but don't know that I learned a whole lot I didn't more or less already know. Only the second or third Nick Broomfield film I've seen (saw his Sarah Palin film for sure; maybe one other?). His manner is so annoying--thankfully not much of him here, although he starts with an odd introduction to the film, some of which is repeated in the film proper.

igh i think i’ll pass
i cannot stand Broomfield

I hear you. (I think he does too--probably no more than five minutes of him in voiceover.)

even if he was never on camera, at this point even his mere existence annoys the shit out of me

The amount of time given to Bill Wyman will be a big problem for some people (10-15 minutes). He plays some old stuff of his computer, points out (with delight and amazement) Jones's contribution. As someone who, as much as humanly possible, tuned out on the Rolling Stones 35 years ago, I was kind of shocked by something that wouldn't surprise anyone who continued to pay attention: this old grey-haired man is Bill Wyman? The version of him that I carry in my head goes back to 1975.

Here's Bill from a couple of days ago, signing for fans at a modest table-for-one in a specialty foods grocery store (the baked goods counter seems to be behind him):

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz09YvRqYIk/?img_index=1

Love it though, he really doesn't miss the life the Stones are leading now.

A Wyman clip from the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjE4DgFVwQU

I'm pretty sure I've seen that guy playing euchre at the community center in town.

It's funny how his desk looks exactly like my parents' desk, from the printer he's using to the small department store picture frames to the small office supply holder with the standard orange-handle scissors. (FWIW, my parents hate rock music and never took part in that side of the culture.)

Looks like a nice friendly old paedophile.