27: Brian Jones (7 page)

In mid-May Keith and Anita flew to Cannes for the annual film festival.
A Degree of Murder
was Germany's official entry that year. As Brian had composed the musical soundtrack, he also arrived in the south of France, checking into the same hotel as Keith and Anita. The first night he was there, Brian tried to persuade Anita to go back to him, as Keith waited patiently in his room.

*

At 4 p.m. on 22 June 1967, around the same time as Mick and Keith – having elected for trial by jury – were leaving court at West Sussex Quarter Sessions, Brian was busted for possession of cannabis at the flat in Courtfield Road. With him was a friend, 24-year-old Prince Stanislaus ‘Stash' Klossowski de Rola. The pair appeared the next morning at West London Magistrates, where Brian also elected for trial by jury. Ever a worrier, Brian was to be driven literally sick by these events.

On 15 June Mick and Keith added vocals to ‘All You Need Is Love', the Beatles' next single. When it was released on 7 July, the B-side – ‘Baby You're a Rich Man' – featured Brian playing soprano saxophone. The day after the recording at Abbey Road, Keith and Anita flew to Paris. Mick, Marianne, and Marianne's son Nicholas and his nanny went to Tangier.

Brian, however, flew to northern California, accompanied by Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham, for the weekend of 16 to 18 June. His destination was Monterey Pop, south of San Francisco. This was the first of the ‘Love Generation' mass festivals, at which Brian arrived in the Mamas and Papas' private plane, and where Brian introduced the set by his friend Jimi Hendrix. The event, at which drug consumption was blatant, marked a significant cultural shift: the symbolic inauguration of ‘rock music' as a creative entity – and marketing force.

Brian's presence at Monterey indicated that – unlike the rest of the Rolling Stones – he was as in touch with the zeitgeist as when he had decided to form a blues group. So moved was Brian by the festival's spirit that he gave a rare interview, to
Beat
magazine. ‘I just came away for a few days and it's so nice to get on someone else's scene. It's a very beautiful scene happening here,' he told the reporter, saying he regretted the other Stones had not also come to California with him. ‘We record practically all the time as the Beatles do. We just got about a week off so I came over here with Andrew. The others have sort of split to various places, I think, I'm not quite sure. But nobody seemed to get it together to come over here. I wish they had 'cause they have missed a very nice scene.'

In the lace-encrusted wrap he wore at the festival, Brian looked like a mediaeval English monarch – apart from the can of Budweiser that was permanently in his hand. Hanging at Monterey with Nico, singer with emerging act the Velvet Underground, earned them the rubric of the King and Queen of Monterey Pop.

‘A lot of people have been sort of critical of this kind of happening in this country. The uptight people,' the
Beat
interviewer said to him.

‘They're frightened of trouble but I don't expect any trouble, do you?' considered Brian. ‘It has been wonderful. I have been walking freely amongst everybody. Yesterday I was walking through and joining rings of kids and fans. You know I've never had a chance to do that much before. People are very nice here. I like it.'

Brian also revealed how he'd been spending his time: ‘I did a Beatles' session the other night, actually. On soprano saxophone, of all things. I've taken up playing reeds again. I used to play reed instruments. I bought a soprano saxophone the other day and ever since I have been doing sessions on it. There are soprano saxophones on the Stones' records, future Beatle records. You know, it's a funny thing – you get hold of something and put it on everyone's records. It's great. There's a very nice recording scene going on right now in London.'

Most of his time, he said, had of late been spent working on the new Stones' album ,
Their Satanic Majesties Request
: ‘The big job at hand is to get the LP done and we're spending an awful lot of time on it this time. It's going to be more of a production. We've really put some thought into it because people are still liking our albums so we're trying to really give them something that will take them on a stage further. And so that they will take us on a stage further. We feel at the moment that our important work is to be done in the studio rather than in baseball halls and stadiums around the country. You see, once you've been around the country once or twice people have seen you and it's a question of what's to be gained by going around again. But, there's a lot to be gained by letting them share our progressions because we are progressing musically very fast.'

Of Monterey Pop itself, Brian Jones seemed to sense its far-reaching effect, giving a glimpse of his abiding political idealism: ‘I would like to see these affairs become a regular part of young community life because I think these people here – from what I've seen so far – are acting as a community. They have the community spirit, the community feeling. I haven't seen any signs of any trouble or enmity. It's very nice. People are showing each other around and it's very beautiful. I'm glad I came. I'll have lots of nice things to say when I get back home.'
[25]

*

On 13 September, Keith, Brian, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman arrived in New York to shoot the sleeve shot for
Their Satanic Majesties Request
. At immigration Keith was taken to one side and questioned for thirty minutes over the drugs trial. Then he was ordered to report to immigration offices in Manhattan the next day. As Brian's case had not yet come to trial in Britain, he sailed through immigration. Mick Jagger, sporting the newly de rigueur mutton chop sideburns, arrived in New York on a later flight and went through an almost identical experience to Keith. While the Stones were in New York there was a climactic management meeting with Allen Klein. On 20 September, there was an announcement that Andrew Loog Oldham was being replaced as Stones' manager by Klein.

Brian, however, continued to disintegrate. He had spent ten days at the
Priory in London on his return from Monterey
. London was awash with rumours that he was about to leave the group. All the same, whatever state he was in he was working at Olympic Studios in west London with the Stones. After sessions on 5, 6 and 7 September, he had flown to Marbella in the south of Spain with Suki Poitier, the Portuguese-born former girlfriend of Tara Browne who had been with the Guinness heir in his fatal car smash the previous December. He returned to the Spanish resort with Suki, a doppelganger for Anita Pallenberg, on 20 October for several days. Brian needed to rest up: his court case was set for the end of the month.

On 30 October 1967 he appeared in court. He was shaky and wan despite his faint tan, a consequence as much as anything of his previous night's excesses with Jimi Hendrix at a Moody Blues concert. His voice trembled as he pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis and allowing it to be smoked at his flat. After a short trial, Brian was given a nine-month prison term, an extraordinarily heavy sentence. He was taken off to Wormwood Scrubs, where Keith had been briefly incarcerated. As soon as he arrived at the ‘Scrubs', the ‘screws' threatened ‘Mr Shampoo' with the haircut they said he was about to have. A demonstration in the Kings Road by about fifty hippies led to the arrest of eight people, one of whom was Chris Jagger, Mick's brother. After an application for an appeal was successful the next morning, Brian Jones was released from prison on bail of £750.

Allen Klein felt obliged to issue a statement: ‘There is absolutely no question of bringing in a replacement for Brian.'

Brian's appeal was set for 12 December and Mick attended the court hearing. A trio of psychiatrists described Brian as ‘an extremely frightened young man'. The sentence was set aside, and Brian was given three years' probation and fined the maximum of £1,000. Two days later, still in a state of apparent ongoing nervous breakdown, Brian collapsed at his new Belgravia apartment and was taken to the nearby St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner. He discharged himself the same night.

Now the undisputed leader of the Stones, Mick Jagger called a press conference. ‘There's a tour coming up,' he began, although this was news to everyone around the group. ‘There are obvious difficulties, one of them is with Brian, who can't leave the country.' Although there were rumours that Jimmy Page would leave the Yardbirds to replace Brian in the Rolling Stones, the group insisted they were without foundation and that they could continue as a four-piece until Brian had sorted out his problems.

At least Brian's appeal served as lateral publicity for the Stones' new album, which was released in the United Kingdom on 8 December. In the United States, where it had been released twelve days previously,
Satanic Majesties
had already sold over $2 million worth of copies. In Britain, however, the long-player was widely dismissed – especially by John Lennon, who considered it yet another Stones' rip-off of the Beatles (of
Sgt Pepper
in this particular case).

Their tails between their legs from the critical trouncing they had received at home, Mick, Keith and Brian quit the country for Christmas. With Stash de Rola along for the ride, Brian headed for Ceylon with another new girlfriend – none other than Linda Keith. It was as though he was bound in an inescapable psychic prison with Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg.

*

During March 1968 the Stones were again at Olympic Studios, recording what would become
Beggars Banquet
. The subject of film was high on the group's agenda. The television director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, a close friend of Mick, was hired to make a promotional clip for a new single, ‘Jumpin' Jack Flash'. Some of the recording of the album that became
Beggars Banquet
was shot by Jean-Luc Godard, doyen of French New Wave cinema directors, as the backdrop for his movie
One Plus One
. As well as capturing the isolation of Brian Jones, strumming a guitar that was unconnected to the control room, Godard also caught on film the evening when Anita Pallenberg joined Keith, Brian and Suki Poitier to chant the backing vocals to ‘Sympathy for the Devil'. Lurking in a corner of the frame was a well-dressed man with a sardonic and sadistic sneer attached permanently to his upper lip. This was James Fox, an actor friend of Mick. In May it had been announced that he would play opposite the Rolling Stone singer in a film entitled
Performance
, to be directed by Donald Cammell.

That same month, on 12 May 1968, the Rolling Stones made a surprise appearance at the close of the
NME
Poll-Winners Concert at Wembley Empire Pool, performing ‘Jumpin' Jack Flash' and ‘Satisfaction'. The 10,000-strong audience went berserk at this first stage appearance in Britain in almost two years. Although he was of course unaware of this, the show marked the last concert appearance by Brian Jones anywhere.

Life still seemed to be running out of control for the founder of the Rolling Stones. A week later, on 20 May, he was busted yet again, at the third-floor flat he had rented on the Kings Road, above Alice Pollock and Ossie Clark's shop Quorum, from which he would order floral shirts by the dozen.
[26]

After failing to wake Brian at just after seven in the morning, the police had climbed into the flat through a window to find him on the phone, calling his solicitor. A small brown lump of what appeared to be hash was found in a drawer. Appearing that morning at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court, Brian was remanded for three weeks on bail of £1,000 while the substance was analysed.

A week later, on 27 May, saw the release of ‘Jumpin' Jack Flash', a record whose superficially naive simplicity turned both in and out on itself until it achieved epic proportions – until the mid-1970s the character of Jumpin' Jack Flash became like an alter-ego for Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones' fourteenth British single, it sold almost 100,000 copies in three days, going straight to number one. It stayed there for three weeks, the group's first UK number one since ‘Paint It Black' in May 1966. In the USA it was in the top spot for a week. After the shocks of the previous year, it seemed the group were once again on an upward path.

Early in June 1968, at Sarum Chase in Hampstead, north London, Michael Joseph – better known at the time for his corporate photography – shot a series of Hogarthian portraits for what would become the inner sleeve of the
Beggars Banquet
album. Joseph noted that Brian was extremely nervy. He was worried about the consequences of his pending court appearance, scheduled for 11 June. Perhaps this is an explanation for his appearance, like that of a deranged hobbit. ‘Brian was upset at having been busted but he had a dog to play with,' said the photographer. One of the rooms had been given a mediaeval appearance; on a banqueting table was an entire roasted pig. It is a picture taken from this series that was used on the album's inner gatefold. Keith is leaning across the table with a fork and stuffing an apple into Mick's mouth, while Brian sprawls in a chair at the end of the table, as an Irish setter leaps up on him.

*

Mick Jagger spent August 1968 filming in London, working on
Performance
, co-directed by Nicholas Roeg and Donald Cammell; Anita Pallenberg had been cast opposite him. Although he had given the film's script a cursory reading Mick initially had accepted Donald Cammell's vision that all he needed to do was play himself. Vacationing with Marianne Faithfull in Ireland prior to the shoot, however, he quickly saw that his character of Turner bore only a superficial resemblance to himself. Marianne Faithfull, steeped in the ways of thespians, provided the solution – to play Turner as a cross between Brian Jones and Keith Richards: ‘Brian with his self-torment and paranoia and Keith with strength and cool.' Although Mick Jagger accepted her advice, undercurrents of himself inevitably leaked into the part. But not so much that they shifted the balance. There was, however, a consequence that Marianne had not considered. ‘What I hadn't anticipated,' she later realized, ‘was that Mick, by playing Brian and Keith, would be playing two people who were extremely attractive to Anita and who were in turn obsessed with her.' For the future of the Rolling Stones, and the relationship between Mick and Keith, the repercussions would linger for the rest of their careers – especially when it became widely believed that Mick had actually had penetrative intercourse with Anita during the filming of one of the film's several sex scenes.