Old Gods Almost Dead (39 page)

Mick Taylor was puzzled to get a call from Mick Jagger. He hadn't been a real Stones fan until he'd heard
Banquet
the year before, especially “Street Fighting Man.” He arrived at Olympic the night the Stones recorded “Honky Tonk Women,” on which his guitar was later overdubbed. Mick Jagger was in a room doing an interview with the London underground paper
International Times.
Jimmy Miller just sat there waiting for Keith, who showed up three hours later. Taylor played on some tracks they were developing—“Gimme Shelter,” “Live with Me,” an early “Loving Cup”—and thought that was it. “Well, I enjoyed it very much,” young Mick told old Mick, thanking him. A few days later, Jagger rang up and asked Mick if he wanted to join the Stones, and Taylor asked for a week to think about it. “It was a very good period for the group,” he said later. “They'd made a decision to really get back into touring again. There was a very special atmosphere surrounding the whole thing.”

Taylor called Jagger back. “I said, 'I'd
love
to be a Stone!' And that was that.” His initial salary was 150 pounds per week, until he became a made member of the Rolling Stones by proving himself on tour. “We got the right guy now,” Mick told Peter Swales. “He's really young and cute-looking.”

Mick Taylor gave the Stones something it never had, a blues guitar virtuoso. For the next five and a half years, Taylor's charged, cliché-free playing would be the foil for Keith Richards's spiky style as the Stones kept on rolling.

                

June 1969.
The Stones were working on the heroin confidential anthem, “Monkey Man.” Brian Jones missed the sessions. He stayed in Sussex, talking to other musicians, especially Alexis Korner, about forming a new band. John Mayall and Mitch Mitchell both visited. Brian consulted Jimi Hendrix who told Brian he needed to write some up-tempo jams. “If you don't see little kids skippin' to your music,” Hendrix said, “You got nothin'.” Ian Stewart declined the opportunity, saying, “I started one fucking group with you, and that's enough.”

                

On Saturday, June
8
, Mick barked to Peter Swales, “Get me a fucking taxi,” and went off to see Blind Faith play a free concert for 150,000 kids in Hyde Park. Pink Floyd's free acid rave in the park was even bigger the year before. Promoted by Blackhill Enterprises (who managed Pink Floyd), with the huge crowd expertly controlled by a hip, buckskin-clad emcee named Sam Cutler, the event came off without a hitch. Backstage, Cutler suggested to Mick that the Stones play for free in the park too. A free concert, Jagger realized, would be a trippy way for the Stones to introduce their new guitar player and “Honky Tonk Women” to the world. The date was set for July 5.

                

They sacked Brian Jones
from the Rolling Stones the evening of June 9, one of those early summer English nights when it doesn't get dark until late. Mick, Keith, and Charlie Watts drove down to Sussex to talk to Brian at Cotchford Farm.

Keith Richards: “Mick and I had to go down and virtually tell Brian, 'Hey, old cock, you're fired.' Because there was no serious way we could go on the road with Brian. The fact that he was expecting it made it easier. He wasn't surprised. I don't think he even took it all in. He was already up in the stratosphere. He was like: 'Yeah, man, okay.' ”

Mick softened the blow as best he could. He told Brian they would put out any statement he liked. He could say he was leaving the band or just not touring this time, whatever he wanted. They offered him 100,000 pounds in ready cash and 20,000 pounds a year as long as the Stones lasted. Yeah, man, okay.

Keith: “We said, what do you want to say? Do you want to say that you've left? And he said, 'Yeah, let's do it. Let's say I've left and if I want to, I can come back.' [We said,] 'Because we've got to know, and we've got Mick Taylor lined up.' He said, 'I don't think I can. I don't think I can go to America and do those one-nighters anymore.' ”

When the meeting was over, the Stones drove back to London to finish mixing “Honky Tonk Women.” Brian sat by himself for a while, watching the Christopher Robin garden paint itself black, crying softly to himself.

                

The next day,
Les Perrin issued a statement from Brian: “I no longer see eye to eye with the others over the discs we are cutting. The Stones' music is not to my taste any more . . . I have a desire to play my own brand of music rather than that of others. We had a friendly meeting . . . I love those fellows.”

The other Rolling Stones would express a certain amount of regret and guilt over the years about what happened to Brian. Mick Jagger: “We carried Brian for quite a long time. We put up with his tirades and his not turning up for over a year. So it wasn't like suddenly we just said fuck you. We'd been quite patient with him, and he'd just gotten worse and worse. He didn't want to come out of this rather sad state. We had to baby him, and it was rather sad.

“What we didn't like was that we wanted to play again onstage, and Brian wasn't in any condition to play. He was far too fucked up in his mind to play.”

Charlie Watts: “I felt sorry for him, for what we did to him then. We took his one thing away, which was being in a band. I'm sure it nearly killed him when we sacked him. That's my opinion.”

Awakened from the Dream of Life

Late June 1969.
The Rolling Stones were working on “Midnight Rambler” at Olympic, the lyrics inspired in part by the published confessions of the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who killed six women in the sixties. They all met at a strip club in Frith Street, Soho (Keith and Mick arrived in Mick's spiffy yellow Morgan), where Ethan Russell photographed the sleeve of “Honky Tonk Women.” They rehearsed for the July 5 Hyde Park concert in the Beatles' basement studio at Apple in Savile Row; Charlie and Keith played for hours, jamming on Jimmy Reed numbers, trying to get something going. The next day, they held a press conference in Hyde Park to introduce Mick Taylor as their new guitar player. “He doesn't play like Brian,” Mick was quoted. “He's a
blues
player. He gets on well with Keith and wants to play rock and roll, and that's OK with us.” They taped their first TV appearance with Taylor, doing “Honky Tonk Women” and “You Can't Always Get What You Want” for David Frost's American program.

Mick and Marianne were learning their lines for their roles in Tony Richardson's new film,
Ned Kelly,
based on the Australian outlaw and folk hero. Mick had been cast as Ned (with Marianne as his loyal sister), provoking a brief outcry from Australian newspapers, which thought Mick too epicene for the role of badass, cop-killing Ned.

While Marianne was drowning herself every night in
Hamlet,
Mick had been seeing a lot of a black American actress, Marsha Hunt, who'd been in the London production of the rock musical
Hair.
He was trying to get money out of Allen Klein for repairs at Stargroves, his country place, which was serving as a commune for some of his friends. And he was helping his new banker, Rupert Lowenstein, plan a big party, a White Ball, at the banker's Holland Park home. Peter Swales hired a new band called Yes to play, and it was a big deal because Princess Margaret, movie stars, and politicians were expected.

Keith needed money to close the deal on 3 Cheyne Walk, but Klein's office in New York didn't respond to his frantic calls and telexes. So Keith sent Tom Keylock to New York. Tom vaulted the receptionist's desk, stormed into Klein's office, sat down, and told Klein he wasn't leaving until he had Keith's money. Rupert Lowenstein was waiting in the wings to assume control of the Stones' finances. Their Decca contract would expire in 1970, and the Stones anticipated a bidding war for their services.

                

Things had been
quiet at Cotchford Farm in June, and Brian seemed better than he had in years. Charlie and Shirley Watts visited him a few times that month, since they lived nearby, and found him upbeat and better. Alexis Korner came and jammed in Brian's fully equipped music room. Brian was heavy into Creedence Clearwater Revival's swampy hit “Proud Mary” and liked to blast “The Ballad of John and Yoko” with his favorite line, “They're gonna crucify me.” Stu asked if he was coming up for the free concert, and Brian laughed and said no, because he'd be the only person who'd have to pay.

He was living with Anna Wohlin, a pretty, raven-haired Swedish dancer. She was twenty-two, in love with him, and was trying to help him get back on his feet. They were enjoying the long days of the English summer, taking walks with Brian's dogs, Emily and Luther, picking flowers. Also living on the property, in a flat above the garage, was a builder named Frank Thorogood and his girlfriend, Janet Lawson, a nurse.

Brian had problems with Thorogood and his building crew. Thorogood, forty-four, had been hired by Tom Keylock, having done some work at Redlands. His crew was a raucous bunch of lads and riffraff, openly contemptuous of the stoned rock stars for whom they worked. Thorogood had been working at Cotchford Farm, but Brian felt overcharged and taken advantage of, and had given Thorogood the sack. He allowed him to continue living on the property, possibly because Brian owed him money.

                

Over the years,
there have been many attempts to make sense of what happened on July 2, 1969, the night Brian Jones died. In the official version, the people in the house that night claimed that an unsteady Brian was swimming by himself after an evening of drinking, possibly suffered an asthma attack while in the water, and was found drowned at the bottom of his pool. No one believed this except the East Sussex coroner.

Another version, related by an unnamed source years later to an investigating journalist, claimed that Brian was accidentally drowned during a drunken party while “playing” with some of the straw dogs who were working for him. Everyone scattered after a dead Brian was pulled out of the pool, and, threatened and intimidated by Frank Thorogood, no one ever said anything to the police.

Anna Wohlin published her own account thirty years later. According to her, only four people were there that night: Brian, Anna, Thorogood, and Janet Lawson. Brian had fired Thorogood a few days earlier, but hated falling out with people, and invited Frank and Janet to spend the evening with them by the floodlit heated pool.

It was a hot summer night. According to Wohlin, Brian tried to talk to Thorogood, to make up with him. But Thorogood was truculent and kept bringing up the money he said Brian owed him. Brian was conciliatory, teasing, needling Thorogood, drinking his favorite wine, Blue Nun. He suggested they all have a swim. Janet Lawson wasn't in the mood and went into the house to get a drink. Brian, Frank, and Anna jumped into the pool.

The teasing continued in the pool, Wohlin says, and Thorogood got upset. He grabbed Brian and dunked his head underwater. Brian came up sputtering, coughing up water, supposedly still laughing at Thorogood and taunting him. From the house came Janet's voice, telling Anna there was a phone call for her, and Wohlin left Brian and Frank alone in the pool for about fifteen minutes.

“I was chatting on the phone,” she related, “when I heard Janet cry from below the bedroom window. 'Anna! Anna! Something's happened to Brian!' I found Frank in the kitchen. His hands were shaking so badly he had difficulty lighting his cigarette . . . When I got outside there was no sign of Brian. Then I saw him, lying on the bottom of the pool.” Thorogood and Janet got Brian out of the pool and onto his back in the grass. “He looked so alive when we got him out,” Wohlin said. “Unconscious, but not dead.” She thought she felt Brian grip her hand. Bill Wyman said she told him that she felt Brian's pulse. Janet tried artificial respiration, but it didn't work, and she told Anna that Brian was dead and ran to call for help.

“I refused to believe Janet when she told me he was gone. I kept giving him resuscitation until the ambulance people pulled me away. I was devastated—Brian had been murdered, by Frank Thorogood.”

According to Wohlin, Thorogood threatened her life if she told the police what she had seen. She was taken to London, hidden from the press by Les Perrin, kept away from the funeral. Within a week, she was put on a plane for Sweden and told not to come back to England if she knew what was good for her. She stayed silent until her account was published in England in 1999.

Frank Thorogood called Tom Keylock's home to tell him what had happened, and Keylock arrived—possibly before the police were called. After Brian was pronounced dead shortly after midnight on July 3, the police took conflicting statements from Thorogood, Janet Lawson, and Anna Wohlin. Les Perrin found Brian's asthma inhaler by the side of the pool at three in the morning and gave it to the police. After they left, Brian's house was looted of some valuables—money, tapes, guitars, clothes, and a William Morris tapestry.

Ian Stewart picked up the phone at Olympic Studio at two in the morning of Thursday, July 3. It was Tom Keylock's wife, saying Brian was dead. The Stones had been recording a Stevie Wonder song, “I Don't Know Why.” They all looked at each other and went into what passed for shock among the Rolling Stones. They lit a couple of joints and sat on the floor. Charlie Watts wept for a while, then called Bill Wyman at his hotel to tell him Brian was gone.

BRIAN JONES OF THE 'STONES' FOUND DEAD
was the headline on that morning's
Daily Mirror.
The London press reported the events as given them by the police, based on the three people they'd interviewed.