Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones

He never wrote a single song for the band, I'm not sure you even hear him sing on any of their songs and yet, as the "founder-member" of the infamous "27" club of prominent young musicians coincidentally dying at that age, Rolling Stone Brian Jones has retained his status in rock lore, aided, it has to be said in this, by the strange circumstances of his death.

Often credited with originally getting the band together, he was a talented multi-instrumentalist (that's him on dulcimer on "Ruby Tuesday", the marimbas on "Under My Thumb" and especially the sitar on "Paint It, Black,") and fashion icon with his bobbed haircut and candy-stripe-and-ruffles look, while there are still people who say the Stones' music hasn't been the same since he died.

This film tells his musical life story (comparatively little is revealed about his early years bar some fascinating home-movies showing him as a young teenager with his family) but is hindered in this by the lack of any original Stones music on the soundtrack or any participation by any of his former band-mates, even long-since ex-member Bill Wyman, who had previously disagreed with Jones's ousting from the group.

Instead, we get lots of so-called original, but very bad background music supposedly fitting for the times, in fact at one point, someone praises in glowing terms his guitar solo on "No Expectations" before moving swiftly on to the next talking head rather than play the darned thing. About those talking heads, we get lots of those, ageing acolytes of the band with the same stories to tell they've no doubt peddled to biographers of the group since the year dot.

Initially, the film shows some interesting, rare footage of Jones during his time with the band, some of it clearly of home-movies but these are looped and repeated over and over again as the film goes on, greatly reducing the effect.

The last half-hour speculates on his death when, despite being a strong swimmer, he was found drowned at the bottom of his own swimming pool. Other books and films have been made on this subject alone and the producers here fall into line by accusing the shady builder to whom Jones owed money and who'd practically moved into his house anyway, as the perpetrator. The film tries to explain away the lax police investigation at the time, quickly passing the death off as suicide under the weak premise that this would send out an anti-drugs message to the youth of the day, although I suspect it was just typical lazy policing. There's even some silly speculation about the possible involvement of the Stones' then new manager Allan Klein and Jagger and Richards themselves which really ought to have been edited out.

On the whole, I found this to be a rather shoddily assembled and untrustworthy film which barely scratched the surface of this turbulent but obviously talented individual.

To paraphrase Dylan talking about his own Mr Jones, as regards the producers of this film, there's clearly something happening but they don't know what it is...

Someone needs to make a documentary about Brian Jones and center on his music, his guitar playing, whether slide or perfect rhythm to Keith Richards' rough, messy leads, and not just center on his death as if he only lived to die...

What's here could be best described as a kind of gossip-documentary coming from various friends, none of them that important, memorable, or famous except Ian Stewart's voice from an obviously very old interview...

The same images of Brian are shown that we've seen a hundred times, and never strumming more than once on a guitar but making cute faces and messing around. What's worse here is the music. They couldn't afford The Rolling Stones so they settle for really bad renditions of what sounds like a cover band warming up.

Yikes, this was awful.

As someone who's only listened to a few albums in The Rolling Stones' discography (most without Jones' involvement), I was ready to be convinced that Jones was the true mastermind behind the band, and a musical genius... but the first hour largely fails to present a compelling argument to what made him so great (he played the cool sitar part on Paint it Black is all I can remember - and there are disappointingly no Rolling Stones tracks used, so you just have to hum said sitar part to yourself. Any music examples would have helped the "underrated music genius" argument, but the song rights clearly weren't within the film's budget).

Then it just turns into a tedious and not particularly well made true crime documentary in the last half hour, and even if some interviewees disputed the conspiracies, the ones that did try to push them didn't make many great arguments.

Honestly, Brian Jones seems like a bit of a tag-along, and given that so much great music was made by the band after his departure, I'm thoroughly unconvinced that he was the secret mastermind behind the band. The documentary describes him as being constantly drunk and/or high around (and then after) the time the band started to find popularity, too.

I also remain highly skeptical of any possibility that he was murdered. This documentary tried very hard to put forth that he was misunderstood musical genius + hE wAs MuRdErEd as it's two main arguments, but fails almost completely.

Some really dodgy interviewees, too, who barely even seem to make sense some of the time. ("Brian could resist everything but temptation" one of them sincerely says at one point. That's literally as dumb as the "pain don't hurt" line from Roadhouse).

I'd say, don't waste your time. Or maybe, watch it up until the point where Brian Jones dies. The conspiracy theories about his death don't make for compelling watching unless you aren't a critical thinker.