The Stones and Brian Jones

Brain Jones founded the Rolling Stones. He was shy, sexually attractive (and careless with it), and increasingly unhappy for not being Mick Jagger. Kicked out of the band for a level of drug abuse that made him unreliable, he died young a short while later. Nick Broomfield's film is a sympathetic account of his life that doesn't hide from the fact he wasn't always a nice person to be around, and a sad lesson of the perils of getting what you might have thought you wanted. The film relies quite a lot on Bill Wyman, but Wyman actually provides some perspective that those who stayed in the band for longer perhaps would not provide. It's an elegaic portrait of an ultimately tragic life.

Greetings again from the darkness. Nick Broomfield has been making documentaries for nearly 50 years. The list of subjects is quite diverse, yet his interest in musicians seems to recur periodically, but even in these, his focus is mainly on the person rather than the notes on the scale or the performances on stage. A perfect example is his 2019 doc, MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE. His latest on Brian Jones again fits the description.

Brian Jones formed The Rolling Stones in 1962 as a British Blues Band. Here we are more than 60 years later and in 2023, the band has recently released a new album and single ... yet very few remember or even know the name Brian Jones. Director Broomfield sets out to tell the story of this enigmatic and talented musician who was ultimately kicked out of his dream band, leading to his much-too-young death shortly after. On the surface it's a tragic rock 'n roll story, but deep down, it's the story of Jones' personality and substance abuse.

Former Rolling Stones' bassist Bill Wyman is featured here and provides a great deal of backstory. For more on Wyman, I recommend the 2019 documentary, THE QUIET ONE, which portrays his obsessive attention to collections and history. Alongside Wyman's input, there is archival footage from Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Marianne Faithfull, and Eric Burdon. Even the older interviews and clips help us understand Brian Jones' difficulty as the band evolved from blues to rock. We also learn more about his ability to father kids at the level of an NBA player. But what really strikes is his problems stemming from an abuse of alcohol and drugs (and women).

Andrew Loog Oldham pushed the band towards commercial success with rock 'n roll and away from Brian's beloved blues. So he lost his position as band manager and his preferred style of music, as Mick Jagger's on stage persona took over and Jagger/Richards compositions filled a role that Brian couldn't. He was fired from the band after the "Let it Bleed" album and prior to the band's next U. S. tour. It is mentioned that Brian lost the one thing that mattered to him ... the band. He lost his life a few weeks later, and kudos to Broomfield for not dwelling on the conspiracy theories around his death.

Included here are interviews and clips of early Stones' live performances that you've likely not seen before. I can't help but contrast Brian's story with that of Robert Fripp in the recent documentary I watched on King Crimson. Two original architects of long-standing bands - one lost everything, while the other remained and rebuilt the band a few times. Two musical geniuses with opposite paths.

In theaters November 17, 2023.

I was very interested in this documentary as I knew very little about Brian Jones, his background and his demise.

To be honest, by the end, I think I would rather have been left none the wiser.

Around about the 20 minute mark, Pat Andrews, the mother of one his many offspring, summed him up perfectly. This interview was recorded in 1965, so it was not a matter of hindsight, it was very much relevant and of the time.

Maybe it wasn't possible, but I would like to have seen more about his early childhood with a view to gaining more of an insight into how his character developed and became to utterly selfish and irresponsible.

I can empathise with his feeling of not wanting to be part the monoculture that was so prevalent in the 1950s and early 1960s, I am from that time myself. I feel there must have been more to his relationship with his parents than was presented as he seemed to be effortlessly accepted into oth-er families, only to abuse their hospitality by getting the daughters pregnant. Once is careless, twice is foolish ... five times!! What was he thinking?

His demise was mainly down to being completely lost psychologically and latterly being influenced by the wrong type of women.

The Rolling Stones was the band he put together, it was his band, but he soon found he couldn't write songs as was the new way of things at the time, and Mick Jagger was a more obvious spokesman for the group and he was soon sidelined by manager Andrew Loog Oldham.

You can see in the documentary that he was lost when the Stones were being interviewed.

On the plus side it was good to know how influential he was on the Stones early records.

From last year comes a documentary from master documentarian Nick Broomfield (Driving Me Crazy/Kurt & Courtney) about one time member of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, who ended up dying from drowning in his pool (after taking drugs) back in 1969. You think the sky was the limit for Jones as he was one of the founding members of the greatest, arguably, rock & roll band in the world (& history) but as we find out from archival footage & actor reenactments from his own missives, Jones soon found himself falling under the influence of his excessive drug taking & his predilection for feeling he was being constantly verbally attacked by fellow bandmates Mick Jagger & Keith Richards even though according to Bill Wyman some of the signature licks on key tracks came from him but it's sad to see how when the band was celebrating its best life, poor Jones found himself in a rabbit hole of his own making which he could not find himself out of.

I'm shocked this doc has a good-not-great rating. I thought it was borderline phenomenal. The amount of footage from the early '60s is amazing and the editing with said footage is incredibly good. It's a documentary that nails the two requirements for any doc: it's a great story combined with great technique.

I have been a Stones fan for about 25 years but never delved very far into their history. For someone like me this was eye-opening, and I have to believe a lot of the footage and even some audio was brand new to even the most die-hard fans.

To me this succeeds on every level. My only small beef was that sole of the audio interviews were hard to hear. Nothing crazy in the negative department. Almost nothing in fact. It's just a great doc that's nostalgic, fascinating and tragic.