Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones Read online

  Maybe Brian met his match in the self-styled ‘Nazi anarchist junkie’. Four years older than Brian and several inches taller, Nico had grown up in Berlin’s post-war wasteland and was an ambitious enigma, an expert in the art of evasion. She claimed already to be experienced in the dark sexual arts, mentioning to many that she preferred anal intercourse – ‘I like it the Turkish way: my father was Turkish’ – yet in the package of notes she left for biographer Richard Witts, she claimed that Brian Jones was the more decadent, bedding her in a room with ceremonial candles, then dripping hot wax on to her, using a loaded gun as a dildo, piercing her labia with a brooch pin when he was high, and slapping or hitting her in sex games that went out of control, leaving bruises. It’s possible that some of the stories were true. Zouzou, who knew Nico well, maintains, ‘Nico, he was scared to death of. One time we were in the Ad Lib [club], he was telling me, “If you see Nico let me know right away, cos she will jump on me!” I said, “You’re big enough to look after yourself!” So no way. Maybe she had [Brian] one time then, but of course he would not tell me.’

  Nico and Brian did meet up again, in LA in May around the time of the Shindig! show. She remembered Brian talking of his fascination with Aleister Crowley, widely acclaimed as the ‘wickedest man in the world’, and one-time acquaintance of Donald Cammell. Nico later told a journalist, ‘Did you know Brian was a witch? We were interested in these things. Mick knew and was his enemy.’ At other times she changed her story, theorizing that Brian’s fascination with the occult was merely a cover story for his sexual experimentation.

  The pair used each other, twin masters in mendacity, but Brian was true to his word in that they did ‘talk careers’. With Brian on guitar, alongside house producer Jimmy Page, Nico’s recording debut, I’m Not Sayin’, would be one of the first batch of singles released on Oldham’s Immediate label, alongside the McCoys’ Hang On Sloopy. The McCoys single was a huge hit that summer, whereas Nico’s twee version of the Gordon Lightfoot song sank without trace. But the venture served its purpose: Nico’s face helped make Immediate hip, and when Brian introduced Nico to Andy Warhol in New York that November, the single became her entrée to a job with the Velvet Underground.

  Nico would talk often of Brian over the years. She painted him as a potent figure – ‘he gave the best sex’, she pronounced, better than Jim Morrison – but opined that he never reached his full potential. He was gifted and could have made his own music but was also lazy: ‘I kept saying that, but he called me a nag.’ In her telling, Brian’s obsessive pursuit of carnal pleasures was enough explanation for his failure to branch out on his own. Yet somehow, in her story, that gives him greatness too: he was an untameable being who could never become, like Mick, a conventional careerist.

  Nico’s observations would get rolled up into Brian’s mythology. Her unreliable memories suggest his fascination with the occult pre-dated his involvement with Anita Pallenberg, the woman who friends of Brian’s like Marianne Faithfull and fellow dandy Christopher Gibbs agree seemed to ‘know all about witchcraft’. Brian was indeed interested in Aleister Crowley, confirms Stash Klossowski, who also got to know him that year. ‘Especially with psychedelics being involved, there was a definite all-pervading presence of the occult, and its potentiality.’

  Brian’s status as an ‘adept’, or some form of witch, was confirmed by the presence of a third nipple situated on his inner thigh, according to the film-maker and Crowley acolyte Kenneth Anger and at least one of Brian’s lovers. It was Brian’s dark powers, once he’d teamed up with Anita Pallenberg, that made him ‘the occult unit of the Stones’, Anger reckoned. Others, as we shall see, believe he had certain gifts of insight. But those close to him suggest that, rather than devoting himself to Satan, Brian fixed on a more nuanced and benign deity, namely the god Pan. The Greek god of fertility, half goat, half man, Pan was quite literally demonized with the advent of Christianity, but he was essentially a benevolent entity. To Brian, Pan embodied the spirit of rock’n’roll, says Stash, who explains how in Greek myth, King Midas was called upon to judge a contest between the stirring, syncopated music of Pan’s pipes and the elevated, pure melodies of Apollo’s lyre. It turned out, to Apollo’s rage, that Midas couldn’t resist the lascivious sound of the pipes. ‘The rock’n’roll spirit,’ Stash asserts, ‘comes from Pan.’

  The legend echoed the stories that Brian had studied about the blues – how it was the Devil’s music; how in the dark nights of Mississippi musicians dreamt of the Devil, thought he was the one who inspired their best songs. As a forbidden god who played the pipes and revelled in his own fertility, Pan was a figure to identify with for a man who’d wandered far from home with a guitar and already spawned a number of children. Others saw the parallels, too: Marianne Faithfull, who understood Brian and empathized with him while all too conscious of his faults, described him later as ‘a voluptuous, over-ripe god . . . gone to seed’. Yet the powers of Pan, while short of satanic, are none the less dark and potent. ‘Pan is a very dangerous sort of power,’ says Stash. ‘The word “panic” comes from the name Pan. It’s significant that Brian was attracted by the notion of Pan, and at the same time in awe. Awe is the right word.’

  Brian’s interests and obsessions would come to define the Rolling Stones for ever. His fascination with chaos, dark forces and lasciviousness would permeate the band’s music and image; Mick and Keith would follow in his wake. Dancing with the devil would come at a high cost. In the process, though, they’d make great art.

  *

  The Stones juggernaut shuddered and picked up speed that summer of 1965 when Satisfaction became their first US number 1 – it hit the top of the charts on 10 July. Relationships and locations remained as fluid as ever, for the band and its founder. In June, after the close of the band’s third US tour, Keith was due to move into his new flat, 5 Ambassador House in St John’s Wood, but it was delayed. Mick headed for 13a Bryanston Mews, after a brief stay with the photographer David Bailey, while Keith, after a few days at the Hilton, moved in with Brian – a demonstration that, as ever, the power balance within the band continued to oscillate.

  At some of the parties that summer, Keith could be seen laughing at Mick and Oldham, the two ambitious characters whom emerging heads were starting to mock openly as the dope and acid was being passed around. At other times the pendulum swung the other way, as on that secret trip to meet Allen Klein in August. Keith and Oldham had gone for a schmooze on Klein’s yacht with Bobby Vinton, the NME’s Chris Hutchins and a bunch of friends. They were making their way upriver to Shea Stadium for the Beatles’ landmark show. It was a momentous, thrilling occasion, and Hutchins was enjoying the party buzz when he joined Klein, Oldham and Keith on the bridge. ‘I walked in, and they were discussing how they could get rid of Brian. I don’t mean kill him . . . they were discussing how they could ease him out of the band.’ Hutchins knew all about Oldham’s contradictory moods, that ‘manic grandiosity’, but he was shocked to hear the subject being raised. It was ‘mean’, but most of all, he knew it would damage the band: ‘He was such a major factor in the Stones. But I think he was a bit heavy for them. He was really serious about music, and about life.’

  Brian was certainly always ready to seek out new experiences, but things were never straightforward. He’d do great, profound things in a flaky way, his first trip to Morocco that August being a good example.

  Brian had kept in fairly close contact with Linda Lawrence. He’d told her she was ‘too good for him’ but had turned up for the birth of their son, Julian, on 23 July 1964. Linda had known about his relationship with Dawn Molloy, but even when Brian had moved out to Chester Street ‘I was always hopeful we’d be making up’. So when Brian invited her to join him on a visit to Tangier, her heart leapt again, though she soon realized ‘he was trying to help me expand my own life – and to move on’.

  The pair stayed at the El Minzah in Tangier along with Robert Fraser, who had
probably suggested the exotic destination. Brian’s old bête noire Deborah Dixon, the woman he’d thought was a ghoul, was there too, as was Donald Cammell. There were some idyllic trips, and at one old palace Linda and Deborah did a photo shoot; this was where Brian probably first met the artist Brion Gysin, a friend of Bob Fraser’s. The stay was marred by press intrusion and mixed messages, but Brian’s intent was clear, says Linda: ‘He had explained we weren’t going to be together, but he wanted me to meet people who might be able to help me with my career. It was mainly a positive thing. Then he went off again, and Robert Fraser invited me to London.’

  Linda turned up at one of Fraser’s parties in London, and the gallery owner slipped LSD into her drink. Then came a trip to Paris with Cammell and Dixon; the pair bought her beautiful clothes and lingerie, and introduced her to Anita Pallenberg. Eventually, Linda began to feel ‘uncomfortable – Donald was definitely trying to set up some sort of sexual scene’. Linda wasn’t tempted by the idea, returned to London, and gave up on her hopes of Brian.

  With the notable exception of Andrew Oldham, many people around the Stones liked Linda and saw her as a stabilizing influence. Certainly, where Linda resisted temptation, Brian jumped in. All the way.

  The advent of Allen Klein brought not so much a change in the atmosphere around the Stones as an intensification of it. There’d always been the obsession with gangsterism, inspired mainly by Oldham, who saw thugs like Don Arden as a role model; yet Brian, and Keith too, were just as fascinated by unsavoury characters. Klein guaranteed airplay for the band in the States, ‘but we didn’t want to ask about how exactly it was done’, says Gered Mankowitz, for insiders were certain Klein boasted Mafia connections. Brian, the Robert Johnson fan, was more aware than anyone of the Faustian implications of the deals that were being made. And he, more than anyone, revelled in the darkness that was gathering, in the embryonic Swinging London’s combination of aristocratic decadence and gangster chic.

  Robert Fraser – ‘Groovy Bob’ – was the embodiment of London’s emerging scene, and would be Brian’s companion for much of the next two years. Bob emerged from what was a comparatively nouveau riche family: his grandfather was Gordon Selfridge’s butler, but his banker father Lionel was the archetypal self-made man who in 1945 became a Companion of the Order of St Michael and George and later funded Robert’s education at Eton. It was at Eton that Robert became friends with Christopher Gibbs, who owned a hip antique shop, was one of the aristocracy’s leading dandies, and would also become a Stones intimate over the course of 1965. Gibbs’s reminiscences of Fraser have some obvious resonances with the life of Brian Jones. ‘Robert was my friend from the age of thirteen, or something like that,’ says Gibbs. ‘He was an extraordinary, mercurial being, very sharp antennae for what was happening in music, film, painting, writing, anything creative. And then, quite efficiently, he dulled all those sensibilities and did himself in. He was a great experimenter, took all those drugs before anyone else thought of it. Then he got HIV before anyone else thought of it, and died, before anyone could really treat that terrible affliction.’

  As well as collecting art, Groovy Bob collected people – by the end of 1964 he’d already become friends with Cammell, Dixon, Pallenberg, Hopper and Berman. Brian and Mick were two of the most treasured additions to his collection. The old aristocracy was teaming up with the new aristocracy. ‘Bob, Chris, they were nurturing these guys,’ says Michael Rainey, who became Brian’s friend around the same time, ‘so they could have them . . . so they could become part and parcel of some secret little cabal.’ Rainey in turn came from celebrated stock: he was the son of the party-loving society figure Marion Wrottesley, was well known for his eye-catching yet elegant style, and in October 1966 became one half of the young aristocracy’s hippest power couple when he married Jane Ormsby-Gore, contributing editor of Vogue and daughter of Lord Harlech. As the two sets cosied up, Rainey was a fly on the wall. ‘The music was the equalizer,’ he says. ‘The pop aristocracy – the Beatles, the Stones – were beginning to mingle, not just with the aristocracy but with people outside their own class. It was like birds of paradise, where the two separate sides do these little dances and when they get into position they can sit and natter. And things were said in between the lines.’

  Rainey loved Brian as a fellow dandy. He watched both Brian and Mick make their way into this new milieu with diametrically opposed motivations. Brian wanted to experiment, seek out new experiences; Mick seemed desperate to join the aristocracy. Rainey despised this dull and conventional ambition. He believed he hung around with Jane Ormsby-Gore hoping she’d elevate him in society. ‘I think he wanted that leg-up, and my wife kind of liked collecting these young boys, as her followers – this was before we were married.’

  In exactly the way he boasted of his fling with Pat Andrews, Mick loved to flaunt his conquests, real or imagined. This was all part of the misogyny around the Stones. Brian was certainly not innocent, but Mick’s actions were more considered, designed to maintain his status as top dog. Soon his name and Jane’s were being publicly linked – it’s generally thought that Lady Jane referred to her – and Mick seemed to relish the effect it had on Rainey. Rainey detested his ‘cockiness’, but he also noticed how quickly Mick learned. ‘Mick was being taught how to deal with people’s emotions, or men’s insecurities. And he [planned he] was going to be somewhere, in the higher echelons of society. Brian wasn’t of that ilk, he didn’t work like that.’

  A little social climbing was to be expected; but Rainey believed Mick’s was excessive. He remembers Mick describing a stately home he’d just visited. He adored it, he told Rainey. ‘It’s got the most wonderful Georgian chinoiserie wallpaper.’

  ‘I remember thinking, Gosh, you have learned fast,’ says Rainey.

  As he watched all this jockeying for position, Rainey never heard Brian complain about being gradually frozen out. He suggests that this was ‘because he could never quite put his finger on what was happening. Obviously Mick, Oldham, maybe Keith, were in a little cabal of their own. With him as the victim. There’s a secret between the three of you, and he knows it – but only by osmosis.’

  In retrospect, the signs were obvious for all to see when the group resumed work in September, with two dates in Ireland which were captured by director Peter Whitehead for the movie Charlie Is My Darling. A riveting document, it epitomizes Andrew Oldham’s erratic brilliance. Oldham could spot talent in the raw, and in Whitehead he picked out a future giant in his field. ‘Andrew was ruthless; and he was brilliant. He gave me total freedom, absolutely total freedom. I met him on the Monday, he knew about [Whitehead’s movie] Wholly Communion . . . then it was, OK, we’re rolling on Friday morning.’

  Whitehead would make many widely respected films, but Charlie Is My Darling has a force and simplicity all of its own. It depicts a cataclysmic psychic energy being released, and it shows how each of the protagonists struggles to adapt to this momentous force. The sketch of Brian in particular is fascinating – intimate, poetic and laden with portents. Captured just as he was dreaming of manning the escape pod, today it evokes both his rise and terrible fall.

  Whitehead had expected to document a fascinating phenomenon, but when the cameras rolled at Dublin’s Adelphi Theatre on 3 September 1965, he was transported by the raw power and paganism of the spectacle. ‘Once it started, bloody hell! I was interested in opera, Bartók, Miles Davis and others, so I was a little bit aware of music based on twelve-bar blues . . . but I’m certainly smart enough to know the extraordinary discipline and power. It was just astonishing, and I suddenly thought, Oh my God, I’ve got to take it seriously – and I did. Then there are two thousand kids going berserk and I could see why you couldn’t resist it. I’ve said before, for me it really was a pagan festival, initiates identifying with their god.’

  The portrait of Brian shows both his power and his weakness. Indisputably, Mick’s is a towering presence, a cheeky, boy
ish sexuality. But Brian’s blond, Aryan elegance is more than a foil – he defines the Stones as a band rather than a backing group. Throughout this period, sporting a Gibson Firebird or Vox Phantom – a futuristic, phallic adornment – he is a potent figure, a little devil, adept at goading the crowd into violence, unleashing panic. Brian is still, manifestly, holding some power; yet, as Whitehead observed, his desperation to demonstrate that power highlights his weakness. ‘From the first moment, I recognized that Brian Jones, of them all, was really determined to give me a good impression, and make sure I never took my eyes off him. But I wasn’t aware, nor was anyone else really, there was a very deep rift between himself and the other two.’

  Whitehead remembers that the interview with Brian was ‘very long, and fascinating. He was prepared to talk, I think because already I sensed he was the outsider.’ Somewhat fey, Brian looks straight at the camera, and he could simply be talking about the short shelf-life that everyone expected of the Beat groups of the time when he tells Whitehead ‘my future as a Rolling Stone is uncertain’. ‘That can have two meanings,’ says Whitehead, ‘meaning the Rolling Stones might last six months or three months or whatever. [But] he was already considering whether he should get out, and not be the guitarist in the corner.’

  It’s easy to sense a haunted quality, or premonition, in Brian’s outlook. If Brian did feel isolated or vulnerable, his anxiety would have been exacerbated had he known, as Oldham would later reminisce, that when it came time for playback ‘Peter and I were falling about [laughing], [re]playing bits to make sure Brian had indeed spewed out this nonsense’. Whitehead’s recollections don’t square with Oldham’s: ‘Brian was articulate. More articulate than Mick or Keith. He did have this . . . feminine side to him. He was more into gossip, yes, and could come over as being a bit wishy-washy. But ultimately, he didn’t have the brutality and certainty of Mick Jagger.’