Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones Page 23
When the band returned from tour, Brian looked for solace with Linda Keith, the woman who had inspired Keith’s lyrics for Ruby Tuesday; both were damaged and increasingly isolated, but Brian was far from broken. Still he did not acknowledge that the power in the Stones had now passed irrevocably to Keith; still he reckoned there was a chance of regaining Anita. Early in May he enlisted Stash, once again, as moral support for the premiere of Mord und Totschlag in Cannes. ‘Brian was OK,’ Stash recalls. ‘He did cling to me, said you have to come to Cannes. And Volker Schlöndorff was calling me too, saying you have to make it.’
The festival was a bittersweet experience. Brian’s score for the film – sophisticated, experimental yet often accessible – was widely praised. Both Schlöndorff and Stash remember one moment when Brian was introduced as composer of the soundtrack and walked down the stairs alongside Anita, beaming as the cameras flashed, finally given the attention he craved. But his fantasies of a reconciliation with Anita remained unfulfilled.
Keith stayed in the background. He was careful, acting all relaxed and friendly with both Brian and Stash, but remained in his room when it was time for dinner – a dinner on which Brian had placed all his hopes. ‘I’d said it was a possibility to get her back,’ says Stash. ‘Volker was delighted, the premiere went off beautifully, and we all had an extremely fun evening. You can see it from the pictures. But Anita had made up her mind. So after a nice evening, they mutually agreed to let it slide. But windows open, and windows close – it wasn’t a case of total despair.’ Stash adds that the whole evening was ‘extremely cordial’. But as Schlöndorff points out, ‘nothing can ever be cordial in such amorous fights’.
*
As the summer of 1967 approached, Brian was battered but hardly broken. His life was only marginally more chaotic than those of the rest of the organization. Andrew Oldham, paranoid and seemingly manic-depressive, would himself descend into near madness over this period, and volunteered for electro-convulsive therapy to exorcize his demons.
George Chkiantz, soon to become one of the key engineers at Olympic studios, is one of the few of his studio brethren to have kind words for Andrew Oldham, who he reckons had a keen eye for detail and a talent for picking out a good mix or take. But by May 1967 he too shared Mick and Keith’s consensus that ‘Andrew was going for a certain sort of style. And that style was starting to move on, so he became more and more irrelevant.’
Oldham’s preoccupation with Immediate was a crucial factor in his estrangement from Mick in particular. Oldham had used Mick to establish the credibility of his label, and around the beginning of 1967, Mick asked for a word with his manager and mentor.
‘Andrew,’ he told him, quietly but assertively, ‘you know I’ve done a lot for Immediate. I think it’s fair you give me a piece of the action.’
Oldham was incredulous: ‘You’re fucking joking?’
Soon both men were shouting, with Mick repeating, ‘I only want a third of it!’
This was Oldham’s moment of hubris. His conviction that he was more important than his protégé would lead to his losing the Stones, and his label too. ‘It was a big argument,’ says Tony Calder. ‘Andrew wouldn’t give a piece of Immediate to Mick – and it was the biggest mistake he ever made. Andrew didn’t ask me at the time, he only told me later, and I was so fucking angry. I’d have given Mick a third. That’s when we started to fall out big-time.’
Some time around April, Mick and Keith had discussed their intention to jettison Oldham with Allen Klein – and discovered, says Chkiantz, a problem. ‘They’d got Allen Klein in, among other things to make them all unbreakable contracts. And he’d written up Andrew’s and, guess what, it was unbreakable.’ Hence, with Klein mediating, Mick and Keith arranged that Oldham, who was in any case keen to stay safely Stateside, would keep away from the studio. Yet there was another aspect of the contract that became an open secret at Olympic. ‘Because of the contract, Andrew would still get the producer’s royalty,’ explains Chkiantz. ‘But then they discovered he was responsible for the recording costs. So therefore Satanic Majesties took for fuckin’ ever!’
Recording for this new album had started in February with Oldham, and continued without him from early May. The sessions were often a meandering, unfocused mess. In this context it was Brian who as much as anyone pulled the music together. In particular, along with session pianist Nicky Hopkins, who’d joined the Stones camp after working on Mord und Totschlag, Brian transformed the future single We Love You into a half-decent song. ‘The part Brian added on the Mellotron was absolutely brilliant,’ comments Chkiantz. The Mellotron was a primitive sampler, also used on the opening of the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields, and the example at Olympic was particularly tricky to operate. ‘It’s only if you tried playing that instrument that you’d realize how difficult it is, what coordination you need to get anything resembling a rhythm,’ adds Chkiantz. ‘The capstan motor wasn’t powerful enough, so the more keys you pressed, the more it slowed down. Playing it took a special kind of genius.’
Indeed, that summer Mick would comment that the upcoming album was largely electronic, and was based on Brian’s experiments. Wags might argue that this was simply a way of evading responsibility for what would justifiably be regarded as the Stones’ worst album to date. Still, even in his fragile state, Brian continued to hold a measure of power.
Certainly when Sonja Kristina, later known as the singer of Curved Air but at the time an up-and-coming folk singer, encountered Brian – during the first post-Oldham Olympic sessions, most likely early in May – she regarded him as the psychic centre of the Stones. Brian had turned up at his new regular haunt, the Speakeasy, where he could often be seen chatting with Jimi Hendrix. On this night he had arrived dressed beautifully in an array of Moroccan silks and multicoloured fabrics, but after some accident with a spilled drink he’d borrowed a shirt and waistcoat from a waiter – yet still he looked an imposing, psychedelic presence. Sonja, who’d just turned eighteen, arrived at the club with her friend Romi and sat next to the star. ‘He seemed very gentle. Spaced out, in a very nice, fluffy kind of way. He was on his own, apart from a driver.’
Back when Sonja had first seen the Stones close up, at Ready Steady Go!’s Mod Ball in 1964, she had regarded Brian as the premier Stone, a pioneer of R&B. Three years later she felt no reason to change her mind: he remained for her at the cutting edge of the new look and the new turn-ons of the London scene. The trio chatted about music, as well as more esoteric subjects, before Brian suggested they go back to his place for a smoke.
In the car, that gentle attitude changed – he was ‘antsy, kneeling on the seats saying stuff to the driver, telling us how he couldn’t drive any more’ – until finally the party arrived at Courtfield Road. Once in the flat, Sonja and Romi marvelled at the pale shagpile carpet, the telephone in the toilet, the colourful rugs and the collection of exotic instruments. Out of the car, Brian was happy again, taking phone calls and at one point listening to a mix of that day’s recording at Olympic down the phone. The trio talked late into the evening about spiritual matters, visions they’d all had, the occult, and in particular about the god Pan. Brian told them he’d heard stories from Brion Gysin of how a group of musicians from a tiny place in Morocco called Joujouka performed a ceremony which summoned up the god. ‘He was talking about the Pipes of Pan . . . then my friend Romi, who was very psychic, started having visions. Of Brian being this god Pan.’
They convened to Brian’s bedroom for a night that was sensual rather than sexual, fondling each other, popping amyl nitrates, talking endlessly and softly. Eventually Brian passed out and the girls tucked him up, carefully. In the morning he greeted them again, quietly, wispily, once again vulnerable. Then he put on his Afghan coat and floppy hat and went out to face a new day. Embattled as he was, he still seemed a potent figure. ‘He had insight,’ says Sonja. ‘He was undoubtedly a unique person. It would seem from Rom
i’s reaction that he was a very special person indeed.’
*
All the Stones felt embattled on 10 May. After the failure of their efforts to fend off the police, Mick, Keith and Robert Fraser finally appeared at Chichester Crown Court. They faced a trio of layman magistrates chaired by Basil Shipman, a well-known figure in local circles. Mick faced charges of amphetamine possession for the Italian pills, Keith for allowing Redlands to be used for the smoking of cannabis, and Fraser a more serious charge of heroin and amphetamine possession. Schneiderman was charged in his absence, but his identity was concealed. Thus began a classic confrontation between the establishment – or, more specifically, the small-town squirearchy – and the upstart youth, an encounter of tangible brutality that would stretch Mick in particular to the limit.
Today, we think of the Stones drugs bust as the moment when the establishment was faced down and conquered. The confrontation would mark out Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as icons of insurrection. But as Stash Klossowski points out, ‘What turned out to be the making of Keith Richards would be the breaking of Brian Jones.’ Stones accountant Stan Blackbourne insists that ‘the police definitely wanted Brian – he was public enemy number one for them’ – and he attempted to shield him from some of the attacks. It’s likely that both the News of the World and the police had been told by their informant that Brian would be present at Redlands, so now they were determined to nail him. As his bandmates listened to the charges at the little town court, and the Stones’ barrister, Geoffrey Leach, questioned the police, the establishment turned up for a second go with a neatly planned flank attack.
The day after returning from their film premiere at Cannes, Brian and Stash recuperated at Courtfield Road, trying to work out what was happening with Mick and Keith and waiting for the afternoon papers for updates from Chichester. The phone rang incessantly and the pair answered all the calls, many of them from journalists they knew well. The questions were mostly the same. ‘They were asking, “Have you been busted?”’ says Stash. ‘We were thinking, Have we been asleep and haven’t heard anything? And remember, we were waiting for news from Chichester and all the while the press have been tipped off, in a major way, that a bust was going down – before it had even happened!’
Brian and Stash checked that there were no drugs around the flat. ‘There’s nothing here that I know of,’ Brian reassured his friend, but they were still hurriedly looking around for any paraphernalia left by visitors when the doorbell rang. Stash ran down, and was relieved to see Mohammed Jajaj, Robert Fraser’s servant, who’d come to help clean up. The pair spoke briefly in French, Mohammed reassuring Stash that he hadn’t seen anyone around; then a group of strangers suddenly appeared, pushed Mohammed out of the way and rushed into the flat.
Stash and Brian were still trying to work out if the intruders were press or police when a couple of them pushed their way into Brian’s bedroom and looked under the mattress – ‘And out popped – I can still see it – a purple Moroccan-looking wallet which had this iffy-looking grass in it. My first reaction was, Who among the many girls we’d had round had left that behind? But in fact it was obviously planted by people who knew what they were doing. Because they wouldn’t have found it that fast otherwise.’
As the police swarmed around, varying emotions engulfed both Brian and Stash. They weren’t so much scared as confused, and occasionally they laughed at the bizarre scene unfolding around them which seemed ‘totally insane – just incredible’. Then one officer, who they discovered later was the infamous Norman Pilcher, brandished a small phial he claimed to have found. Amid the buzz of voices and shouting, Stash heard the word ‘cocaine’, but as he and Brian rushed over to take a look, Pilcher smiled at them and said, ‘Well, I’m not going to charge you with this, am I? For one thousandth of a gram?’
Pilcher’s combination of aggression and unctuousness accentuated the roller coaster of emotions, for of course the next morning the newspaper headlines screamed that cocaine had been found in Brian’s flat. ‘Bullshit,’ says Stash. ‘And so it went on.’
The realization that this was all a high-profile set-up meant to intimidate and break an upstart musician began to dawn when the pair stepped out of the flat on their way to Chelsea police station and saw a TV news crew, all set up and waiting for them. By the time they’d been bailed out and arrived at Allen Klein’s suite at the Hilton, the footage had been edited and was being shown on the Six O’Clock News.
Brian stayed at the Hilton that night. Although Nicholas Fitzgerald, a self-styled friend of Brian, later claimed he was depressed and on tranquillizers, Stash, who was with Brian at the hotel, contends that he survived that first encounter intact, that he was more shocked and annoyed than despairing at the ludicrousness of the charges. ‘You can see in the photos from that day it was all hilarious – we are laughing and smiling,’ says Stash.
That old rebelliousness, the total disrespect for authority that had characterized the teenage Brian, survived his first victimization by the establishment. But his lack of physical stamina, first noticed by Brian’s friends back in his teens, would ultimately undermine that defiance. Although Brian and Stash laughed the first day, ‘we weren’t smiling when the police gave a completely erroneous account of what went on’, says Stash, who’s still outraged at the treatment he and Brian received. ‘And we didn’t smile when we had to appear again on bail.’ Stash found himself stretched to the very limit over the next couple of years. For Brian, that initial bust caused a cascade of consequences that were catastrophic.
Some of Brian’s friends blamed Allen Klein and his fellow Stones for what would happen next. Stash, for one, stands up for Klein: ‘He got us out and bailed within a couple of hours.’ But it seems that Klein also advised Brian, during his stay at the Hilton, to avoid Courtfield Road and keep the police guessing as to his whereabouts. This would have a marked effect on Brian’s stability. More serious was the advice of Brian’s lawyers. ‘The lawyers bear a great deal of responsibility for what happened,’ says Stash, ‘because these establishment people looked at us like a bunch of idiots – my own lawyer, David Napley, was very disapproving. They all had this patronizing, dreadful view we were all mentally ill children. And they told us, you have to stay away, one from the other. And Brian, you have to stay away from the rest of the Rolling Stones. Now, some of us drew closer together under adversity. But Brian . . . he became totally estranged.’
9
The Kindness of Strangers
BRIAN KNEW HOW to deal with bigots and rednecks. Back in 1965, when walking the streets of Greenwich Village with Nedra Talley of the Ronettes, the dandy arm-in-arm with the black woman would regularly attract shouts of ‘Hey, who do you think you are, faggot?’ He’d laugh, give them the finger, and keep walking, unconcerned.
But those rednecks weren’t organized like the police and tabloid newspapers, who seemed especially to hate Brian Jones. The forces of the establishment were a motley crew. The News of the World, in 1967 as in 2011, sold millions of copies with its unique concoction of moral outrage and near pornographic intrusion into private lives. Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher craved fame and recognition. Backing them up were a bunch of minor dyspeptic personalities, self-styled worthies, suburban officials and legal types. This was a species celebrated – or, more often, derided – in Britain for hundreds of years, right back to the days when they were the butt of William Hogarth’s scabrous popular etchings. Yet, while mocked, this group kept a tight rein on power – and Brian Jones was their ideal victim.
Caroline Coon was co-founder of Release, an organization formed to protect youths who’d often simply disappear after being picked up for drugs offences. Release was on the front line of the fight against a zealous and often corrupt police force, and the organization shared Stones accountant Stan Blackbourne’s belief that, for the establishment, Brian Jones was Public Enemy Number One. ‘Every time the establishment saw a picture of Bri
an Jones, they saw a political statement. He was remarkably honest about what he was, and to that extent he was very vulnerable. Because he was blurring gender, with long hair, those clothes, his love of exotic cultures, his rejection of orthodox religion. Wearing those clothes, that was a political as well as a fashion statement.’
Over a period of around twelve months, the police attempted to bust Brian on at least seven documented occasions. The establishment, ill formed and ill assorted as it was, retained a special, visceral hatred for him because, as Jeff Dexter puts it, ‘he was a dandy – and dandies were always frowned upon by certain members of the straight society’. There was a price on Brian’s head; breaking him would make people money. ‘He was so beautiful, so glamorous, therefore he was commercial,’ says Coon, ‘in the sense that he would sell newspapers. Which meant that whatever cop could get him was going to get a lot of kudos. That’s why Groupie Pilcher in particular wanted to get him, for the fame.’
In the immediate aftermath of the raid on Brian’s flat, Allen Klein ‘for once, was absolutely brilliant’, says Stash. The management at the Hilton, where Klein retained a suite, viewed the prospect of hosting a notorious rock star and accompanying Polish-French bohemian jetsetter with extreme distaste. Klein simply intimidated them into letting the pair stay for the next couple of days, both of them ‘still laughing’, says Stash, at the ludicrous charade. The day after his bust, Brian demonstrated his defiance with a shopping trip to Chelsea Antique Market; yet later that day the mood darkened when the police attempted another bust, pulling over his Roller and searching him and Stash as they were heading for the West End.