Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones Read online

  That is indeed what he was as far as the establishment kids went. As he built new relationships through music, Brian’s old friends fell away – or rather he pushed them away, keen to shock those he considered bores or jobsworths. One friend turned enemy was Colin Dellar, who’d sat next to him in the A stream. ‘We were friends for two years. And then we were not friends. In the end it was like two gangs, the Jones Gang and the Dellar Gang. And I used to say that the Dellar Gang used to represent good, and the Jones Gang represented evil.’ The pair started to fall out, says Dellar, when he visited the Joneses’ semi-detached home. It was neat and prim inside but Brian used to delight in leaving a mess for his mum to clean up. ‘He’d say, “That’ll give her something to do!”’ Some of Brian’s other friends put this down to a typical schoolboy showing off, aiming to shock. If so, it worked: it was Dellar who thought there was something of ‘the devil’ about Brian Jones.

  Their feud didn’t quite descend into violence but there was constant sniping. One time Dellar pulled off a particularly satisfying coup when groups of kids were marking each other’s history essays. His group managed to get hold of Brian’s to assess. ‘It was a very good piece of work because he was a highly intelligent boy. But we managed to get the history teacher, Mr Campbell, to give him a low mark. That was fun.’

  Brian’s counter-attack was devious, and effective. At some point during their fourth year, Deputy Head Frederick Jessop was walking along the school hallway when suddenly he heard a string of obscenities being shouted at him. He hurried up the stairwell in search of the offender, but whoever it was had disappeared. Mr Jessop was certain he’d recognized Dellar’s voice, and questioned the pupil. ‘He was really annoyed with me, but it wasn’t me who’d shouted at him – it was Brian Jones.’ The Deputy Head didn’t believe Dellar. A full year later, Dellar was shocked to find that having joined the sixth form he wasn’t appointed a prefect. Later still he learned that the Head, Dr Bell, ‘had heard all these stories from the Deputy Head about me, that I’d been saying all these things. Which was Brian Jones getting his own back. In the end they realized it was Brian imitating my voice and I did become a prefect – a year later than all my friends. And Brian did that to me.’

  Dellar was exceptional in his detestation of Brian Jones, but plenty of other boys noticed his total lack of respect for, even hatred of, authority. ‘He’d lampoon the establishment,’ says classmate Ian Standing. ‘There was always this aura of slight aggression, or obstinacy. It would all have been a big front, but it was very noticeable. He resented authority, no question.’ One or two others in the year also challenged the teachers, but as classmate Robin Pike points out, ‘there would be misbehaviour but not being directly rude to a teacher. Because this was the fifties there was still corporal punishment, hence that certain amount of fear.’

  Brian Jones courted punishment openly, most conspicuously in February 1957, when Bill Haley, the chubby kiss-curled rock’n’roller who’d been adopted (for the want of anyone better) as an icon of youthful rebellion, announced extra dates for his UK tour, including a show in Cheltenham. On the 22nd, teenagers queued for tickets, causing a stir in the town: the civic authorities were paranoid about troublemaking youngsters, in particular Teddy Boys, who had generated many outraged headlines in the local paper and were banned from the Town Hall. Police kept a close eye on the crowd, and the Gloucestershire Echo printed a photo of the rock’n’roll fans lined up outside the Gaumont. Soon, the talk of the grammar school was the boy a few dozen places back. ‘He was in a grammar school uniform, and it was Brian Jones,’ says Robin Pike. ‘The magnitude of the occasion is difficult to explain. I’d been strictly forbidden to go, and of course this was in school hours. It was outrageous, really. This was a pivotal moment.’

  Brian got his ticket and ventured to the concert on his own. The show, however, turned out to be a disappointment, with no riots and oddly formulaic stage announcements by Haley, whose band featured, of all things, an accordion.

  He was only just turning fifteen, but Brian was becoming completely self-sufficient. He was affable enough: he’d got off his bike to chat with Robin Pike when they shared a post round that Christmas. But the fact he’d done so felt unusual to Pike: ‘he was particularly friendly – and that in itself was striking’. Where there were shared interests, he’d put the effort in – he continued his visits to Phil Crowther’s house to work on songs together – but in other respects his take on life had diverged noticeably from the mainstream.

  There was another distinctive aspect of Brian’s life that struck a few people – local girls such as Carole Woodcroft and June Biggar, who cycled a similar route on their way to the girls’ grammar school, Pate’s Grammar, to the west of the town. Both of them noticed Brian stopping at Albert Road and meeting a Pate’s girl with fairish hair in a long ponytail. Hope (not her real name) and Brian were ‘all over each other’, says June, ‘which was unusual. You might meet a grammar school boy at the Gaumont – where it was dark. Because people talk, and you wouldn’t want your parents to find out.’

  Brian, the geeky ugly duckling, had grown into a muscular, clear-skinned youth. He wasn’t too tall but had a fey, puckish charm all of his own which meant that most of the Pate’s girls knew of him. The romance with Hope lasted a few weeks or months, remembers Carole. She liked Hope, who was intelligent, pretty and rang the school bell each morning. ‘Then Brian moved on, I think, to another girl.’

  For all his defiance and the teachers’ comments about his declining academic performance, Brian’s results in the O levels he sat that summer were respectable: he got seven, including English, Maths, French, German and two sciences – enough to get him into the sixth form, where for his A levels he took on General Studies plus Biology, Physics and Chemistry. These were notoriously difficult subjects, but the best ones to help him to a career as a vet or pharmacist – two strait-laced professions which Lewis, his neighbours reckon, had picked out for him. When Brian joined the sixth form in September 1957, his teachers pronounced his attitude ‘good’, although once again there were signs of the inescapable presence of Lewis, who reported an ‘awkward attitude at home’ to the teachers.

  Amid the negativity, the crushing sense of being constantly under supervision, the one meaningful avenue of escape in Brian’s life continued to open up. That summer he’d started depping regularly on guitar for Bill Nile’s Delta Jazzmen, playing a string of shows at their HQ in a backroom of the grand Victorian swimming baths in Alstone. ‘He was a good guitarist, probably better than many on the London scene,’ says Nile’s singer Dave Jones. ‘He wasn’t a regular, but he played a lot of times, maybe a dozen.’ Then the pair branched off to form Brian’s first band, the Barn Owls, with drummer (and twitcher) Steve Keegan. Already Brian was venturing beyond the conventional trad jazz repertoire, exploring the work of guitarists James and Lonnie Johnson and, soon, John Lee Hooker, the most stripped-down and primal of the new electric bluesmen. The little band’s set was eclectic – Ain’t Misbehavin’, CC Rider, Careless Love and a couple of Lonnie Donegan numbers – which they’d strum out at local pubs like the Montpellier Arms, Duke of Sussex and Reservoir Inn. Dave and Brian became fairly close friends, meeting at each other’s houses or rehearsing at a garage near Hatherley Road. Dave liked Brian. ‘He was easy to work with musically, always turned up for gigs and rehearsals, which was the main thing. He was a worker.’

  Dave knew that Brian was trying out other musicians outside their trio, always experimenting and learning; and in the spring of 1958, Brian joined up with two jazzer friends, Mac White and Martin Fry, to open a little club at the Wheatsheaf Inn on the Old Bath Road. Mac’s band played there most Wednesdays, while Brian checked tickets on the door.

  Brian continued to seek out new songs, in the random ways of kids in the pre-internet age: asking friends for recommendations, using the listening booths in the Curry’s electrical shop, poring over the pages of Jazz News. He sugge
sted to one school friend, Tim (not his real name), that they start up a record club together. The idea was that Brian would supply the record player, and Tim the records. It was probably early in 1958 when they put their plan into action, catching the bus together out to Gloucester, checking through the record racks at Bon Marche, a big department store, and returning to Brian’s house with a copy of 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford. There was no sign of Brian’s parents or sister as they settled down in the neatly tended living room, put the 78 on the little record player, and listened to it again and again. ‘It’s gritty, real life,’ they remarked to each other. ‘The guy’s speaking from experience.’ It fitted with Brian’s diverse tastes. He was absorbing new music, whatever it was, savouring the deep, doleful tones of Ernie Ford and Johnny Cash just as much as he loved the brash energy of Little Richard.

  Now, as a sixteen-year-old, Brian attracted more interest around the city. Perhaps it was his recent transformation from an ugly duckling which inspired his oft-noticed narcissism, but with his blond hair cropped short, high cheekbones and fine features, he seemed well aware of his physical appeal. He turned the eye of many a Pate’s girl. ‘He was very attractive,’ says June Biggar, ‘with lovely ivory skin and blue eyes’; perhaps adding to the allure, as another Pate’s girl, Penny Farmer, points out, he was already known as ‘a wild one’. He was one of those people who might come down the street in a mood and walk right past you without saying hello. ‘He wouldn’t share things,’ say other grammar school boys who were mainly still interested in sports, academia and ‘normal’ pursuits.

  Tim, also sixteen, was a fairly shy schoolboy and his friendship with Brian, not to mention their record club, didn’t endure. As he describes their relationship, Tim – a pleasant, friendly man who still lives in Cheltenham – pauses for a while before remarking, ‘There was something about his personality I didn’t feel comfortable with.’ The awkwardness was caused, Tim eventually explains, by an incident one afternoon at Brian’s house. ‘It was one occasion when he and I were together . . . and he suggested we mutually masturbate. It totally threw me. And I never told anybody else about it, not even my wife.’

  Now, in 1950s Britain a little mutual masturbation wasn’t especially deviant – John Lennon once famously recalled his own youthful circle jerk, while in some private schools it was positively de rigueur. None the less, ‘It was a precocious thing to do,’ says Brian’s friend John Keen. ‘That kind of thing happened in public schools, but here it would have been beyond the pale.’ That was certainly Tim’s reaction: ‘He did have this dark air about him, from a sexual point of view. I call that dark. I think that was why we didn’t continue that friendship.’

  It was early in 1958 that Brian’s sexual explorations had their first lasting consequence, when news spread that the sixteen-year-old Hope had disappeared from Pate’s and had given birth to Brian’s first child. The matter was hushed up – only Hope’s immediate classmates were aware – and the baby was given up for adoption (the normal procedure in what was becoming a common event at the girls’ grammar school: Hope’s classmates remember at least two other secret births that year). It seems Hope did go on to a fulfilling life, later moving overseas. It appears unlikely that the child ever managed to discover the identity of his father, especially as news of the pregnancy and birth were banished to the arena of rumour and speculation.

  Some of those privy to the secret disliked Brian from that moment, such as Carole Woodcroft, who went on to the art college, and took a couple of coach trips to West End clubs with Brian in 1959. ‘He was a rogue. But not in a glamorous way, not one of the flirty smiley guys. He seemed very cold, as if he was very focused on what he wanted.’ John Keen, later a psychologist, liked and respected Brian, but agrees on the point about coldness. ‘It’s hard to categorize psychologically, but Brian did have a streak in him which was lacking in conscience. He didn’t suffer or act as if anything had happened.’ In rebelling against his parents’ values, against society’s conventions, he gave himself licence to be selfish. Barry Miles, a student at the art college who’d meet Brian often over the following years and who also ‘had issues’ with Cheltenham, remembers Brian as ‘a difficult character to be around, but that’s because he didn’t belong there – he belonged in London’.

  With news of the business with Hope carefully suppressed – the boys’ grammar school staff were unaware – Brian remained a popular boy around the area, despite the suspicions of the town’s parents. His skills and growing reputation as a musician lent him a certain glamour and – says Penny Farmer, who went out on a date to Filby’s with him in 1959 – ‘he had a naughtiness about him that made him quite interesting’. The pair’s date was a fun, sparky evening that started out at Filby’s; then they took a long, meandering walk up to All Saints, another jazz club on the high street. He was sexy – ‘a naughty face, a twinkly face, he had personality’ – and a lot of the talk was about music. An acquaintance of Brian’s was playing in the band they were going to see; Brian joked about him, did a little mime to poke gentle fun at him. He kept the conversation going, energetically, talking about other friends on the scene, doing little imitations of them. ‘He was all about music. Music was him. It was in everything he did.’

  The band, it turned out, was forgettable, but many people in Filby’s and All Saints saw the pair together and soon word got back to Penny’s mum. That’s how Cheltenham was. ‘She went ballistic. She must have heard things my brother David was saying about [Brian], and told me, “Keep clear of that one!” But he really was one of those kids you didn’t want to touch for long, or you’d get burnt.’

  In the claustrophobic Cheltenham scene, plenty of girls knew about Brian. He was a regular at the sixth form dancing lessons above the Gaumont Cinema, where Brian had seen Bill Haley (Pate’s headmistress Miss Lambrick had banned the joint grammar school dances for a short time in an attempt to curb her school’s humiliatingly high pregnancy rate, but relented after a few months). Robin Pike remembers Brian disappearing outside with the odd girl, and making out with some French students who were on an exchange around 1959. Yet most of Brian’s school friends remember rather more romantic evenings, when Brian danced with a girl he’d met at dancing sessions, or the Friday afternoon sixth form club held jointly with Pate’s.

  Valerie Corbett lived nearby in Hatherley and was a pupil at Pate’s Grammar; she and Brian became a fixture on the scene, chatting at Filby’s or on the driveway out of Pate’s where Brian would wait, leaning against his bike. ‘I remember them particularly from the dance classes,’ says Brian’s classmate Roger Limb. ‘There’d be waltzes, quicksteps, the cha-cha-cha, and I remember Val and Brian being there, with Val just gazing at Brian. She had no eyes for anybody else.’

  Anna Livia was in Val’s class at Pate’s, and like most of her schoolmates she found Val ‘really sweet and kind, and when she was happy she had a really sweet smile’. Four months younger than Brian, Valerie was a quiet girl with a pretty face and high cheekbones, mid-length brown hair and well-developed breasts; she and Brian, in his slim suit and with his Gerry Mulligan-style cropped blond hair, made an attractive couple. They were omnipresent at Filby’s and other trendy haunts like the Waikiki wine bar and the Patio restaurant throughout the spring of 1959, Brian’s final year at school. Colin Partridge, Brian’s grammar school contemporary, was one of many who thought the pair looked ‘blissfully happy. Although I’m sure they had disagreements from time to time, they seemed joyful.’

  Back at the grammar school, though, life was anything but joyful. There were many minor incidents during Brian’s final year – benzene ignited in the chemistry lab, throwing of mortar boards around the school grounds – that saw him carpeted or questioned. His absences increased, and in the spring of 1959 this ‘unreliable development and conduct’ prompted his form master to write to Brian’s father. Other teachers tried a more personal approach: the head of biology, Ron Bennett, had high hopes for Bria
n, as did his bluff deputy Fred Dempsey, who took him aside for a man-to-man talk. ‘You’ve had it all cushy, Brian,’ he remonstrated with him. ‘You haven’t seen the world yet, you don’t know how difficult it is to make a living!’

  ‘I really appreciate you telling me this,’ the seventeen-year-old replied, with fake sincerity, ‘I really will make an effort.’

  Instead, his behaviour deteriorated further, into open confrontation.

  In the almost textbook list of causes for the teenage rebellion of Brian Jones, the grammar school’s bias towards conformist rugby-playing types seems especially to blame. The most potent symbol of this favouritism was David Protherough, prefect and Captain of the Rugby XV, a classic ‘jock’ esteemed by the teachers and recommended for admission to Cambridge despite the fact he’d not even made the A stream, like Brian. Protherough was popular with the rugby crowd, regarded as ‘a bit of a bully’ by others, and detested by Brian. This one-man embodiment of the establishment inspired particular contempt, reckon a couple of classmates, because his girlfriend, Glitch, seemed immune to Brian’s advances.

  The feud – what teachers would later term ‘The Protherough Affair’ – came to a head during Brian’s final term. ‘It was a staged affair during the lunch hour,’ remembers Roger Jessop. Brian and a friend had arranged a showdown with the rugby captain which ‘ended up in a confrontation, a hell of a scrap, with Brian acting as a ringleader’. Teachers broke up the fight and Brian was once again carpeted, but there was insufficient evidence to penalize him without jeopardizing Protherough’s prospects too. Despite talk of expulsion, Brian survived his first act of open rebellion. Protherough duly went up to Cambridge, and in his one-man campaign against jobsworths and authority figures Brian Jones dug his trench a little deeper.