Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones Read online

  In the event, the stories heard by Reece were quite possibly less ludicrous than many of those contained in Fitzgerald’s book, which revealed none of the insider information its title promised. The book mostly seemed a sad fantasy, especially the assertion that Brian was possibly bumped off because of the planned supergroup (the implication was that it was Tom Keylock who oversaw the murder). Hendrix’s producer Eddie Kramer describes the story as ‘silly’, and John Lennon, in later interviews, commented that he thought Brian was another victim of the drugs scene, and how his sad state in the latter days meant ‘You’d dread he’d come on the phone’ – hardly the comment you’d expect from someone whose supergroup with Brian was sabotaged by a contract hit.

  Fitzgerald’s account is remarkable for how few encounters there are with others who knew Brian who were still alive and could therefore verify or disprove his presence. Fitzgerald implied that Suki Potier, who died in 1981, was aware of dark dealings, but Suki never mentioned this in the wake of Brian’s death to friends, like Michael Rainey. Stash was with Brian at the Hilton after his bust, when Fitzgerald describes Brian calling him. Stash doesn’t remember the call, nor did he ever hear Fitzgerald’s name mentioned. One of the few named friends is James Phelge. Today, Phelge says, ‘Nick Fitzgerald? Who the fuck is he? I never met him that I recall, and do not recognize him from the photo. His story of meeting me does not sound real.’ The same, sadly, can be said of many of the events in Fitzgerald’s book. But that hasn’t stopped his story being the basis of many subsequent murder theories.

  Fitzgerald went to live near his mother after the publication of the book, did not surface to refute any of the accusations of inaccuracy, and died in 2009.

  A. E. Hotchner

  Hotchner’s 1990 book Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties concluded that Brian had been murdered on the basis of two witnesses, Dick Hattrell and an anonymous cockney with long sideburns called ‘Marty’. In this account, Hattrell claimed to have visited Brian at Cotchford shortly before his death, became worried about him, then later bumped into a party-goer who had witnessed Brian’s murder. ‘Marty’ also claimed to have witnessed the incident, which was watched by (among others) two women. Hotchner incorporated Fitzgerald’s story, as well as the hearsay of other bystanders, such as the story that Linda Lawrence was another witness of the cover-up and was spirited out of the country (Linda last saw Brian in 1968). Today, Hattrell says the story is nonsense, that he never visited Cotchford and ‘never told the story about Brian being murdered . . . this information is not correct’. Meanwhile, ‘Marty’ has since kept his counsel. This version of events is also incompatible with Anna Wohlin’s two books. Unless Linda Lawrence and Dick Hattrell are part of the conspiracy, Hotchner’s thesis doesn’t stack up.

  David Gibson

  David Gibson was employed to fit carpets at Cotchford Farm; he later surfaced to make allegations in the Brighton Evening Argus. He reckoned Brian had been absent from Cotchford most of the day, as had Anna Wohlin; but Brian had reappeared later in the evening, and begged Gibson not to leave. Gibson believed that Brian had been murdered, and that Tom Keylock was responsible. There have been second-hand reports, says Stones road manager Sam Cutler, that Gibson saw Princess Margaret at Cotchford – hence rumours of a cover-up to protect the controversial princess’s reputation. It is thought that Gibson never contacted the police and, like Fitzgerald, believed he had been the victim of threats and murder attempts.

  Gibson’s story is incompatible with most of the rival conspiracy theories bar the air of paranoia and Brian’s conviction that someone was out to get him. However, Brian didn’t share this with witnesses, like Bobbie Korner, who were known to be his confidants. Gibson’s story is detailed at the Brian Jones fan club site, www.brianjonesfanclub.com.

  Janet Lawson

  In a Daily Mail interview with Scott Jones published on 29 November 2008, Janet Lawson claimed that much of her original statement was suggested to her by the questioning officer, Detective Sergeant Peter Hunter. This interview provided new evidence: that Lawson was in fact Keylock’s girlfriend, and that Keylock had suggested she go down to keep an eye on Brian. In this interview, Lawson suggested that Frank Thorogood had been acting strangely and that she believed he had killed Brian, most likely by accident.

  Lawson’s account is consistent with the facts as we know them although her memories do, of course, provide only the most tenuous evidence of Thorogood’s guilt, and equally prove that Keylock was economical with the truth. In the various police reviews of the case, some officers have concluded, ‘It is possible that Thorogood was larking about . . . [but] this is of course pure speculation.’ It remains the second most likely scenario, that if Frank Thorogood was responsible, it was an accident – a possibility which Lawson and Wohlin’s accounts could well support.

  Tom Keylock

  Most of the murder conspiracy theories around Brian’s death emanate from Tom Keylock, Brian’s driver and minder, who around 21 February 1994 claimed to have heard the deathbed confession of builder Frank Thorogood. In a sworn statement, Keylock said, ‘I visited [Thorogood] at the North Middlesex Hospital on Sunday 7th November 1993. Mr Thorogood was terminally ill and close to death . . . Mr Thorogood stated he would finally like to set the record straight in relation to the death of Brian Jones. Mr Thorogood stated he physically held Brian Jones under the water and that this resulted in the death of Brian Jones.’

  Any cynic would point out that a deathbed confession is valueless; if anything, the ‘confession’ attaches more guilt to Keylock than to Thorogood, especially as Thorogood’s daughter Jan Bell later surfaced to deny that Keylock had spent any time alone with their father, who had been admitted to hospital with a respiratory problem and therefore, not being aware he was on his deathbed, could not have made a ‘deathbed confession’.

  Keylock’s reminiscences were a key source for Terry Rawlings’ book Who Killed Christopher Robin? (Boxtree, 1994), an updated version of which is promised soon. Keylock was likewise an adviser for Stephen Woolley’s 2005 film Stoned (based on Janet Lawson and Anna Wohlin’s recollections), which again accused Thorogood. Perhaps there is truth to some of Keylock’s stories, but I feel they should all come with a health warning.

  Keylock himself died on 2 July 2009. Sam Cutler reported that he, too, made a deathbed confession which was videoed and offered for sale. Several years later the video remains just a rumour.

  Jan Bell

  In 1994, Jan Bell, the daughter of Frank Thorogood, denied that her father had made any confession to Tom Keylock. Jan also related a story which she recalled her father sharing with her, of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards driving down to Cotchford on the day of Brian’s death and arguing with Brian over ownership of the name Rolling Stones; during the argument, Keith pulled a knife on Brian. But the Stones were at Olympic on the day in question, observed by several witnesses. It’s possible that Thorogood had indeed witnessed an argument between Mick, Keith and Brian, but if it did happen it probably took place at Redlands earlier in the year.

  ‘Joe’

  Early theories, inspired by Keylock, that Thorogood murdered Brian were given additional weight by Geoffrey Giuliano’s Paint It Black, published in 1994. Giuliano’s book relied heavily on interviews from Mandy Aftel’s and Laura Jackson’s earlier books; recycled the allegations of the pseudonymous Marty from Hotchner’s book as well as Dick Hattrell (who denies speculating that Brian was murdered); added another anonymous industry insider, ‘Sean’; and for good measure one more mysterious bystander, ‘Joe’, who claimed to have held Brian underwater ‘for the fucking crack. For a joke, like.’ On the tape, ‘Joe’ claimed that Thorogood had subsequently fled the scene: ‘Frank had got this old Ford Anglia . . . we jumped out of the pool . . . We went to London.’ However, Thorogood was present at Cotchford when police officer Albert Evans arrived around 12.10 a.m. Subsequently, the police concluded
the tape was a fake, ‘prepared in America for a number of radio programmes in New York’.

  Anna Wohlin

  Anna’s book, with the emphatic title The Murder of Brian Jones, was published in 1999. Her story was broadly consistent with her original witness statement, except she detailed more tension between Thorogood and Brian who, she said, had argued over bills for work on Cotchford Farm with the result that Brian had sacked the builder. There was little explanation of why, if Brian had fallen out with Thorogood, he went over to his flat to invite him for a swimming session. Although Anna didn’t witness it, she wrote that she believes Thorogood killed Brian because of his reaction after the death: ‘Frank was as cold as ice. He didn’t show any sympathy.’

  Anna Wohlin made the accusation when Thorogood was dead and therefore not able to defend himself; she also suggested that Stones PR Les Perrin, who died in 1978, was involved in a cover-up. Unless one believes other ludicrous theories that Anna was involved in a (different) cover-up, one must feel sympathy for the trauma she underwent. None the less, most of her recollections of Brian being focused, in control of his music, and planning a new life with her are contradicted by objective witnesses like Bobbie Korner and Korner’s bassist, Nick South.

  Some people believe that Anna’s story validates Keylock’s assertion that Thorogood was responsible. But Anna’s conviction that Thorogood murdered Brian seems to have arrived only once Thorogood’s name was already in the frame, according to Jan Oloffson, the Swedish writer and photographer who introduced Anna to Brian. ‘Anna came over [from Sweden] and I met her through a friend of mine, a Swedish girl called Inga Rose,’ he says. ‘I wrote and took pictures for Swedish Images, she was impressed by this, and I took her down to the clubs.’ Jan introduced Anna to Brian at the Revolution and the three remained good friends; Anna and Brian spoke to Jan several times on the phone from Cotchford, and were planning to come to his wedding on 12 July. Of course, they never made it. After Brian’s death, Jan was one of the few who stayed in contact with Anna. ‘She came to see me . . . we spoke, and it was definitely a drowning thing. Whether Brian might have drunk or smoked too much was another matter. But as far as she was concerned, there was no one involved in drowning him.’ Anna’s latter-day belief that Brian was murdered is, says Jan, a recent development: ‘Early on she didn’t [believe that]. Definitely not.’

  The ‘Allen Klein report’

  In 2009, one-time Stones road manager Sam Cutler mentioned the ‘Allen Klein report’ on his blog. He detailed how Klein had employed private detectives to investigate Brian’s death; they concluded that Keylock was the guilty man. As detailed elsewhere, there is some evidence to suggest Keylock’s guilt, principally his attempt to blame Frank Thorogood, his apparent theft of some of Brian’s belongings, and Janet Lawson’s revelation that she was actually Keylock’s girlfriend, and Keylock had persuaded her to conceal this fact. Yet in October 2013, Cutler told me that there was now confusion as to whether the Klein report does in fact exist.

  The Toronto Sun and Tom Keylock

  In 2003, the Toronto Sun ran a story on Jerry Stone, proprietor of a Stones-themed bar in the city, that described his acquisition of two exciting items of memorabilia, gold records for Paint It, Black and Little Red Rooster, both of them (according to Stone) once owned by Brian Jones. The bar owner remarked on the pedigree of the two items, for he had acquired them from ‘former Stones chauffeur Tom Keylock’.

  This was a fascinating development for some Brian Jones diehards, for it was well known that many of Brian’s possessions had disappeared after his death. Some items, including master tapes and clothing, had been returned to the family; others, such as David A. Hardy’s paintings and quite possibly some of Brian’s guitars, have never been traced. Keylock’s possession of the gold discs apparently verified that he had stolen items from Brian, thus confirming his dishonesty. This also seemed like supporting evidence for the theory that Keylock was the mastermind behind Brian’s death (as borne out by Fitzgerald’s alleged sighting), and made Keylock’s dubious claims of Frank Thorogood’s deathbed confession appear to be an obvious attempt to put sleuths off his trail.

  Many people who met Keylock disliked or distrusted him, Stones confidant Keith Altham for instance: ‘I didn’t like him. And no, I didn’t trust him. There was something about him that was unpleasant, a little bit like Jimmy Savile, where you sensed there was something malevolent.’ This view was shared by many in the Stones circle, and even by outsiders like Brion Gysin. For this reason, over recent years Keylock’s name has increasingly been suggested as Brian’s murderer, perhaps the mastermind in a bigger conspiracy.

  Keylock as a villain makes much more sense than Thorogood. There’s only one flaw in this version, which is that Keylock was in London on the evening in question, namely at Olympic studios in Barnes, where he was seen by, among others, Altham. ‘I had got to Olympic around eleven on my way home; he came in about midnight, or one o’clock.’ Keylock had received a call from Cotchford with the news of Brian’s death, and broke the story to the band.

  Witness accounts of Brian’s death put it after eleven o’clock; Fitzgerald reckoned he had turned up at the house at 11.15, and would have been ‘threatened’ by Keylock some minutes later. The notion that Keylock could have chased off Fitzgerald or other bystanders, threatened and instructed the various witnesses, hit the road for an eighty-minute drive and arrived in the studio by one o’clock stretches credulity to the limit. ‘It’s ludicrous,’ says Altham. ‘Keylock was unpleasant, but why would he have murdered Brian when Brian was the goose that kept laying the golden egg?’ Of course, it’s possible that Keylock could have been involved if he’d organized a murder with split-second timing – but as with so many conspiracy theories, this makes more assumptions, and generates more inconsistencies, than the official version.

  Who was responsible?

  Keylock’s presence at Olympic undermines the most plausible conspiracy theory about Brian’s murder. Yet it doesn’t eliminate many of the deep and justified misgivings around Brian’s death.

  Brian was ill served by the establishment, and by his own band. The former had a statutory duty to investigate his death but did so in a casual manner; the latter had a duty of care to the man responsible for forming the Rolling Stones, however maddening, irritating and unreliable he was.

  Although the police did assign experienced detectives to the scene, their investigation jumped to a conclusion early on, and failed to adequately consider other alternatives. The police failed to control the site, too, allowing Keylock and others access to the area, which allowed evidence to be destroyed and Brian’s property to be removed. Similarly, the Rolling Stones seemed content to leave Keylock, a man who Keith Richards and others believed was a thief, in charge at Cotchford.

  In the years since Brian’s death the band has shown little interest in protecting his legacy, and it appears from the limited amount of evidence available that the current value of Brian’s estate is only modest. It’s quite possible that Lewis Jones, who died in 2009, was not aggressive in protecting the value of his son’s estate. After the death of Louisa, in 2011, the estate passed to Brian’s sister Barbara, who has one son. Today, by most estimates, Brian Jones’s estate receives less than £20,000 a year in income, which seems exceptionally low considering the band’s back catalogue has been extensively reissued, along with DVDs. It is undeniable that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts have no legal duty to look after Brian’s financial or other interests; perhaps it’s naive to suggest they have a moral duty.

  Only Bill Wyman has stood up for the band’s founder: ‘As the years go by, I become ever more convinced he’s entitled to [a] free pardon.’

  Notes

  Chapter 1: Secrets and Lies

  Main interviewees: Robert Almond, Trudy Baldwin, June Biggar, Roger Dagley, Colin Dellar, Graham Keen, John Keen, Anna Livia, Roger Limb, Roger Jessop, Dave Jo
nes, David Mercer, Linda Partridge, Tony Partridge, Tony Pickering, Robin Pike, Pip Price, Alvin Smith, Ian Standing, Carole Woodcroft. Architectural information from Nikolaus Pevsner’s Gloucestershire (Penguin, 1974); ‘so gay it was unbelievable’ quote is Barry Miles. Many thanks to Robin, John and Pip for their guided tours of the area. Most accounts of Lewis and Louisa’s role in the Welsh and musical community come from John and Graham Keen, and Roger Jessop. Recollections of Lewis primarily draw on interviews with Robert Almond and Linda Partridge; information on the local church was from Trudy Baldwin. Thanks to Shirley Park of Pate’s Grammar School, formerly Cheltenham Grammar School, for her invaluable help. (Initially, Pate’s, the girls’ grammar school, and Cheltenham, the boys’ school on the high street, were separate institutions; they have now merged, based in the bigger building on the girls’ site.) ‘Beatnik horror’ refers to the 7 August 1960 Sunday People story on Jack Kerouac, Jack Corso, William Burroughs and ‘hate merchant’ Allen Ginsberg, ‘men who have nothing to offer but despair’. ‘Essentially a sensitive and vulnerable boy’ comes from Brian’s obituary, by Dr Arthur Bell, in The Patesian (1969); Brian’s O level and A level results likewise come from The Patesian. I have not managed to trace Hope’s current whereabouts, and have changed her name to protect her privacy.

  Chapter 2: Crossroads

  Main sources: Ken Ames, Pat Andrews, Chris Barber, Harry Brampton, Jane Filby, Dick Hattrell, Tony Holbrook, Buck Jones, Paul Jones, Graham and John Keen, Richard Pond, Graham Ride, Graham Stodart, Pete Sumner, David Widdows. Previous accounts have Val realizing she was pregnant after leaving school. Anna Livia suggests she was still at school when Brian was in London. In addition, while other accounts suggest different timelines for Brian’s dates with the Ramrods, I believe most of his dates with them were in 1960, as Tony Holbrook and Graham Stodart remember he still lived at Hatherley Road. This chapter revolves around the accounts of Pat Andrew, Dick Hattrell, Graham Ride and John Keen, to all of whom I’m indebted, especially John, with whom I’d often debate interpretations of events. I couldn’t have asked for a better observer than John, who came from a similar background to Brian – and, given his subsequent career as an educational psychologist, he is well versed in the psychology of groups. Re Chris Barber in Cheltenham: Graham Ride believes Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies visited Cheltenham early in September; my own belief, based on the research of Todd Allen, is that Cyril didn’t play with Alexis until December of that year, which means Graham’s recollections are of a later show, and that Barber’s performance on 10 October was the date of their first, crucial meeting. There is also confusion about the Sonny and Brownie show – Graham Ride believes it was 10 October, and that Alexis was there. More definitively, although many writers have rendered accounts of Brian watching Sonny Boy Williamson in Cheltenham, this is fantasy. Williamson’s first visit to the UK is well documented, and was in 1963. I think Dick Hattrell has confused his memories of Sonny Terry with Sonny Boy Williamson. There are other incompatibilities in various accounts. Dick Hattrell thinks Brian finally moved to London after his third trip to Ealing; Graham Ride is certain he’d already decided to move before his first show, so I’ve followed his account. Dick Taylor believes he, Mick and Keith attended the second week of the club, 24 March, although other versions differ. Many accounts, like Philip Norman’s, suggest Brian played with Paul Jones after Brian moved to London, rather than before, partly because this was Paul’s initial memory. However, that chronology is impossible, and Paul now agrees he’d met Brian in Oxford, late 1961. For further reading, I’d recommend Graham Ride’s Foundation Stone.