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The Rolling Stones released Exile On Main Street in May 1972, having been preceded by the Top 10 hit “Tumbling Dice”. Exile On Main Street hit #1 worldwide just as The Rolling Stones embarked on their famed 1972 American Tour, their first in the U.S. in three years, and during which they played many songs from Exile On Main Street.

However things were not as simple as they seemed for The Rolling Stones, but then they rarely were.

Exiles On Main Street

By 1972 The Rolling Stones had found themselves as Exiles On Main Street. Although they had just signed with Atlantic Records for a huge advance and with the healthy sales of “Sticky Fingers” they should have been in good financial shape. However all this had done was enable to stave off the UK’s inland revenue who were chasing them for an astronomical tax bill built up over the previous 7 years of stardom.

Much at Mick Jagger’s insistence, they took their weary bitterness at the situation on the road in 1971 for a “goodbye” tour of the UK before uprooting themselves to the Côte d’Azur. They all found places to live and began to re-create their lives amongst the sun and palm trees in the South of France.

Villa Nellcôte

Keith Richards rented a chateau called Villa Nellcôte and The Rolling Stones set up their studio in the basement. Nellcôte had been the Gestapo HQ during the Second World War, complete with swastikas still cast into the floor vents! It was soon dubbed “Keith’s Coffee Shop” in reference to the Coffee Shops in the Netherlands which sell coffee and some narcotics although it soon left this description behind as the Nellcôte became evermore squalid and decadent.

By now heroin was becoming a daily part of Keith Richards life. Bill Wyman said that by now The Rolling Stones were falling into the abstainers (Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and Mick Jagger) and those that indulged in the shape of Keith Richards, Jimmy Miller, Bobby Keys, Mick Taylor and engineer Andy Johns. With visitors to Nellcôte including Gram Parsons and Hunter S Thompson, the consumption of narcotics was never going to be anything other than enthusiastic! One of those visitors was a young Frenchman called Dominique Tarlé, whose photographs documented the goings on during the recording on one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

As recording got underway, Mick Jagger, now married to the now pregnant Bianca Jagger (ne Macias), disappeared for days at a time. Added to his current state of domestic bliss, the fall-out from the UK tax man chasing them and their enforced exile and the vagaries of the pop business had taken it’s toll on Jagger. He was jaded and not as focused as he could have been.

Without the constraints of expensive recording studio time and Mick Jagger’s frequent absence allowed Keith Richards to potter away and experiment; he would sit for hours playing with new sounds and riffs, while the others sat around and “picked their nose” according to engineer Glyn Johns. This meant Exile On Main Street was far more Keith Richards‘ record than Mick Jagger’s. However, deciding to record the album in the basement of Nellcôte was never going to make it an efficient process.

The recording sessions were almost exclusively nocturnal, starting around 8pm and running through until 3 or 4 in the morning. Many evenings would start with nothing prepared and Keith Richards would simply experiment with sounds and rhythms and see what came up. Keith Richards drove Exile On Main Street, but not in a bossy, go-getting way, but in his own quest for the sound he wanted. If he was ever pushed to do something he did not want to do he would simply not go along with it. According to Bill Wyman if he was asked why he would simply say “because I don’t want to”.

Since Keith Richards, Bobby Keys, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts and Jimmy Miller formed the core of the band that recorded most of the tracks between them, it proved to be a tortuous process. Rumors at the time suggest that getting “Tumbling Dice” took over 100 takes and even then, during the mixing, Mick Jagger commented “those cymbals sound like dustbin lids”!

Such was Bill Wyman’s distaste for the company kept at Nellcôte, he was only on eight out of the eighteen tracks. Unbelievably Charlie Watts found the perseverance to shut himself away in the drum isolation booth for hours at a time bashing out take after rejected take through the long hot summer of 1971 on the Côte d’Azur.

In other words it was a near perfect demonstration of how not to record an album.

On Release of “Exile On Main Street“

However disheveled and decadent the process, the result is now widely regarded as one of the great albums of all time, making number 7 in The Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time for example.

This was not always the case though. The initial reception to Exile On Main Street was lukewarm from the media and while the album went to number one on both the UK and the USA’s Billboard album chart, it quickly fell away and failed to make Billboard’s top thirty best sellers of the year chart for 1972.

Even more galling was that The Rolling Stones pre-Atlantic Records greatest hits set, “Hot Rocks 1964-1971“, outsold Exile On Main Street in 1972 even though it never made it higher than number 4 on the Billboard chart!

On the initial reviews, Keith Richards said, “When Exile On Main Street came out it didn’t sell particularly well at the beginning, and it was also pretty much universally panned. But within a few years the people who had written the reviews saying it was a piece of crap were extolling it as the best frigging album in the world.”

Indeed, on first listen Exile On Main Street is a ragged record, a mish-mash of stunning tracks, the bizarre, the folly and frankly some pure filler. The mix is all over the place, at times even Mick Jagger is barely audible over the hand-claps, horns, hoots and toots that seem to be thrown in a seemingly random manner across tracks. However after a few listens the seemingly random selection of songs and sounds reflects perfectly The Rolling Stones at that time.

Exile On Main Street can leave a new listener underwhelmed, just take a look at some of the comments for Exile on Main Street’s entry in The Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

But give Exile On Main Street a chance and it will get under your skin in a way few albums can. In the words of critic Robert Christgau, “It took me perhaps twenty-five listenings before I began to understand what The Rolling Stones were up to, and I still haven’t finished the job.”

To many this was the last of the great Rolling Stones albums. The heavy drug usage had not yet taken it’s toll and while they produced some very good albums after “Exile On Main Street” many of them used reworked pre-1972 material and none are as good as “Exile On Main Street” overall.

The Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger

• vocals
• backing vocals
• harmonica

Keith Richards

• acoustic
• electric guitar
• slide guitar
• bass
• vocals

Mick Taylor

• electric guitar
• slide guitar

Charlie Watts

• drums

Bill Wyman

• bass
• auto-harp
• vibes

Other Musicians

• Ian Stewart – piano
• Nicky Hopkins – piano
• Jim Price – trumpet, trombone, organ
• Bobby Keys – saxophone, percussion
• Billy Preston – piano, organ
• Clydie King – backing vocals
• Bill Plummer – upright bass
• Mac Rebennack (Dr. John) – backing vocals, piano
• Richard Washington – marimba
• Al Perkins – pedal steel guitar
• Jerry Kirkland – backing vocals
• Tami Lynn – backing vocals
• Kathi McDonald – backing vocals
• Jimmy Miller – drums, percussion, maracas
• Vanetta Field – backing vocals
• Shirley Goodman – backing vocals
• Joe Green – backing vocals

Production Team

• Jimmy Miller – Producer
• Glyn Johns – Engineer
• Andy Johns – Engineer
• Nick Watterton – Engineer
• Joe Zaganno – Engineer
• Jeremy Gee – Engineer

Tracklisting

Originally Exile On Main Street was released as a double album, the only non-compilation album The Rolling Stones released as a double album. We have shown the track-listing from this original release.

All songs written by Mick Jagger/Keith Richards unless otherwise stated.

Side One

1. “Rocks Off” – 4:32
2. “Rip This Joint” – 2:23
3. “Shake Your Hips” (Slim Harpo) – 2:59
4. “Casino Boogie” – 3:33
5. “Tumbling Dice” – 3:45

Side Two

1. “Sweet Virginia” – 4:25
2. “Torn and Frayed” – 4:17
3. “Sweet Black Angel” – 2:54
4. “Loving Cup” – 4:23

Side Three

1. “Happy” – 3:04
2. “Turd on the Run” – 2:37
3. “Ventilator Blues” (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor) – 3:24
4. “I Just Want to See His Face” – 2:52
5. “Let It Loose” – 5:17

Side Four

1. “All Down the Line” – 3:49
2. “Stop Breaking Down” (Robert Johnson) – 4:34
3. “Shine a Light” – 4:14
4. “Soul Survivor” – 3:49

Release Information

Exile On Main Street was released in May 1972 on Atlantic Records/Rolling Stones Records in the USA (initially distributed through the Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco Records until 1973) The Rolling Stones have since had several distribution deals since then for their post 1970 back catalogue, the most recent was their 2008 deal with Polydor Records.

Mick Jagger Getting Married…Really?

The Rolling Stones were now tax exiles. They had all decamped to the South of France over a month earlier and planes were afoot to get the recording of their new album (which would eventually emerge as Exile on Main St) underway. A month to the day after Keith Richards had arrived on the Cote d’Azur, marked The Rolling Stones first rehearsal on May 5th, 1971. For reasons best known to himself, Mick Jagger left it until then to tell the rest of The Rolling Stones that he planned to marry a week later.

For various reasons this irked many. Firstly those in The Rolling Stones management knew that The Stones were broke. They were desperate for them to get on with their new album so they could release it, get out on the road and get cash back into The Rolling Stones overdrawn bank accounts. Mick was the one Stone not living in The South of France, he and Bianca were living in Paris. With Mick Jagger now deciding to get married, this would mean more time away from the band on honeymoon, thus delaying things still further.

Also he had not known Bianca that long. He had split from long-term lover Marianne Faithfull less than a year earlier. Many years later, Marianne Faithful would not be the first to comment on the similar looks of Mick and Bianca Jagger, writing

…in May 1971, Mick had finally given in to his narcissism and married…himself!

From Keith Richards point of view, marriage was just not the thing you did. The furore around the decision of Mick Jagger to actually get married was incredible. Mick Jagger is getting married – yes, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones is getting married! It was seen as the anti-establishment becoming the establishment.

Keith had never married Anita, Paul McCartney never married Jane Asher, Eric Clapton never married Alice Ormsby-Gore….even Mick did not marry Marianne Faithful. But now here was Mick Jagger, getting married. For Keith it was something that “they” did and indeed it seemed that “they” thought this was akin to admitting that he and The Rolling Stones were accepting that the squares had been right all along.

A Guest List of Showbiz Royalty

To make matters worse, although this was supposed to be a quiet, personal wedding it did not stop a chartered jet taking off from Gatwick airport filled to the brim with a who’s who of the British entertainment world. Alongside Mick Jagger’s parents Basil and Eva Jagger, were Paul McCartney and Linda, Ringo Starr and his wife Maureen, although the fall-out from The Beatles had still not settled by this point and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were not talking to each other so sat at opposite ends of the plane.

They were joined on the flight by French film director Roger Vadim, photographer Lord Patrick Litchfield, Marshall Chess (of Chess Records) Eric Clapton and Alice Ormsby-Gore, Ronnie Wood (at this time still playing with The Faces, several years before joining the The Stones) and band-mates Ronnie Lane and Ian MacLagan. Also on the plane were Stephen Stills and several of The Rolling Stones regular collaborators in the shape of Nicky Hopkins, Jimmy Miller, Glyn Johns, Doris Troy and PP Arnold.

Even with all these people being shipped in for the wedding, Mick Jagger only got around to inviting band-mate Bill Wyman along to the reception (but neither of the ceremonies) the day before the wedding. Unsurprisingly Wyman is not happy and it is left to his long term companion Astrid and Rose Taylor to buy the couple a wedding present in the shape of a tandem.

With the furore about the very idea of Mick Jagger getting married causing a media storm and a plane packed with celebrities on it’s way to fill out the pews, Mick Jagger’s hope that this would be a quiet, personal wedding were looking more than a little naive.

The first clues started at London’s Gatwick Airport as hoardes of tabloid journalists descend, firing questions at anyone heading towards the Comet airliner. This included “Spanish” Tony Sanchez, one of The Rolling Stones‘ drug dealers, who he claims had been called by Mick Jagger and told to bring 3 ozs of cocaine with him as, “I’m not going to get through this gig without it.”

The “Civil” Ceremony

This may have been the effect of cold feet on Mick Jagger, but the chaos of the wedding day would have made anyone think twice about getting married.

The Civil Ceremony was due to begin at 4pm, however both Mick and Bianca are late. In front of the town hall is an assorted throng of pres photographers from every corner of the globe. Marius Estezan, the Mayor St. Tropez, awaits the couple and fields questions from the world’s press in the council chambers.

Estezan, obviously unhappy with the intrusion of the hoards of press and non-appearance of the couple told Les Perrin, The Rolling Stones press officer, that if they are not there by 4:30, there will be no wedding. So Perrin called Mick Jagger to tells him what is happening and gets an earful from Mick Jagger, “GET RID OF THEM! If there’s going to be that crowd, then I am not getting married.”

Jerry Pompili, who has only recently been working with The Stones after being house manager at The Filmore East, and Mick Jagger’s assistant and The Rolling Stones logistics man Allan Dunn try to clear the hall. This proves to be a tough task as the photographers do not want to leave and, much to the annoyance of The Rolling Stones camp, they do not have to leave as French law makes all public buildings public!

Perrin calls Mick Jagger again to tell him the news and Mick Jagger, by now not in the best of moods, says, “Fucking Hell! I wish to god I’d never said I was going to get married in the first place.” So Mick and Bianca arrived to find over 100 members of the world’s press fighting for pole position in the blazing hot sun. Flash bulbs fire off as questions in a multitude of languages and accents bombard the couple as the pushing, jostling and insanity descends on them.

During this bombardment Mick Jagger allegedly says something along the lines of “Fuck it I am not doing this” making Bianca cry, much to the joy of the photographers who think they may just have made their fortunes with the photos of Mick Jagger jilting his bride. However Perrin manages to persuade Mick and Bianca to pose for photographs and get it over with now. So they pose and the photographers then leave them to go to the civil ceremony.

The local chief of police and his guard and Jerry Pompili waited outside as Keith Richards ambled up to take on his role as Best Man wearing braided tights and a green combat jacket. Unbelievably, the cop did not recognize one of the most famous men on the planet and grabbed him, preventing him from entering. “They were standing there with their hands around each others throats screaming in their respective languages and I had to break it up” said Pompili. This is the first of four fights that Keith Richards will find himself embroiled in.

With everyone present, the civil ceremony passes and everyone moves on to St Anne’s church for the religious ceremony.

The St Anne’s Ceremony

Lord Litchfield escorts Bianca Macias, dressed in a white trouser suit by Tommy Nutter and displaying a large amount of cleavage for a Catholic wedding, down the isle to the theme from “Love Story”. Tommy Weber’s sons, eight year old Jake and six year old Charlie (or “Boo Boo”) act as page boys for the ceremony. Tommy Weber had brought a wedding gift of a pound of cocaine that he had smuggled in to France using Jake and Charlie as mules!

Tommy Weber, while not currently a close member of The Rolling Stones tribe, will soon become a fixture on the Nellcote scene after the suicide of his ex-wife, Susan Ann Caroline Coriat, better known as “Puss”, mother of Jake and Charlie and lover of Anita Pallenberg, takes her own life in a London hotel.

Father Lucien Baud manages to avoid eye contact with Bianca’s nearly exposed chest for long enough to complete the service with the words

You have told me that you believe youth seeks happiness and a certain ideal and faith. I think you are seeking it too and I hope it arrives today with your marriage. But when you are a personality like Mick Jagger, it is too much to hope for privacy for your own marriage.”

Reg Lancaster, photographer and long time friend of The Rolling Stones, described it as

The place was charged with atmosphere. It was colossal. The ceremony was all in French but Jagger followed it – he’s a good grammar school boy.

As the couple left St Anne’s the world’s press once again charge in to get the photos of the wedding of the year, or even decade. A few hundred feet away is the Bentley to take the happy couple away and they are escorted by Pompili and Dunn.

However the press do not make it easy, fighting for the shots they need for their papers and when they reach the Bentley, Pomili is unable to open the door due to the mass of people. He shoves an Italian photographer aside to make room and receives a blow to the head with a camera as reward. With blood spewing down his face from the cut on his forehead, Pompili grabs the responsible photographer and throws him against the car hard enough to dent the bodywork of both car and photographer.

The Bentley leaves for the reception to be held at the Cafe des Artes.

The Reception

The guests number from anywhere between 200 and 1000, depending on which report you read. All reports agree that it was quite some party though. As the night progressed, Keith got Pompili (still covered in blood) to assemble some of the rock n’ roll talent for an impromptu jam.

Pompili heads off to approach the great and the good assembled before returning to find Keith Richards passed out on the balcony. Depending on which version of events you read there is debate about whether Keith was back on heroin at this point. Most reports of this time say that Keith was not yet and was simply exhausted, but whatever he was not roused and the jam went on without him.

Terry Reid does some numbers before Mick gets in on the act singing with Doris Troy, PP Arnold, Steven Stills. Mick’s parents leave not having given their son his present and Bianca also heads off to their hotel, far from impressed at the lack of attention. She later comments that, “My marriage ended on my wedding day.”

The Honeymoon

The following day most of the guests make it back onto the plane to go home, except for Eric Clapton and Alice Ormsby-Gore. Eric Clapton is suffering badly from heroin withdrawal and cannot get on the plane. Keith Richards, only too aware of the nature of a junkie does not want to help, but Tommy Weber takes pity on him. Keith tells him

You can take the driver and go down to Marseilles and sort him out if you like. But you’ll find he’ll be on your back forever. He shouldn’t have come down here if he didn’t have his shit together.

Keith Richards was well aware of this having experienced it himself, but this would still not stop him finding his own way down that particular route again and very soon. Tommy Weber managed to score Eric Clapton enough heroin to get him home and he too left France.

Eric Clapton was not the only one leaving the country. 6 weeks after leaving the UK, The Rolling Stones had managed a single rehearsal and recorded precisely nothing for their new album. Now Mick Jagger was about to leave the band behind and take off on his honeymoon aboard a 97 foot long yacht with crew of six to take him and his new bride for a ten day cruise around Sardinia and Corsica. No work will be done while he is away, but other events will happen that have a bearing on the recording of Exile on Main Street.

Marianne Faithful

In another world, the woman marrying Mick Jagger would have been Marianne Faithful. She and Jagger had split a year earlier in May 1970 after many years together. Now, less than a year later, here was the man the seemingly did not believe in marriage getting married.

By now Marianne Faithful was a fully fledged junkie. She had been getting through her performances on London’s stage only with a large dose of chemical assistance, which she paid for by sleeping with Spanish Tony Sanchez, a man she described as “loathsome.” She had lost custody of her son and was seeing a doctor in London who she later recalled would simply “pump her full of valium.” She was not in a good way.

When she saw the headlines in London plastered across the newspapers proclaiming “Mick and Bianca wed in French Fracas” it was more than she could take. She immediately headed for a bar, downed several vodka martinis, staggered into a curry house and passed out in her meal.

She was locked in cells to sleep it off and charged with drunk and disorderly conduct and fined one pound. However her downward spiral continued and she was soon to find herself homeless, living on London’s Soho streets for several years suffering with addiction and anorexia nervosa.

The Rolling Stones Prepare to Leave England

However by April 5th, 1971, British taxes were due and The Rolling Stones owed taxes…..alot of them! Soon those that could afford to leave were heading leaving to become tax-exiles, however The Rolling Stones were the first to do this en-masse. As Mick Jagger said to Roy Carter of the NME shortly before the release of “Exile on Main Street”

So after working for eight years I discovered at the end that nobody had ever paid my taxes and I owed a fortune. So then you have to leave the country. So I said fuck it, and left the country.

At the time the tax rate in the UK for higher earners was astronomical. Remember the lyric from The Beatles’ “Tax Man” of “One for you, nineteen for me”? Well the truth was not far from this, the rate was 83% for earned income and 98% for un-earned income!

The Rolling Stones had also become the focus of much unwanted attention, with several drug busts and near misses with jail. Under the constant glare of the tabloid newspapers and with several members of London’s Metropolitan Police Force making a good income from busting musicians and pocketing the bribes (before sending them to court anyway) being a Rolling Stone was not the most comfortable thing to be.

On top of this The Rolling Stones were embroiled in legal wrangles. In the wild west of the early days of the Rock Music industry most artists found themselves entwined in a maze of legal contracts. Only the successful ones had the means to fight them and even they struggled and this was the situation The Rolling Stones found themselves in.

The largest legal action was against Allen Klein. Allan Klein was the man Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had picked to rescue The Rolling Stones from their Andrew Loog Oldham/Eric Easton management. However things had gone very sour and by now The Rolling Stones believed that Alla Klein owed them somewhere in the region of $17 million….a number well north of $100 million in today’s money. He also controls the masters to The Rolling Stones back catalog.

On top of this a large amount of their money had been frozen by a receiver due to a suit being brought by Eric Easton against his former partner and ex-Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Loog-Oldham for breach of contract. On top of this Andrew Loog-Oldham is in court with Allan Klein.

By the time The Rolling Stones were preparing to leave the UK, a memo from Jo Bergman, their office manager, stated that The Rolling Stones number 3 account is overdrawn and they need over $7000 to pay the most pressing debts and they do not have enough cash to keep the office running.

On top of this all the band’s personal accounts were over-drawn and each of the Stones owed almost a quarter of a million dollars in taxes – allowing for inflation this would be approaching ten times that sum in today’s money. In short The Rolling Stones are broke.

Prince Rupert Ludwig Ferdinand zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg

The man that cooked up the plan to exile The Rolling Stones was Prince Rupert Ludwig Ferdinand zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg or Prince Rupert as we shall now call him. Prince Rupert, a descendant of the Bavarian Royal Family, founded the Merchant Bank, Leopold Joseph with Jonathan Guiness and is it’s managing director.

Prince Rupert had met Mick Jagger and been persuaded to get involved with The Rolling Stones finances. Bill Wyman said that he thought this was for

The pleasant duty of investing surplus funds for a highly successful pop group

but found that

their assets did not cover their debts, mortgage payments or daily expenses

Allan Klein had set up a separate branch of The Rolling Stones publishing in New York under his sole control, which meant he is the gatekeeper to much of The Rolling Stones money. Allan Klein also has them under contract so they cannot take their music anywhere else and he was very reticent to distribute their funds, only ever offering to lend them money, never give them money.

At the time the French tax regime allowed The Rolling Stones to pay no French taxes on what they earn as long as they reside in France for at least a year and spend at least $500 000 a year – nothing too onerous for a Rolling Stone! So Prince Rupert came up with the plan to dump Allan Klein and decamp The Stones to the Cote d’Azur in the South of France while setting up companies in Amsterdam and The Dutch Antillies to protect and shelter their assets.

They knew they were very unlikely to get all their money back from Klein let alone get back control of their back-catalog. However they had to do this to allow them to effectively start again, at least from a financial standpoint. Bill Wyman described this as -

A heavy gamble but the only way, for Klein would certainly not willingly give us our freedom

The Rolling Stones had just come off the back of their most successful ever record in the shape of Sticky Fingers and made a huge amount during their last tour of the USA. Since they could not tour without a record and Atlantic, having just paid them a big advance for their signatures and to set up Rolling Stones Records, were also keen to get something out there. So it was decided that The Stones needed to get back into the studio as soon as possible.

So 1971 would see the band all leave the UK to set up in France and record an album. However we are talking about The Rolling Stones and things are never that easy.

Exiles on The Cote d’Azur

Charlie Watts and his wife Shirley were the first to go, staying in a hotel in Cannes before finding a rented house in La Borie in Thorais, near Arles. On April 1st, 1971, Bill Wyman, his long time lover Astrid Lundstrom, Mick Taylor, his girlfriend Rose Miller and their 3 month old daughter, Chloe board a chartered flight to Nice. Mick Taylor, as the new boy in The Rolling Stones, has not made the money of the others and so does not need to go into exile. Had he been in possession of a crystal ball, he may well have stayed at home.

Of the Glimmer Twins, Mick Jagger was now very much “with” Bianca. Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías, former girlfriend of Michael Caine and French playboy and record producer Eddie Barclay, was pregnant with Jade Jagger and would soon become Mrs. Bianca Jagger.

Keith Richards was “with” Anita Pallenberg, the mother of his 18 month old son Marlon and the former lover of Brian Jones and Mick Jagger. Anita Pallenberg had been around The Rolling Stones since meeting Brian Jones at a gig in Germany. Even among The Rolling Stones, she was the center of attention – glamorous, beautiful and insatiable in both narcotic intake and sex.

Mick Jagger’s previous girlfriend, Marianne Faithful had always got on well with Anita Pallenberg (they are still good friends to this day) but Bianca….Bianca was a threat to her position as number one female in The Rolling Stones clique. So with both Mick and Keef’s long standing rivalry added to this brewing rivalry between their significant others, the internal politics were already rampant.

Added to this was Keith and Anita’s drug habits. Since returning to the UK after the last US tour and fateful events at Altamont, Keith had taken it badly. His heroin usage had spiraled and it was reported that he could barely play on parts of Sticky Fingers and Anita was right there with him. So before they could leave for France they needed to get clean, both on legal grounds and because they did not have contacts in France that could score them heroin (although this would change during the summer….and then some!)

Keef had agreed to get clean first and Anita would go in after him. They decided not to go into rehab together so that one of them could look after Marlon while the other was away. Keef was the one who had earned the money and hence the one that had to leave the country by the April 5th deadline, so he went into Bowden House, a private hospital in North London, first.

Keef, came out clean and Anita went into Bowden House. Anita found detox hard going and made several trips outside Bowden House and whe that failed she called Keith to bring her some Heroin. Keith and Michael Cooper, both drunk and with plenty of cocaine running through his system, writes off his pink Bentley on their way to see Anita. The pair make a hasty getaway, leaving the steaming heap of Bentley impaled on some railings and look for somewhere to hide their stash before the police arrive. They remember they are near Nicky Hopkins house (he had been playing with The Stones as a session musician for years) and decide to bury their stash in his garden only to be discovered by Nicky Hopkins….who invites them in for tea!

As April 5th draws near, Keith appears no closer to leaving and Keith is not a man to be rushed (he did not make a single gig on time on the last tour). Jo Bergman and the others at Rolling Stones HQ are beginning to wonder if he will ever leave. As the team arrive at Keith’s Cheyene Walk house in Chelsea on April 5th to pack his stuff, they are relieved to find he is ready to leave. Dressed in one of Anita’s cardigans and floral flares, he and son Marlon board the plane to Nice with Jo Bergman and Shirley Arnold (another member of The Rolling Stones staff)

When they arrive in the spring sun on the Cote d’Azur, Jo Bergman takes Keef to see his potential new house, Villa Nellcôte, which would play a starring role in the summer’s escapades. She had originally earmarked the house for Mick Jagger and Bianca, but Bianca had not liked it as it was too public. Keith on the other hand loved it, much to Jo Bergman’s relief.

With all the Stones now living in the South of France this only left Mick and Bianca. They are in France but staying in the Plaza Authenee Hotel in Paris where Bianca had studied political science. Since nothing can happen without Mick being there, this means the recording is put on hold until after he has got married, had a honeymoon and found a place in the South of France.

During this time the other Stones looked for a studio to record in. After looking around they did not find anything they liked in France, so it was eventually decided to bring their mobile studio down from London and record in the basement of Nellcote. This would mean that Keef, one of the glimmer twins that were essential to the recording of a new Rolling Stones album, would be close at hand at all times.

It would Mick and Bianca several months before they would finally settle on a place in the South and when they did it was in Biot, Alpes-Maritimes. Biot is an ancient walled town overlooking the Mediterranean and home to many artisans and the Musée Fernand Léger, and significantly, a good distance from Nellcote.

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Background to recording “Let It Bleed“

“Let It Bleed” was released on November 27th 1969, the result of hundreds of hours of recordings. The Rolling Stones had begun the recording of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in May 1968, before their previous album, Beggars Banquet, had been released. The Rolling Stones re-grouped in earnest at London’s Olympic Studios to record “Let It Bleed” in February 1969 and would continue sporadically until November the same year. However this was a turbulent time for The Rolling Stones.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richard narrowly avoided jail terms after they were arrested in a drugs bust at Keith Richard’s home. In a separate raid, Brian Jones was also arrested for drug possession and also narrowly avoided a jail term.

On top of this, founder member of The Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, left the band and was then found dead in his Swimming Pool a few weeks later.

Through all this turmoil ‘Let It Bleed‘ emerged and is now considered one of the classic Rolling Stones albums.

Brian Jones leaves The Rolling Stones

By 1969, founding member Brian Jones was nothing more than a peripheral figure in The Rolling Stones. In fact by now all The Rolling Stones were getting used to life without Brian Jones. Bill Wyman was quoted as saying, ‘Brian Jones contribution to “You can’t always get what you want” was to lie on his stomach most of the night, reading an article on botany.’

The other members of The Rolling Stones were not prepared to carry their former leader any longer. After missing days on end he would finally turn up only for the other members of The Rolling Stones to get producer Jimmy Miller to tell him to, ‘Clear off!’

Jimmy Miller felt for Brian Jones and his situation, ‘One night Brian Jones showed after he hadn’t bothered to come for the previous four. He had a sitar and we were doing a blues song….but I was happy he was there.’ Jimmy Miller felt the band should do more to help him and encourage him to turn up. The rest of The Rolling Stones were less sympathetic, “You’re new on the scene. We’ve been putting up with Brian’s nonsense for years.”

Brian Jones was struggling with addiction to prescription drugs and emotional problems. He had been left by his girlfriend, actress and model Anita Pallenburg, for his band-mate Keith Richard. This seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for his relationship with the rest of The Rolling Stones.

By now he had stopped referring to The Rolling Stones as ‘we’ and now used ‘they’ to describe them. Brian Jones only performed on only two tracks on “Let It Bleed“, the autoharp on “You Got the Silver” and percussion on “Midnight Rambler”. With a tour of the US looming and Brian Jones drug convictions making it hard to get a visa, it was obvious a parting of ways was on the cards.

As 1968 moved towards winter, The Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, a feared man in the US Showbiz world, pushed the other members to deliver the coup de grace. The conspiracy grew during the new year and by the following summer it was decided. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts drove down to Brian Jones‘ Sussex home on the first Sunday in June, 1969. They stopped on the way back to London to tell Bill Wyman the news; Brian Jones was no longer a Rolling Stone.

As they left the feeling of relief was palpable. There were even thoughts that Brian Jones may rejoin The Rolling Stones when he recovered. Little did any of them suspect how little time he had left.

Ry Cooder as Brian Jones Replacement?

During this period The Rolling Stones had been thinking about a replacement and Ry Cooder topped their list. Ry Cooder was initially flattered to be considered, but after being invited to Keith Richards home in Chichester he became a little wary of Keith Richard’s close attention to his playing. A dispute blew up between Ry Cooder and The Rolling Stones over authorship of “Honky Tonk Women” and it’s companion “Country Tonk” (both recorded during the same period) Ry Cooder said of the incident, ‘My experience with The Rolling Stones showed me one thing, if you don’t advance yourself, you’ll find yourself left in the dust.’

The relatively innocuous track “Country Tonk” track was not only subject to Ry Cooder claiming co-authorship, but also of Gram Parsons. The former Byrds man had been hanging out with Keith Richards in London. Gram Parsons claimed he arranged the track, “Country Tonk”, a fact disputed by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. What cannot be disputed is his influence on Keith Richards, having introduced him to his collection of traditional country records.

Mick Taylor becomes Brian Jones Replacement

With Ry Cooder replacing Brian Jones no longer a possibility, Mick Jagger turned to John Mayall of The Bluesbreakers for advice. He recommended Mick Taylor, whom he had drafted in to The Bluesbreakers to replace none other than Eric Clapton when he was just 18 years old.

When initially asked by The Rolling Stones to come along, Mick Taylor thought it was as a session musician, but it soon dawned on him he was there as a possible replacement for Brian Jones. His playing impressed the duo of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and he left the studio to the sound of, ‘See you tomorrow’.

Mick Taylor continued to rehearse with The Rolling Stones played overdubs on on two tracks on “Let It Bleed“; “Country Honk” and “Live With Me” before making his on-stage debut with The Rolling Stones at their famous free concert in London’s Hyde Park on 5 July 1969.

Recording “Let It Bleed“

Mick Jagger was having greater influence away from the music (he was believed to be the driving force behind their split from former manager Andrew Loog-Oldham, their tax exile and later the formation of their own management company with Rupert Löwenstein) whereas Keith Richards was now the driving force in the studio.

Keith Richards had taken creative control in the studio. Keith Richards, who had already shared vocal duties with Mick Jagger on a handful of songs (“Connection”, “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” and “Salt of the Earth”), sang his first solo lead vocal on a Rolling Stones recording with “You Got the Silver.” (although this is rumored to be down to an engineer accidentally erasing Mick Jagger’s version!)

‘He doesn’t just march into the studio and say, “it’s going to be this, that or the other”‘, said Ian Stewart, ‘He just kicks off into something and people just follow him. He is the one that usually decides how each song is going to shape up’.

The routine of nocturnal jams and countless takes, which became the norm was also formed in over the long recording process of ‘Let It Bleed‘. The material that came out of these sessions was dark and murky. From the opening track, the classic Gimme Shelter, a foreboding warning that rape and murder are ‘just a shot away’ to the finale in the shape of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, beginning with the angelic voices of the London Bach Choir, and ends in a raucous, although thoroughly downbeat, climax, “Let It Bleed” is the death knell for the 1960s innocence and naivety.

On Release of “Let It Bleed“

Admittedly this innocence and naivety had died for The Rolling Stones far earlier after falling foul of The Establishment and their jail sentences following the February 1967 raid of Keith Richards home. However as the 1960’s drew to a close ‘peace and love’ was being replaced by something darker, and The Rolling Stones were perfectly placed to reflect it.

‘Let It Bleed‘ emerged as one of The Rolling Stones best albums and is widely considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time.

Upon release “Let It Bleed” made it to number 3 on the Billboard charts and in the UK it hit the number 1 spot on the album chart (knocking The Beatles “Abbey Road” from the top of the chart) “Let It Bleed” went on to go Double Platinum in the USA.

The Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger

• vocals
• backing vocals
• harmonica

Keith Richards

• acoustic guitar
• electric guitar
• slide guitar
• bass
• vocals

Brian Jones

• auto-harp
• percussion (congas)

Mick Taylor

• electric guitar
• slide guitar

Charlie Watts

• drums

Bill Wyman

• bass
• auto-harp
• vibes

Production Team

• Jimmy Miller – Producer
• Glyn Johns – Engineer
• Gus Skinas – Engineer
• Bruce Botnick – Assistant Engineer
• Jesper Hansen – Assistant Engineer

Other Musicians

• Ian Stewart – piano
• Nicky Hopkins – piano, organ
• Jimmy Miller – percussion, drums, tambourine
• Merry Clayton – vocals, backing vocals on “Gimme Shelter”
• Ry Cooder – mandolin on “Love in Vain”
• Nanette Workman – backing vocals on “Country Honk” (not actress Nanette Newman as credited on the LP)
• Byron Berline – fiddle on “Country Honk”
• Bobby Keys – tenor saxophone on “Live with Me”
• Leon Russell – piano and horn arrangement on “Live with Me”
• Al Kooper – piano, French horn, and organ on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
• Jack Nitzche – choral arrangements on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
• Rocky Dijon – percussion on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Track Listing

All songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, unless otherwise specified.

Side One

1. Gimmie Shelter (although more commonly titled “Gimme Shelter” on later compilation albums) – 4:31
2. Love in Vain (Robert Johnson) – 4:19
3. Country Honk – 3:07
4. Live with Me – 3:33
5. Let It Bleed – 5:28

Side Two

1. Midnight Rambler – 6:53
2. You Got the Silver – 2:50
3. Monkey Man – 4:11
4. You Can’t Always Get What You Want – 7:29

Trivia

The track listing on the sleeve did not follow the actual order of the songs on the record. The sleeve designer, Robert Brownjohn, admitted later he did this solely for aesthetic reasons. The paper label at the center of the vinyl gave the correct order for the tracks, however when “Let It Bleed” was first issued on CD in 1986, the CD track listing followed that of the original LP sleeve! The folk at ABKCO finally corrected this on the 2002 re-issue.

The London Bach Choir plays on the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, but the group asked to have its name removed from the credits on “Let It Bleed”

In The Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, the line “I sang my song to Mr Jimmy” is a reference to their producer Jimmy Miller, not Jimi Hendrix as is often believed. The rest of the line says “and he said one word to me and that was dead”. At this time The Rolling Stones and Jimmy Miller used “dead” to refer to something they really liked, so when Mick Jagger sang the original song idea to Jimmy Miller, his response was “dead”!

Release Information

“Let It Bleed” was released on November 27th 1969 on London Records in the USA and Decca Records in the UK. The rights are now owned by ABKCO and distributed by Universal Music Group

Brian Jones Death

Brian Jones had died in mysterious circumstances a week earlier, having been found dead in his Cotchford Farm swimming pool having left the The Rolling Stones a few weeks earlier. Between Brian’s death and his funeral, The Rolling Stones had played a huge free gig in London’s Hyde Park. At the beginning of this gig, Mick Jagger has read an extract from “Adonais”, Shelly’s eulogy to his friend Keats. Hundreds of white butterfly’s were released and The Stones opened their set with Johnny Winter’s, “I’m Yours And I’m Hers”, one of Brian’s favorites.

Brian Jones Funeral

The 1960s had seen many changes in attitudes (including the response to The Rolling Stones drug busts) but back in Cheltenham in 1969, a nice middle-class town, things were still very much as they had been. However on a hot and humid July day, they were about to be invaded by the outside world.

Before the funeral, fans had already sent enough flowers to fill the cemetery, including a guitar shaped arrangement from Brian’s family and a huge arrangement spelling out “Gates of Heaven” from The Rolling Stones.

On the day of the funeral the town was besieged with tearful fans, curious onlookers and swarms of press photographers. The 14-car funeral procession crawled to the cemetery at a pace even more stately than usual as its progress was blocked by the surging crowds.

Below is the TV coverage from Dutch TV showing the scenes at the funeral. It’s in Dutch, but the interview with Keith Richard is in English.

The Service

The clash of old and new continued at the funeral service. Speaking of Brian Jones in the eulogy, Canon Hugh Evan Hopkins said -

He had little patience with authority, convention and tradition. In this he was typical of many of his generation who have come to see in The Rolling Stones an expression of their whole attitude to life. Much that this ancient church has stood for in 900 years seems totally irrelevant to them.”

For the canon, Brian Jones symbolized all the sins and excesses of his generation.

If any pretense at solemnity had been hoped for at the burial, it soon evaporated. As the casket was lowered into the ground photographers fought to get shots as teenagers jostled and pushed their way forward to toss their flowers onto Brian Jones‘ remains.

Worries about the grave being looted meant it was dug twice as deep as normal, 12 feet, and with all the shoving there was a real danger of people falling into the deep grave.

The Jones Family

The Jones family were a conservative, even snobbish, family and in many ways shared the views of Canon Hugh Evan Hopkins. Brian Jones and his father Lewis Jones had a fractious relationship. His father, a respectable aircraft designer, did not understand his son and the way he turned his back on everything he believed was right and felt his music was “evil”. Brian’s relationship with his mother was also cold, especially after his younger sister Pamela died from Leukemia.

The words chosen for Brian Jones‘ headstone seemed to sum up this relationship, “Affectionate Remembrances of Brian Jones” (incidentally the date on the headstone shows he died on July 3rd, when the death certificate cites he died before midnight on the 2nd)

Lewis Jones had wanted a private, low-key funeral, but The Rolling Stones tour manager Tom Keylock stepped in and arranged the details of the funeral. “Brian lived like a star and he died like a star” said Tom Keylock, “I got it organized how I thought fitting for Brian, not Lewis Jones.”

Brian Jones was buried wearing a powder blue jacket, white shirt and black tie. His hair had been lightened and cut in his trademark bob, he looked as if he were asleep. He was laid to rest in a grand silver and bronze casket. It is widely believed that the casket was commissioned by his close friend Bob Dylan, however Tom Keylock has claimed that he was responsible for commissioning the casket.

Attendees at the Funeral

Of The Rolling Stones, only Charlie Watts (reportedly the one most affected by the death of Brian) and Bill Wyman attended the funeral. Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful were on their way to Australia to film Ned Kelly and had been threatened with legal action if they were late. Keith Richard and Anita Pallenberg did not attend either, but considering their history with Brian, this was not surprising.

One surprising absentee was Brian’s girlfriend at the time of his death, Anna Wohlin. She had been living with Brain at Cotchford farm and had been present when he died. She had been in shock and she claims The Rolling Stones management had sent her back to Sweden because, “I was just a nuisance, I was just a problem.”

Anna Wohlin’s absence was probably for the best as Frank Thorogood, the builder who was also at Cotchford Farm the night Brian died, did attend. He died in 1993, but has since been accused by Anna Wohlin of killing Brian Jones.

According to the funeral director, The Rolling Stones management also asked for photographs to be taken of Brian’s body in the casket but at this point the Jones family put their foot down and security guards were placed at the funeral directors to make sure that no photographers got in.

Remembrances

Brian Jones had lead a brief but extraordinary life. He was also easy to hold up as a morality tale for the older generation. He had fathered 5 children, all outside wedlock (still something of a stigma then) and refused to acknowledge any of them. He was also vain and insecure, but for all his faults his charisma, musicianship and drive had launched one of the most influential bands of all-time.

As 1968 drew to a close, Brian Jones did what all rock-stars now do and bought himself a country retreat, Cotchford Farm. Cotchford Farm is a country manor house in the East Sussex countryside, formerly owned by A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie The Pooh books, and included a large outdoor swimming pool.

Around midnight on July 2nd, Brian Jones was found at the bottom of his swimming pool in mysterious circumstances. All attempts to revive him failed. He was 27.

Brian Jones Last Performance with The Rolling Stones

Back in December 1968, Brian Jones made his last ever appearance with The Rolling Stones in their “Rock and Roll Circus“. Although he appeared enthusiastic at times, throughout The Rolling Stones performance he appeared distant. In fact he was out of it and playing so badly that his guitar was turned down so low that you could not hear it on most tracks.

On the DVD commentary on “Rock and Roll Circus“, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who (who also played on “Rock and Roll Circus” along with Jethro Tull and Taj Mahal) said they thought it would be Brian Jones‘ last live musical performance and so it was.

Brian Jones leaves the Rolling Stones

Brian Jones, the blues purist, had been unhappy with the direction The Rolling Stones were taking. He had barely played a note on “Let It Bleed” and according to Anna Wohlin, “So many times the car would come down [to take him to the studios] and Brian would say, ‘Anna, you’ll have to go out and tell them I’m not going to go, I don’t want to.’”

This came to a head on June 8th, 1969, when Brian Jones and The Rolling Stones parted ways

It wasn’t a surprise to Brian Jones. He had in fact considered starting his own band and during 1969 was known to have contacted Alexis Korner, blues-man and one of his oldest friends, Rolling Stones collaborators Jimmy Miller and Ian Stewart and Mitch Mitchell who played with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. There are reports that Brian wrote and recorded a single during this time, although if it exists, it has never surfaced.

Like many things around this time, Brian Jones physical and mental state are uncertain. The last known photos of him, taken by schoolgirl Helen Spittal on 23 June 1969, show him looking bloated and tired.

Other reports say that his feeling of relief after his sacking was huge. Indeed his friend, Alexis Korner, said he seemed, “happier than he had ever been” after he visited him and his girlfriend Anna Wohlin in late June.

Anna Wohlin described them as being young and in love. “I lived with Brian and it was very nice and easy. He was very happy about his country life. He said it was the first time in his whole life that he felt he had a home.” She explained that Brian had told her of his plans to bring his two sons by previous relationships, to visit and wanted to marry her and settle down, “He was prepared to have a family. He wanted to have a big family and lots of dogs. He was even talking about having horses.”

Anna Wohlin maintained that after his arrests Brian had calmed down and was clean. “He had stopped with the drugs,” she says. “He was so scared about drugs. When he was busted and all that, he hated it. He hated the police. People have the wrong impression.” This did lead to a nasty incident when Brian hit Anna when he discovered she was taking prescription pills.

According to The Rolling Stones tour manager Tom Keylock, this was not the first time something like this had happened. In an interview he said Brian Jones, “had this thing about whacking women” (Tom Keylock had arranged for Brain to be left in Morocco the night he assaulted Anita Pallenberg and she left him for Keith Richard)

Tom Keylock tells a different story when queried on Brian’s life in the country, “He had a lot of people around him, hangers on, but to me he was a very lonely boy.”

Tom Keylock was obviously not impressed with Anna Wohlin’s claims either, “She was on the scene five or six weeks and – ‘I’m in love with Brian‘ – Bullshit! Brian was running out of birds, he’d always want one around him. She was probably on the gravy train, she wanted to groove around with a star”

Renovating Cotchford Farm

Prior to Brian Jones leaving The Rolling Stones their tour manager and general “fixer”, Tom Keylock, had arranged for his old friend Frank Thorogood to oversee the renovations on Brian’s home.

Even though Brian Jones was no longer a member of The Rolling Stones he was still on their payroll and Tom Keylock was still under instruction to keep his eye on Brian.

Frank Thorogood

Frank Thorogood had previously been employed by The Rolling Stones before, to do some work on Keith Richard’s house so he was trusted. They had employed a team of three builders and Frank Thorogood was staying at Cotchford Farm in the room over the garage to oversee the renovations and keep an eye on Brian.

Initially Frank Thorogood and Brian Jones got on well, but as the job went on their relationship became strained. Brian Jones was not the easiest client to deal with, often changing his mind or being told by his accountant to change his mind when they found out how much it was going to cost. From day to day he did not know what he was supposed to be doing, making it very hard for him to manage a team to build something that was a moving target.

The Builders

The team of builders were also openly hostile to Brian Jones. Not only was he difficult to work for, but this was 1960s Britain and to many The Rolling Stones were still public enemy number one. The fact that he was also obviously far wealthier than them and this effete fop had a string of incredibly attractive women appearing at the house (usually when Anna went away) also stoked their jealousy, although they were happy to drink his booze!

As writer Terry Rawlings put it, “There was a network of drivers, builders, laborers. The same guys who were working on Redlands. All working class, all in their thirties, all taking as many liberties as they could, borrowing his Rolls Royce. Seeing him swan around with dolly birds in this beautiful house, there’s bound to be resentment.”

Brian Jones Fires Frank Thorogood

As things progressed Frank Thorogood and Brian Jones had several arguments about both the cost and the workmanship, both accusing the other of messing things up. This culminated in a huge argument when on July 1^st when a supporting beam in the kitchen came crashing down, almost hitting Anna Wohlin.

The next morning Jones told Thorogood in no uncertain terms that he was withholding all further payments until the beam was fixed and he was also going to review all of Thorogood’s bills, including his grocery bills (which Jones was also paying as he was staying at the farm) Initially Thorogood did not take Jones seriously, feeling that he was actually employed by Tom Keylock to keep an eye on him, not to be his employee. When Jones threatened to fire him and make sure that he never worked again, the 44-year-old Thorogood became very sullen. He did not take kindly to being dressed down by some 27-year-old upstart.

As has been stated many times before, Brian Jones was a complex man. He was capable of great moments of “Ass-holery” as Bill Wyman described it, but he could also be very sensitive. As he hid himself away upstairs he could hear the builders working downstairs.

The Night of Brian Jones‘ Death

From here on, things are not clear. At some point Tom Keylock became aware of the situation, possibly through a call from Brian. As Tom Keylock said, “Brian was a very difficult man. One minute he would be loving, gentle, a really nice boy and a brilliant musician, but he had these turns. He couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag, so if he upset some bloke, he had to call me to get him out of trouble.”

Janet Ann Lawson

According to Janet Ann Lawson, Keylock asked her to go down to Cotchford Farm to ‘keep an eye on Brian‘. Keylock was not only worried about the tensions between Thorogood and Jones, but also for Brian’s health and she was a state registered nurse. It would appear that Tom Keylock was doing what he could to keep Brian Jones out of trouble

Many people have reported that Janet Lawson was Frank Thorogood’s mistress (he was married) but she was in fact Keylock’s girlfriend (a fact that she confirmed herself) although she did know Frank Thorogood through Tom Keylock.

When Janet Lawson arrived she reported, “There was something in the air. Frank was acting strangely, throwing his weight around a bit.” Brian asked Frank Thorogood to go into town and get some more liquor and wine, which lead to some conjecture that other guests were expected.

However both Anna Wohlin and Janet Lawson reported that only Frank, Janet, Anna and Brian and were there, although Anna Wohlin claims that Thorogood and Lawson were in the rooms over the garage and Janet Lawson claimed they were all together for a dinner of steak and kidney pie.

This is not the only area of uncertainty as from here on the details of what happened that evening become foggy as the various reports of the evening differ, with the three guests giving as many conflicting accounts of what happened.

What is certain that at some point later in the evening everybody swam in the pool. Janet Ann Lawson described Brian as “a good swimmer and acrobatic in the water.” a view that was shared in all reports, however she did decline to get in the pool with them. This has been attributed to inability to swim by some reports, while others have said she thought they were too drunk to be swimming.

Brian Jones was also reported to be asthmatic, keeping inhalers in various places, and the following day was again hot (by British standards, the day had been in the high 80s Fahrenheit, 30+ Celsius) causing his asthma to play up.

Janet Ann Lawson’s Version of Events

According to Janet Ann Lawson, after the four had eaten dinner together, they had gone to the pool for drinks. Later that night, Wohlin, Thorogood and Jones had gone for a swim. Anna had gone back to the house to answer the phone and Brian Jones then asked Lawson to go and find his inhaler and bring it down to the pool. Frank Thorogood and Brian were then left alone in the pool.

What happened next in Janet Lawson’s words was,

I went to look for it (the inhaler) by the pool, in the music room, the reception room and then the kitchen. Frank came in in a lather. His hands were shaking. He was in a terrible state. I thought the worst almost straight away and went to the pool to check.

When I saw Brian on the bottom of the pool and was calling for help, Frank initially did nothing. I shouted for Frank again as I ran towards the house, and he burst out before I reached it, ran to the pool and instantly dived in. But I had not said where Brian was. I thought, “How did he know Brian was at the bottom of the pool?”

I ran back to the house and tried to call 999 but Anna was on the phone and would not get off it.

Anna Wohlin’s Version of Events

According to Anna Wohlin, during the day Brian Jones hid away from the builders, feeling guilty about the way he had talked to Thorogood and Jones couldn’t stand the thought that Thorogood might be upset with him. After discussing the situation repeatedly with Anna Wohlin, he decided to ask Frank Thorogood over for a drink and a swim to make things right with him. At 10 p.m Jones went to fetch Frank Thorogood.

They returned 15 minutes later with Janet Lawson (described by Wohlin as Thorogood’s companion for the evening) Brian Jones served drinks in the dining room and Frank Thorogood, who was still sulking, asked for vodka while Jones drank brandy. Jones tried to patch things up with Thorogood but with limited success.

After a while Jones suggested that they take a moonlight swim; Thorogood and Wohlin took him up on the offer while Lawson declined. Wohlin says that Jones always placed his inhaler by the side of the pool where he could get to it in case of an asthma attack and tonight was no different. Jones then went straight to the diving board and dove in.

Wohlin noticed that Frank Thorogood’s mood hadn’t improved, but Jones was feeling mischievous, swimming underwater, grabbing Thorogood’s ankles, and pulling him under. Frank Thorogood was not amused before and this only agitated him, but Jones continued to tease him, calling him “old man”. As Jones swam by, Thorogood lunged and dunked Jones’ head under the water, Jones came up coughing and laughing. At that point Janet Lawson called to Anna Wohlin from the house; she was wanted on the phone and the women went inside, leaving the men alone in the pool.

Some time later while Wohlin was on the phone with a friend, she heard Lawson screaming from outside, “Anna! Anna! Something’s happened to Brian!’”

Wohlin rushed downstairs and found Frank Thorogood dripping wet in the kitchen, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands and unable to make eye contact with her. She ran outside, passing Lawson, and looked into the still pool, where Jones was “lying spread-eagled on the bottom.”

She dove in and tried to pull him to the surface, but he kept slipping out of her hands. She yelled to Frank Thorogood for help and he came, but took a while getting there, she said. When he arrived he sat on the edge and slipped into the water, then helped Wohlin get Jones out of the pool. As they turned Jones onto his chest, Wohlin noticed that Thorogood’s manner was “cold as ice.”

Lawson ran over to help and they turned Jones onto his back while Lawson massaged his heart as Wohlin administered CPR (“kiss of life” to use her term) They worked on him without stop. Wohlin said she thought he weakly clasped her hand and he was alive.

Around fifteen minutes later the ambulance arrived, but by then Brian Jones had passed. He was 27 years old.

So who killed Brian Jones?

Anna Wohlin said that Frank Thorogood showed little sympathy when Brian Jones was discovered in the pool and he did nothing to help them in their attempts to revive him. “I don’t think Frank meant to kill him, because I don’t think he was a killer,” she says. “I think it was some sort of horseplay. I think it went too far.”

Likewise when Janet Ann Lawson was asked if she thought Thorogood killed Brian Jones she replied

Yes. I went into the house to look for Brian’s inhaler. Frank jumped back in the pool, did something to Brian and by the time I came back, Brian was lying peacefully on the bottom of the pool with not a ripple in the water.

I think because of the state that Frank was in, something had to have happened. I mean, why would Frank have been standing in the kitchen absolutely terrified if something hadn’t happened?

Jan also believed that Thorogood had not intended to kill Jones, it was an unfortunate accident, probably the result of horseplay that had got out of hand.

In an interview with Classic Rock Magazine, Tom Keylock said that in 1993, he went to visit Frank Thorogood who was terminally ill in hospital. While there Frank Thorogood told him that he had “done” Brian Jones. However he did not get anymore details as Frank was very tired and obviously in pain, so he left him to come back the following day. Unfortunately Frank Thorogood died overnight and Tom Keylock was never able to get the details.

(This was reported in an interview in Classic Rock Magazine dated 2005, however he has also denied saying this in Bill Wyman’s book of 2002, so I will leave it up to you to decide.)

Claims that Brian Jones was Killed by the Builders

In researching his book, Blown Away author A.E. Hotchner tracked down two men who claimed they witnessed the murder, Nicholas Fitzgerald and his friendhttp://thehistoryofrockmusic.com Nicholas Fitzgerald was a good friend of Brian Jones in 1969 and he and a friend had got Cotchford Farm at about 11pm (after pub closing time) on the night of July 2. Seeing that the pool lights were on, they went around to the back of the house instead of going to the front door.

Coming through the bushes, Fitzgerald reportedly saw three men dressed like workmen by the pool and a man and a woman standing on the other side of the pool. The man on the other side of the pool was yelling instructions while one of the three workmen was down on one knee, pushing someone in the pool under the water. One of the three workmen leapt in and “landed on the back of the struggling swimmer.” Before Fitzgerald and his friend could do anything, a “burly man” with a cockney accent threatened them and scared them off.

One of the laborers who worked for Frank Thorogood at Jones’ home at the time spoke to Hotchner. He told his version on condition of anonymity and simply referred to as “Marty” in the book. Marty claimed that at least two of the laborers resented Jones for his wealth, his pretty women, and his air of superiority around them. He also claimed to have been at Cotchford Farm along with a few other members of the work crew who had also brought their wives and girlfriends on July 2^nd.

As the evening progressed the men started horsing around in the pool, harassing Jones and preventing him from getting out of the pool. They then leapt in and held him under while the women pleaded with the men to leave him alone. Since the effect Jones had on women was one of thee things thay disliked about him, it enraged them further.

Things then got out of hand, and Jones drowned. “Those guys got carried away,” Marty said, “and I wouldn’t say what happened was an accident.”

The interview with Marty is below. WARNING there is some strong language in the interview.

This version of events contradicts all the information given by the people that were known to be there. Although neither Janet Lawson or Anna Wohlin claimed to have seen what happened at the moment Brian Jones died both were there shortly before he died. Additionally both said the only people there were Jones, Wohlin, Lawson and Thorogood. In the time the pair were in the house there was certainly not enough time for a group of laborers to arrive and start harassing Brian in the pool.

Since none of the people known to be at the house say there was anyone else there, including Anna Wohlin and Janet Lawson who both made accusations against Frank Thorogood, you have to question the validity of the witnesses. This is especially true when none have identified themselves or come forward until several years later when rumors of ill-deeds became rife. After all, without the bizarre stories it wouldn’t be rock and roll would it!

Retired Detective Inspector Stuart Booth, the man charged with preparing Sussex Police’s response to the media ‘every time this case came up’ during the Eighties and Nineties, revealed that a new file was opened on Brian Jones by Sussex CID in 1983. This was prepared as a response to a book that claimed Brian was murdered by a gang of men who held him upside down in the pool. That claim was dismissed by the police but their file contained this statement: ‘It is possible that Thorogood was larking about with Jones in the water and Jones subsequently drowned.’

Immediately After Brian Jones’s Death

Frank Thorogood called Tom Keylock who set off immediately from London. With todays cars and roads in the middle of the night it would still be approximately a 1 hour 15 minute drive to Cotchford Farm, so we can assume it took Tom Keylock around two hours to get there (for those that would like to check distances, here is the location of Cotchford Farm)

The ambulance had arrived at around midnight and The Rolling Stones were made aware of Brian Jones death around 2am as they followed their usual nocturnal patterns recording “Let It Bleed” in Olympic Studios late into the night. Since Tom Keylock was the first of The Rolling Stones people to arrive he would have been the one who would have called to tell them the news, which also fits in with this timeline.

According to Tom Keylock by the time he got to Cotchford farm, the ambulance had taken Keith’s body away and the police had spoken to everyone at the house, so there was no time to cover anything up.

Anna Wohlin also reported that as soon as Tom Keylock arrived he took charge, so this would imply that they had not been taken to be interviewed by the time he arrived. This also fits with the Police and both Wohlin and Lawson’s version of events, as the times on the interviews are between 4 and 5 am.

This would mean that contrary to Tom Keylock’s assertion, there was time at Cotchford Farm to talk to Lawson and Wohlin before they were interviewed at East Grinstead Police Station.

PC Albert Evans

PC Albert Evans was the first officer on the scene, arriving at 12.10am on July 3rd as the ambulance crew tried to revive Brian Jones. After Brian’s body was taken away Evans searched the house and took possession of a number of bottles of spirits and various pills. He also thought there had been additional people at the house, not just the three witnesses interviewed.

Now in his late 60s, Evans was asked what did he think had happened?

‘Some sort of altercation – drug-induced, alcohol-induced. It was Frank Thorogood who was mentioned – he was the one who had been in the pool with Brian Jones. There was nothing at the time to connect Thorogood with any more. Just feelings.’

‘Indeed, I said exactly this to DCI Marshall (the chief investigating officer) at the time and he reasonably asked me why I thought so. Along with everyone else, I had no evidence to support my feelings other than the ” policeman’s instinct”, but nevertheless these suspicions have remained with me down the years.’

“I’m sure that Bob Marshall [the chief investigating officer] had those feelings very strongly. I shared these views with him. I think he said exactly the same to me.”

PC Mike Harvey

Drugs squad officer PC Mike Harvey was also on the scene in the early hours of July 3. He found five “Black Bombers” (capsules of Durophet) in Frank Thorogood’s coat.

Thorogood told Harvey: ‘I look after them for Brian so that he won’t take too many at a time.’

In other words, he was in unlawful possession of them. Court proceedings would normally have resulted, but Thorogood was only cautioned.

“A caution was quite unusual in those days.” said Harvey in 2008, “We were trying to stamp down hard on drugs so we couldn’t say, ‘Just forget it,’ but given the circumstances, it didn’t justify court proceedings. That was a decision made by a senior officer.”

That officer, according to Harvey, was DCI Bob Marshall, who his part, said he had no knowledge of the drugs find and was not responsible for the decision to caution rather than prosecute Frank Thorogood.

Police Interview Thorogood, Lawson and Wohlin

The Police took Thorogood, Lawson and Wohlin to East Grinstead Police Station to take statements. It was here, outside the police station, writes Wohlin, that Frank Thorogood “sidled up to her” and said, in a very threatening manner, “Don’t forget to tell them it was Brian who wanted me to come down to you, not me. The only thing you need to tell them is that Brian had been drinking and that his drowning was an accident. You don’t have to tell them anything else. I left Brian to go to the kitchen and light a cigarette and I don’t know any more than you. There’s no need for you to tell the police that you saw me in the kitchen. Just tell them we pulled Brian out of the pool together.”

Anna further claims that Frank Thorogood threatened her again, five days later at the coroner’s inquest urging her strongly not to implicate him.

According to Janet Lawson, this was not the only subversion going on, hours after Jones’s death at East Grinstead police station Jan gave a statement to Detective Sergeant Peter Hunter, who is now retired.

“The police were trying to put words in my mouth,” said Jan. “They kept saying, ‘Did this happen or did it happen like this?’ I was very tired, it was about four or five in the morning. I wanted to know if I would be able to give another statement later on because I was tired, confused and nervous. They said ‘Yes’, so when the police asked me to give this statement, and they were suggesting all these things to me, I eventually said, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ to bring it to a close. I thought I would have another chance to give a statement where I could be clearer.”

This never happened and her statement, she says, was, “A pack of lies, the policeman suggested most of what I said. It was a load of rubbish.”

In her original statement, Janet did not mention the tension between Jones and Thorogood, the fact that she feared the worst as soon as she saw Thorogood coming in from the pool nor did she reveal how Frank Thorogood initially ignored her cries for help or that he dived into the pool without her telling him that was where Jones was.

When asked about this in 2008, DS Hunter replied, “If Janet Lawson is saying I physically wrote her statement that is correct, but if she is saying I influenced the content of her statement that is not correct.”

Janet Lawson was not the only one where claims of inaccuracies in police statement were reported. An anonymous source (a policeman at the time) claims Anna Wohlin had been given sedatives by the doctor and had to be actually woken up during her interview.

For all those involved in the events at Cotchford Farm, it is amazing to consider that there is no evidence that any follow up statements were taken from the witnesses when they had sobered up and had a chance to get some sleep and recover from the shock (the statements were all taken in the small hours of July 4^th)

The anonymous source claims that Bob Marshall was determining what evidence was being written down. He went on to say that a DCI would not “push the buttons” without orders from above.

“Chief Constables were and still are political animals, If the Chief Constable knew drugs had been found in the house you’d expect him to say, ‘I want the man charged.’ Yet Frank Thorogood was only cautioned. You wouldn’t do that unless you knew the Chief Constable was backing you. It was decided this information about the drugs find would not be given to the coroner. It’s outrageous.”

With the Police suffering from some egg-on-face following the arrests and trial of Mick Jagger and Keith Richard at Redlands on drug charges, they may simply have been trying to take a softly-softly approach. It also may have been that the Police saw the line of least resistance was to find a known drug user to have accidentally drowned in a drug fuelled stupor.

When asked about this, Marshall said everything in Wohlin’s statement was correct. He also denied manipulating the case or having orders to find a particular outcome.

“It was clear to me within two or three hours of arriving at the scene that this was a tragic accident, a simple drowning.”

The Day After Brian Jones Death

When Harvey met Sussex Chief Constable T. C. Williams the following morning for a prearranged interview at 9am, he reported that Chief Constable Williams was already aware of the details of the case (The Chief Constable is the top ranking officer for a given region)

Harvey said, “He knew Brian Jones was dead and we’d found some drugs in there. He didn’t express an opinion but he would no doubt have discussed it. He may have had some influence on it, I don’t know.”

Brian Jones’s Possessions burned by Tom Keylock

Around the same time Tom Keylock was burning many of Brian’s clothes and possessions. He says this was what he was asked to do by Lewis Jones (Brian Jones’s father), and admitted he thought this was strange. He stopped when he was asked to pack all Brian’s things up and send them to Lewis Jones. This was done in a a single, huge travel case. Lewis Jones then came down with a truck to take away larger items such as Brian’s mellotron.

Some have claimed that many items went missing from the house, taken by the other builders, including recordings made by Brian Jones. Tom Keylock claims this is also untrue, “Nothing came out of that place without my knowledge.”

Since then, one item has surfaced; a watch given to Brian by Alexis Korner with a personal inscription, which was sold at Christie’s in New York.

Coroner’s Report into the Cause of Brian Jones‘ Death

Immediately after Brian Jones’s death, it was reported that his death had been caused by an asthma attack, leading to his drowning. However investigators ruled this out because such an attack would have blocked his windpipe, thereby preventing Brian from drowning.

The autopsy revealed that Brian Jones had alcohol in his blood, roughly the equivalent of 3-4 pints of beer. Brian Jones’s urine also revealed an “amphetamine-like” substance, although not amphetamine, at nearly nine times the normal level.

As much as legend would want us to believe otherwise, no hard drugs were found in Brian Jones‘ system, although the coroner noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by years of drug and alcohol abuse. There was however a “purple spot” on Brian Jones’s liver which was not explained.

But the post-mortem examination found that Brian Jones had sustained no trauma to any part of his body and body bore no internal injuries. In other words there was no evidence of violence. What his body did show was evidence that he had died through drowning.

The coroners report concluded death by misadventure, but what had caused the drowning we will never know for certain. One thing is for sure, there are some serious questions about the process followed.

Was the Investigation into Brian Jones Death Flawed?

There does appear to be plenty of evidence that the investigation by the police and coroner was not as exhaustive as it should have been. The first piece of evidence is, ironically, a response to an author denying that the investigation was flawed by DCI Marshall. Marshall retired in 1974 but he still keeps a detailed file on the case.

In 1991, Marshall wrote a letter to an author researching a book about Brian Jones stating,

“On the evening in question he [Jones] was at the farmhouse with some six or so associates, all of whom were entertaining themselves in their own way and with little concern for each other.

Most, if not all, had been indulging in alcohol and perhaps drugs of some description. This made it difficult to get a precise account of the events of the evening.

After carrying out what was a very thorough investigation, I was satisfied that this unfortunate death was accidental and at no time did I discover anything to warrant consideration of taking criminal proceedings against any person.”

So Marshall believed there were “six or so associates” yet made no effort to track them down and take statements, yet considers it a thorough investigation. In addition he states that due to the inebriated state of the witnesses making it “difficult to get a precise account of the evening” they made no attempt to take further statements when they had sobered up.

The next issue concerns PC Harvey’s statement, which was never presented to the coroner, a fact that surprised retired Detective Inspector Stuart Booth, who during the Eighties and Nineties prepared Sussex Police’s response to the media ‘every time this case came up’.

“I would expect it to have gone before the coroner and people to have asked Frank Thorogood what drugs he gave to Brian Jones, how many, when, times and dates, where he got the drugs from and did he give any other unlawful drugs to Brian Jones that night, bearing in mind the toxicology report showed there was an unidentified purple spot found on the liver”

Did a Taxi Leave Cotchford Farm before the Police Arrived?

Even though the reports of Brian being murdered by a gang do not seem to be too likely, the possibility that there were other people at the house at the time Brian Jones died do seem to have have merit.

There were other reports of a taxi that left Cotchford Farm before the ambulance arrived and the Police that arrived on the scene believed that more people had been there and in 2008 a journalist uncovered some evidence from another case that reinforces these claims.

On July 26, 1969, Joan Fitzsimons, then 29, was the victim of a vicious assault near Chichester which left her in a coma with a fractured skull and blinded for life. Her boyfriend, Jordanian Michael Ziyadeh, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and spent four years in Broadmoor Prison before being deported. Despite his guilty plea, Ziyadeh always claimed he did not carry out the attack. The police case against him concluded: “The motive for this is a mystery.”

Where this becomes more relevant to Brian Jones‘ death is that Joan Fitzsimons was the on-off mistress of Frank Thorogood. She was also friends with Janet Lawson and was the person that introduced Lawson to Tom Keylock. Fitzsimons had also occasionally stayed with Thorogood at Cotchford during the renovations. Lastly, she had driven Jones and his fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richard as she worked for her family’s taxi firm in Chichester (approximately 40 miles from Cotchford Farm)

So, had Joan Fitzsimons been invited along to Cotchford Farm, she would almost certainly have driven herself there, quite possibly in one of her family’s cabs (Cotchford Farm is in a remote location, a good distance from trains etc) So could it be that the taxi reportedly seen leaving Cotchford Farm on the night of Brian Jones‘ death was not one that had been called to take people from the farm, but one that belonged to someone already there?

Joan Fitzsimons died in 2002 so the journalist that discovered this then used the freedom of information act to get further information released (which was something unavailable to earlier biographers). This information included a letter from the Sussex Chief Constable’s office from 1969

‘She is to be asked as to her reason for allegedly being afraid of Mr Francis Thorogood as referred to in a statement of her brother Mr John Russell and what knowledge she has relating to the death of Brian Jones which causes her to be frightened.

The prime suspect: Frank Thorogood was sacked by the star on the day of his death and was in a ‘terrible state’ just before Jones’s body was found

‘In light of the statement of Mr John Russell enquiries are to be made and statements taken to eliminate Mr Francis Thorogood as being in the Chichester area between 8.30pm and 9.55pm on the 26th July, 1969, and with having anything to do with the assault on Mrs Fitzsimons.’

The statement from John Russell is still not available under the Freedom of Information Act as Mr Russell is alive and has elected not to release it into the public domain. However a statement from Frank Thorogood was taken in response to this to eliminate him from the police inquiry.

The statement eliminated Frank Thorogood as a suspect by Sussex Police after his wife and two friends confirmed he had been in London on July 26. However the other information included in the response was enlightening.

The statement from Thorogood said that Fitzsimons knew Suki Poitier, Jones’s ex-girlfriend, and stayed at Cotchford Farm for three days after Jones’s death because Poitier was upset. By this time Anna Wohlin had gone back to Sweden, either coerced by The Rolling Stones Management or on her own accord depending on which version of events you believe.

In another police statement Joan Fitzsimons’ mother, Irene Russell, told police that Suki Poitier had been at Cotchford Farm the night Brian Jones died but left about 30 minutes before the incident. Irene Russell said -

Joan told me that Frank (Thorogood) was causing trouble by trying to get her back. Frank was very persistent. Frank said to me that Joan knows a lot about The Rolling Stones that shouldn’t get out. Joan, as it appeared to me, was frightened of Frank.”

So according to Irene Russell there is a link to Frank Thorogood and she identified another potential witness to Brian Jones death not traced by Sussex police.

At the time, several newspapers reported the attack on Joan Fitzsimons. One said that detectives wanted to find out from her whom she drove on the night Brian Jones died and if she was present at Cotchford Farm at any time during that evening.

The newspaper report went on to say, “The police information is a result of “several interviews” with men, all acquaintances of Mrs Fitzsimons, who talked with her after the death of Jones.”

The same day the story appeared, Sussex Police released a statement, “There is no truth in those reports whatsoever.” As has been shown from the documents now available that they were aware of the possible connection and had made inquiries.

I was nursing in Hampshire when Joan was attacked, but I saw the headlines in a newspaper. When I saw her injuries, I cried.” Janet Lawson said. “I knew it was no coincidence. I felt there was some link with Frank. I went into hiding at my brother’s house on an RAF base. Behind those walls and security fences, that was the only place I had where they couldn’t get to me.”

Whatever actually happened on that fateful night may never be known. What can be seen is that the subsequent investigation was flawed. There were obviously leads that were not followed up and witnesses that were not tracked down. On top of this there is the information regarding the drugs found at Cotchford Farm being withheld from the coroner. Regardless as to whether this was a cover-up or ineptitude, it seems there is more than enough evidence for a further investigation.

Where are they now

Janet Ann Lawson

After this Janet Lawson dropped out of nursing and changed her name to Tallyn and was not heard from until she was persuaded to tell her story by a journalist in 2007. Janet Lawson died from cancer in a hospice in 2008.

Frank Thorogood

Frank Thorogood lived until 1993, where he died in hospital of cancer. It was here he allegedly confessed to Tom Keylock that he killed Brian Jones.

Tom Keylock

Tom Keylock was a consultant on the 2004 film “Stoned” about the life and death of Brian Jones

Shortly after Brian Jones death he left the employ of The Rolling Stones to start up a transport business. He died at the age of 82 on July 2nd, 2009, exactly 40 year after Brian Jones death.

Anna Wohlin

For years Anna Wohlin had refused to talk about her time with Brian Jones, not least because she claims she had signed a contract with The Rolling Stones‘ management to discuss his death only with their agreement. This is again something Tom Keylock disputes, “Nobody offered her any money to keep her mouth shut. No threats. She lives in cuckoo-land if she said that”

Having married and settled down back in Sweden, Anna Wohlin finally decided she would go public after she and her husband divorced. “I kept silent all these years because, even if I had friends who [would have] supported me, I was a little bit scared over it. I knew something was very wrong. He didn’t die of drowning because he was drunk and drugged, but how could I prove it? I couldn’t.”

She wrote her book (titled either “The Murder of Brian Jones” or later re-issued as “The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones“) as the legions of stories circulating about Brian being drugged up to the eyeballs at the time of his death, did not represent the man she knew.

After Brian Jones‘ Death

Two days after Brian’s death, The Rolling Stones performed before over a quarter million people in London’s Hyde Park. Mick Jagger led the other Stones onto stage. As the enormous crowd looked on he stepped up to the microphone and said, “Cool it and listen. I want to say something for Brian.” He then read two verses from Percy Shelley’s eulogy “Adonais,” as thousands of white butterflies were released. The Rolling Stones then opened with “I’m Yours And I’m Hers”, a favorite of Brian’s.

Other tributes came in from many friends and fans including Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison (both of whom also died later at the age of 27)

“Stoned” – the Movie of Brian Jones Life and Death

Around the same time Stephen Woolley, probably best known for producing films such as “The Crying Game” and “Scandal” (based on the Profumo affair, another piece 1960s tabloid sleaze), was developing the movie “Stoned“. Stephen Woolley also believes that Frank Thorogood was responsible for Brian Jones‘ death and met Anna Wohlin a few times in the 10 years he spent developing “Stoned“.

Both Anna Wohlin and Tom Keylock both acted as advisors on the film and at about the only time agree that it is a fairly accurate portrayal. “Stoned” was released in late 2005 starring Leo Gregory, Paddy Considine and David Morrisey.

Afterword

Prior to buying Cotchford Farm, Brian Jones went on holiday to Ceylon and while there he visited an astrologer. The astrologer said, “Be careful swimming in the coming year. Don’t go into the water without a friend.”

References

• Brian Jones Straight From The Heart: The Rolling Stones Murder
• The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones: The True Story of My Love Affair with the Rolling Stone (also published as The Murder of Brian Jones)
• Blown Away
• Interviews with Keith Richards and Tom Keylock in Classic Rock magazine November 2005
• Interview with Anna Wohlin in The Independant Newspaper, November 2005
• Daily Mail Article ‘Has the riddle of Rolling Stone Brian Jones’s death been solved at last?‘ from November 2008
• Brian Jones – Who Killed Christopher Robin?: The Truth Behind The Murder of a Rolling Stone
• The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth
• According to the Rolling Stones
• Up and Down with The Rolling Stones
• Keith Richards: Satisfaction
• Rolling With The Stones

Background to Brian Jones leaving The Rolling Stones

Brian Jones was a complex man, along with his charm and presence were vicious mood swings and moments of “assholery”. A highly intelligent man (he had genius level IQ) he was fully aware that he and The Rolling Stones no longer shared the same destiny.

Keith Richard and Anita Pallenberg

Brian Jones‘ relationship with the other Rolling Stones had deteriorated. While never on the best terms with Mick Jagger (he had even backed plans to sack him in the early 1960s) his personal relationship with Keith Richard broke down when his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, left him for Keith Richard while they vacationed in Morocco. This had driven a wedge between the former friends that was never bridged.

Brian Jones Drug Problems

Along with the Brian’s deteriorating relationship with the other Stones his health was deteriorating with his dependency on various narcotics. He had been suffering badly with the rigors of fame and heavy drink and drug usage. After getting into LSD, these had moments only become worse. If he had a good trip he was the life and soul of the party, however a bad one would leave him crying inconsolably.

He had twice been arrested for drug possession (although the second was widely believed to be a set-up) and narrowly escaped jail time (a fate that befell his band-mates Mick Jagger and Keith Richard after the notorious “Redlands” drug raid) but had been told by the judge to get help and, “for goodness sake, don’t get into trouble again or it really will be serious”

Musical Differences

Brian Jones had also become insecure of his position in the band. Brian was a magnificent musician and arranger, but was not a prolific song-writer. Brian Jones, the blues purist, had been unhappy with the direction The Rolling Stones were taking but was powerless to change it.

With Mick Jagger and Keith Richard writing the majority of the songs, they had become the driving force in the band and Brian Jones had gone from being their self-proclaimed leader (in the early days he had even negotiated himself more money than the other members) to nothing more than a bit-part player. Brian had barely played a note on “Let It Bleed” and according to Brian’s girlfriend at the time, Anna Wohlin, “So many times the car would come down [to take him to the studios] and Brian would say, ‘Anna, you’ll have to go out and tell them I’m not going to go, I don’t want to.’”

Brian Jones and The Rolling Stones part ways

As 1969 progressed Brian had reportedly given up illegal drugs, though he continued drinking heavily. He settled into his new home, Cotchford Farm, formerly owned by A. A. Milne, and enjoying country life.

With “Let It Bleed” released The Rolling Stones wanted to tour again. Brian, with his two drug convictions, would not be given a visa to tour America. However, on a both personal and professional level they were unhappy with Brian, as Keith Richard said, “We just saw Brian as a bit of a fly in the ointment. After two years of being on the road for 350 days out of 365, you start to get a little bit antsy when the fly is still there.”

“We carried Brian for quite a long time,” says Jagger. “We put up with his tirades, and his not turning up for over a year. So it wasn’t like suddenly we just said, Fuck you. You didn’t turn up for the show, you’re out. We’d been quite patient with him. And he’d just gotten worse and worse. He just didn’t want to be in it. He didn’t want to be part of it. He didn’t want to come out of this rather sad state.”

So on June 8th, 1969 Keith Richard, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts drove down to Cotchford Farm to deliver the news. According to Keith Richards, after being fired Brian was, “A little pathetic about it, but at the same time it wasn’t like he wasn’t expecting it.”

“I’m sure it nearly killed him when we sacked him ‘cos he’d fought so hard to put it all together at the beginning.” states Charlie Watts. “It was a huge void in his life, especially being young. If he’d have made 60 million dollars, if he’d had that cushion… He had a little bit, but not what people think. But he was very young, you know, so there was a big space of nothing.”

The following day, emblazoned across the headline of the Daily Sketch was, “Brian Jones Quits The Rolling Stones as Group Clash Over Songs”.

Written on Brian’s behalf, an official statement read, “Because I no longer see eye to eye with the other Stones over the discs we were cutting, I have a desire to play my own brand of music. We have agreed that an amicable termination of our relationship is the only answer.” Allen Klein, The Rolling Stones manager at that point, offered Brian £100,000 and £20 000 a year all the time The Rolling Stones were in existence, plus his share of royalties, a lot of money in the 1960s. For comparison Keith Richard bought his Redland’s home for less than £20 000 the previous year.

Afterwards

Both parties had known for a while that Brian Jones was not going to be the man to tour the USA with. In fact The Rolling Stones had been thinking of replacing him for a considerable time and before his firing, already had his replacement lined up in the shape of 20-year-old Mick Taylor. And so, on June 13th 1969, Mick Taylor, formerly of John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, was unveiled to the press as Brian Jones‘ replacement.

Brian Jones had considered starting his own band and during 1969 was known to have contacted Alexis Korner, blues-man and one of his oldest friends, Rolling Stones collaborators Jimmy Miller and Ian Stewart and Mitch Mitchell who played with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. There are reports that Brian wrote and recorded a single during this time, although if it exists, it has never surfaced.

There was some half-hearted talk among The Rolling Stones that Brian Jones may come back when he had recovered, however events would ensure this was never an option as Brian Jones was found found dead a few weeks later.

Background to The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus

The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus was filmed over 18 hours on December 11th and 12th, 1968. Featuring The Rolling Stones, The Who and a Supergroup called Dirty Mac featuring Mitch Mitchell and John Lennon amongst others it was due to be shown by the BBC, but Mick Jagger held it back as he was unhappy with their performance. Tragically it would also be the last time Brian Jones would perform with The Rolling Stones, and died in his swimming pool little more that 6 months later.

Mick Jagger’s idea was to do something to keep The Rolling Stones in the public eye while they were away recording “Let It Bleed“. He approached Michael Lindsay-Hogg and the two came up with the idea of having the various bands performing as part of a circus, with ringmaster to introduce the acts, some are traditional circus acts, the others musical from classical via The Stones and The Who to Taj Mahal.

Mick Jagger’s original choice was to have Brigit Bardot be the ringmaster, but she declined, as did Keith Richard’s choice of Johnny Cash. After that Mick Jagger took on the role himself, with Keith Richard, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts also introducing acts.

A an invited audience came along and was kept in the studio for 18 hours as cameras broke down and other technical glitches made the whole process frustrating. The Rolling Stones did not perform until early in the morning and this has been cited as the reason for their relatively poor performance.

Welcome to The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus

The darkened screen is replaced by, “ABKCO and The Rolling Stones Present….The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus”

After a brief pause the screen lights up with the image of the ring and the crowd all dressed in brightly colored robes and obviously delighted to be there as “Entry of the Gladiators” (the traditional circus theme) fires up.

An acrobat and cowboys on horseback enter the ring to be followed by The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger preening for all his worth and Charlie Watts looking very uncomfortable without a drum kit to hide behind!

They are soon followed by the other acts, with John Lennon obviously loving the silliness and applause after the traumas of recording The Beatles‘ White Album. The various members of The Who and other guests also parade around with the circus acts.

As “Entry of the Gladiators” dies down, the camera focuses on Mick Jagger, “You’ve heard of Oxford Circus, you’ve heard of Picadilly Circus, well this is The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus” – and we are away.

Jethro Tull

After the intro, Mick introduces the first act in the shape of Jethro Tull. Jethro Tull were a new act, having released only one album at this point and go through a slightly uncomfortable lip-synched version of “Song For Jeffrey” It does allow Ian Anderson to do his now customary standing on one leg routine…

A Quick One From The Who

Keef appears with cigar and eye patch to introduce The Who. After Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon and John Entwhistle harmonize the intro they quickly rip into “A Quick One While He’s Away” and tear it up. Having just come back from tour they were sharp and took the roof off. As the final refrain of Pete Townshend’s guitar dies away you see a very animated Brian Jones applauding from the sidelines.

Taj Mahal

After a brief interlude of a classical piece called “Over The Waves” with gymnasts performing on the rings, comes Taj Mahal doing “Ain’t That a Lot of Love”

There are additional Taj Mahal tracks on the DVD extras, including a ripping version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Checkin’ up on My Baby”

Marianne Faithful

Charlie Watts, looking about as uncomfortable as possible sat amongst the crowd, introduces, “the beautiful Marianne Faithful“. The camera pans down from above to a stunning Marianne Faithful in the center of the ring as she starts to sing “Something Better”

Dirty Mac featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell and Keef

Dirty Mac were the Super Group put together for the Rock and Roll Circus, featuring Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, Keith Richard and John Lennon who was escaping the tensions in The Beatles camp. Having only recently finished “The White Album”, The Beatles would reconvene a few weeks later, early in the new year on the ill-fated “Get Back” sessions, which effectively put the final nail in the coffin of The Beatles.

Introduced by John Lennon (or “Winston Legthigh”) and Mick Jagger (“Nigel”) in very bad American accents while John eats. When introducing Mitch Mitchell, Mick Jagger asks, “Are you really…experienced?” John replies, “Oh, very, very. You’ve read my file…” before presenting Mick with his food, “on behalf of the British public.” Now why do we never see this kind of thing on VH1?

After a storming romp through “Yer Blues” (with a suitably chaotic climax) Yoko Ono appears from under a sheet and she and classical violinist Ivry Gitlis join Dirty Mac for a blues romp entitled “Whole Lotta Yoko“. The band go through a fairly standard blues jam with Ivry playing over the top and Yoko wailing at various points….she has a voice that can only be politely described as an acquired taste!

Then John Lennon introduces The Rolling Stones…

The Rolling Stones

One of the reasons given for The Stones pulling the Rock & Roll Circus was their poor performance. Brian Jones was obviously in a bad way and also did not approve of the direction The Stones were heading in and so was both incapable and uninterested in playing at his best. The Rolling Stones had also been studio-bound and the sharpness a band gets from playing live was blunted. Add to this the hours the band had been filming and waiting around prior to playing due to the technical issues and it is no surprise that The Rolling Stones did not do all their songs justice.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

Off to a slightly poor start, an un-energetic rendition of a Rolling Stones classic

Parachute Woman

Loosening up now and much better, although Mick is a bit subdued.

No Expectations/You Can’t Always Get What You Want

“No Expectations”, a slower number showing off Brain Jones slide guitar and giving Mick a chance to find his stride, before The Stones find their rhythm on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Sympathy for the Devil

A romping version of “Sympathy for the Devil” and probably the highlight of The Rolling Stones set

Salt of the Earth

The finale sees The Stones and guests sitting in the crowd as Keef sings the opening lines to “Salt of the Earth” as Mick Jagger poses, Charlie Watts looks nervous, Bill Wyman unimpressed and Brian Jones remarkably happy with the benefit of hindsight….

The Release of The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus

It was recorded with the idea of editing and broadcasting it on the BBC, however The Rolling Stones were so disappointed with their performance compared to the other acts (most notably The Who) that it was not released until 1996 as a CD and 2004 as a DVD. Although listening to the extras on the DVD, Bill Wyman, never Jagger’s biggest fan, says that the reason they did not put it out was that Jagger was unhappy with his own performance, the rest of the band thought it was fine.

Now when you view it you can appreciate that it was not the most professional piece ever made, but it seemed to sum up the time well. Both The Rolling Stones and John Lennon were about to face seismic events in their careers (and indeed the end for The Beatles) and the stresses of global stardom were beginning to show. Whereas before they seemed to feel invincible, The Stones were turning to follies like The Rock and Roll Circus to keep things fresh and distract themselves from their problems.

After 18 hours of filming, the audience left the studios in the early hours of the morning and Mick and Keith waited around to shake hands with the audience members and thank them for coming…they always were such nice young men!!

In today’s music industry you could not imagine anything like this happening. And, if something similar was done today involving Coldplay and The Killers, could you imagine it being anywhere near as interesting or as much fun?

Trivia

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi played with Jethro Tull as a favor to Ian Anderson for their performance of “Song For Jeffrey”. Original Jethro Tull guitarist Mick Abrahams had recently left and they had not yet found a replacement.

The name “Dirty Mac” was a spoof of Fleetwood Mac, who at this time were a heavy blues band featuring Peter Green, considered the blues guitarist of the day. In the 1960s Fleetwood Mac were a million miles from the sound that would propel them to super-stardom in the 1970s with “Rumours”.

Violinist Ivry Gitlis accepted the invitation to play as he respected Brian Jones musicianship.

Eric Clapton plays a Gibson ES-355 rather than his more familiar Fender Stratocaster in his turn with Dirty Mac.

Around 5:30pm on February 12th, 1967, around 20 police descended on Keith Richards‘ Sussex home, “Redlands”. Of The Rolling Stones, both Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were there at the time of the bust (Brian Jones was supposed to be there too but, according to Keith Richards, he and his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, were fighting when they left for Redlands, so they just left them behind in London) Several others had come down for the weekend including The Beatles‘ guitar player George Harrison and his then girlfriend, Patti Boyd, although they had left prior to the raid.

According to reports at the time, the police took some substances and left around 8:00pm. On March 20th, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger received court summonses alleging offences against the Dangerous Drugs Act. After their court dates, both were sentenced to prison, but the full story actually starts earlier, on February 5th, 1967.

Sunday February 5th, 1967, the British tabloid newspaper “The News of the World” published a story accusing Mick Jagger, among others, of taking LSD. The same evening Mick Jagger appears on The Eamon Andrew’s Show and said he had never taken LSD and that his lawyers would sue. Sure enough on February 7th, Mick Jagger’s lawyers served a writ on The News of the World for libel.

The week following The News of the World’s allegations saw The Rolling Stones in Abbey Road Studios recording with The Beatles before everyone left London for Redlands. The quiet weekend away soon turned into something else as the police raided the property on the Sunday evening.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones arrested on Drugs charges

Since the police had a search warrant, The Rolling Stones deduced they must have had a tip-off. On February 19th, The News of the World released details of the raid before the police announcement was made, confirming their suspicions. The News of the World were not happy at being served a writ for libel by the bunch of upstarts and had decided to make their point.

The report from The News of the World and the police luridly played up the image of  Miss X (a thinly veiled Marianne Faithful) wearing nothing but a fur rug which she deliberately “let fall” from time to time during the raid. Nicky Cramer, a King’s Road dandy and hanger on was initially mistaken for a woman and a female officer was told to search him.

“He had long fairish hair,” reported the female officer who searched him, “and was dressed in what would be best described as a pair of red-and-green silk ‘pajamas’. I searched him and this was all he was wearing. I formed the opinion he, too (along with Mick Jagger) was wearing makeup.”

On May 10th, 1967, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and their friend and art dealer, Robert Fraser appeared a Chichester (the nearest city to Redlands)  magistrates court and released on £100 bail each. The same evening Brian Jones‘ flat was raided and Brian Jones and Prince Stanislaus Klossowski are charged with drug possession.

Throughout the 1960s the youth movement had been challenging The Establishment in Britain. By 1967 it seemed that The Establishment wanted to make it’s point and The Rolling Stones, Britain’s most rebellious band, seemed like the ideal target.

On June 27th, Mick Jagger’s trial began in Chichester, with Keith Richards‘ trial starting the following day. After a day’s hearing each, the verdict was passed down on June 29th – both guilty! Mick Jagger was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for possession of four amphetamine tablets and Keith Richards was given a year’s sentence for allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property. Both were immediately imprisoned, but released on bail the next day pending appeal.

The sentences drew a storm of protest and support. In London, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon of The Who, recorded “The Last Time” / “Under My Thumb” in support while fans held a candlelit vigil in Piccadilly Circus. In New York, fans mounted angry pickets outside the British Consulate.

Even more surprising, on June 1st, The Times newspaper ran the editorial, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”, penned by it’s conservative editor, William Rees-Mogg.

In his editorial he concluded, “If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity. It should be the particular quality of British justice to ensure that Mr. Jagger is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr. Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man.”

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards‘ appeal was brought forward amidst the protests. On 31 July, the appeals court overturned Richards’ conviction, and Jagger’s sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge.

Brian Jones‘ trial took place in November 1967 also resulting in a prison sentence for the accused. However, after appealing the original prison sentence, Brian Jones was fined £1000, put on three years’ probation and ordered to seek professional help.

On this period, Keith Richards said, “There was a realization that the powers that be actually looked upon is as important enough to make a big statement and to wield the hammer. But they’d also made us more important than we ever bloody well were in the first place.”

So who was the Redland’s Informer?

The full list of attendees at Redlands was

• Keith Richards
• Mick Jagger and his girlfriend Marianne Faithful
• Mick’s friend Christopher Gibbs
• Michael Cooper, a photographer and close friend of The Rolling Stones whose untimely death in 1973 from a heroin overdose left a legacy of 70 000 photographs documenting The Rolling Stones between 1965 and 1971
• Robert Fraser, Art dealer and gallery owner and another friend of The Rolling Stones, and his Moroccan servant Mohammed Jajaj
• George Harrison and his girlfriend Patti Boyd came down with Tony Brammell, an associate of The Beatles, who all left before the bust.
• Nicky Cramer (sometimes referred to as Kramer), a Kings Road Flower child
• David Schneidermann, a mysterious man whose nickname was the Acid King

Of these, the majority were either close friends or members of The Beatles, none of which would have anything to gain. Of the others, there were two obvious candidates, Nicky Cramer and David Schneidermann (sometimes spelled “Schneiderman”)

Nicky Cramer

Nicky Cramer was a King’s Road dandy and hanger-on, customarily seen in the King’s Road in red silk trousers and shirt, bells around his neck, and flowers behind his ears. His only known occupation was “forever blowing bubbles through one of those wire wands.” Christopher Gibbs described him as “a sweet, fey, amiable loon. There was nothing remotely wicked about him.”

This was not the universal opinion of him though. Anita Pallenberg described him as, “like one of these upper-class penniless people who’d pounce on everybody – he wasn’t good news, really.” According to reports at the time, he was seemingly “bored or distracted”, which may have been one of the reasons he was considered as a suspect as the traitor.

Christopher Gibbs again, “There were one or two innocent creatures caught up in the bust. Including a youngster named Nicky Kramer, thought very wrongly to have something to do with the setup.” How was he so sure he had nothing to do with it? David Litvinoff, a thug on the fringes of The Rolling Stones entourage with connections to the Krays (the infamous gangsters from London’s East End) visited the unfortunate Nicky Cramer and beat him up systematically. When Nicky still did not confess, he was pronounced in the clear.

David Schneidermann, the Acid King

One of the many mysteries of the Redlands Bust is the identity and role of David Schneidermann. Some report he was a 27 year old Canadian, others say he originated from California, others that he was also known as Dave Britton. Whatever his real identity, he was known as “The Acid King”.

According to sources at the time of the Redland’s bust, The Acid King, lived up to his name and had an attaché case containing a host of illegal drugs. Marianne Faithful confirmed that Schneiderman had delivered to each of the house party a tab of “white lightning” LSD with their tea on the morning of the police raid.

Christopher Gibbs again, “The infamous David Schniederman was a pied-piperish character. Who the hell he was, and where he came from, nobody knew he had just popped up. He was able to tune into everybody’s wavelength and was seductive, satanic, the devil in his most beguiling of disguises. After the bust he vanished as devils do, in a puff of smoke, and was never seen again.”

During the raid Schneidermann managed to prevent the police searching his attaché case by saying that it contained exposed film for a New York newspaper. He vanished soon after the raid and never re-surfaced.

At the trial Michael Havers QC, defending Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, claimed that David Schneiderman had been planted by the News of the World as an agent provocateur. Already being sued for libel, the newspaper, described the allegation as a “monstrous charge” but it later admitted that it was the “reliable source” whose tip-off led to the raid.

Michael Cooper said, “The guy’s much more than an ordinary pusher. He had a whole collection of different passports in different names and with different nationalities on them. I saw them once when I was looking through his bag for some dope at Redlands.”

The most recent conjecture is that he probably worked for either British or US Intelligence, both of whom were known to have infiltrated youth organizations in the sixties.

We should point out that this is not David Schneiderman, the CEO of The Village Voice!

References

• “The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth“
• “According to the Rolling Stones“
• “Up And Down With The Rolling Stones“
• “Keith Richards: Satisfaction“