“I want to play my kind of music, which is no longer the Stones‘ music,” Brian Jones said in his official departure from The Rolling Stones on June 8th, 1969. He claimed the breakup was amicable, but history has proved that the reality was far from that.
This is a tragic story. The Stones began as friends with good intentions. The band, all of whom shared a love of American blues music, buzzed with a youthful zeal that swiftly propelled them to fame.
However, as the band’s reputation grew, their sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle proved to be their demise. This culminated in the Beggars Banquet sessions in 1986.
First, there was the question of sex. Jones and the band met Anita Pallenberg in 1965, and the two developed a turbulent and violent relationship. When Keith Richards witnessed his bandmate physically assaulting his fiancée, he intervened. However, tensions rose as Pallenberg became closer to Richards, and the two began a romance. The rift in the friendships was beginning to appear, as Richards stated, “That was the final nail in the coffin with me and Brian.”
Drugs, on the other hand, were at the heart of the problem. The narcotics that had allowed them to enjoy the rewards of their success were beginning to impede it. While Jones was not the only one who used it, the rest of the band was able to do their tasks.
While the rest of the band was regarded as “workhorses” by their producer, Jimmy Miller, Brian Jones was failing them. It got to the point that, on rare occasions when Jones showed up, the producer would isolate him. They put him in a booth and did not record him on any track they needed. This left the rest of the band to work on the album in another room.”The others, particularly Mick and Keith, would often say to me, ‘Just tell him to piss off and get the hell out of here.'”
Jones was unable to mix his sensuality with his attention, therefore he could not make a useful or consistent contribution. When his drug use prevented him from obtaining a US visa, the band decided it was time to chop off the dead limb.
There is very little known about the night of June 8, 1969. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts paid Jones a visit at his Cotchford Farmhouse in East Sussex. They were acting as an intervention meeting. Some biographers believe the band just sacked Jones from the group he had founded. However, Richards claims that it was genuinely cordial, and Jones was aware that he was in no condition to travel.
Mick Jagger’s official response was, “We’d known for a few months that Brian wasn’t interested.” “He wasn’t enjoying himself, and we had to sit down and talk about it. So we did and agreed it was best if he left.”
In a tragic turn of circumstances, less than a month later, the musician was found dead. As one of music’s worst stories of how hedonism can lead to horror, we’ll never know what songs Jones would have created next.
