Brian Jones

Very true, although I never bought into the Brian hype. Good musician who was a jack of all trades, master of none. A lost soul who gave in to his demons and found that when he needed help most, everyone abandoned him because of how crappy he'd treated them all beforehand. A sad tale, but a cautionary one.

 

He added that awful marimba bit to Under My Thumb - completely ruins the song for me. I much prefer the live version from 1969, where it is a guitar driven groove.

 

I'll say this, There would be no Rolling Stones if it wasn't for Brian Jones. He was the one who founded the group, he gave the Rolling Stones a unique sound. He is to The Rolling Stones that Syd Barret is to Pink Floyd. The bands simply wouldn't of happened without them.

 

I'm not sure he's the one that gave them a unique sound. During his time with the band they kind of flitted from sound and style to sound and style without really developing a characteristic sound. I think they didn't really develop the sound we thing of as characteristically "Stones-y" until after he was out. But really, in the end, the sound of a great band is comprised of the idiosyncrasies of each of the members -- and that's a band that had a lot of idiosyncratic players -- Watts, Wyman, Keith: those guys have immediately identifiable personal feels and sounds and stylistic ticks. Those and the combination of them is what gave the band it's unique sound. Personally I don't think the band has sounded remotely the same since Wyman left, but it kind of maintained a basic stylistic vibe through three changes of the non-Keith guitar chair.

 

There was a different "Stones-y" sound in the 60's. "It's All Over Now", "Get Off My Cloud", "Satisfaction", '19th Nervous Breakdown", and many more.

 

Those albums just added to their legacy, which was already established. Of course they're great albums with great songwriting, and as players they had improved some (Exile is my favorite Stones album, btw) - but that's not the point. They still come in as postscripts to what the Stones had already accomplished. They were already made-men.

 

True, but they certainly aren't the first band who were founded by someone who became marginalized or even eventually left: CCR (Tom Fogerty, marginalizd and left), The Who (Roger Daltrey, marginalized until he reasserted his dominance many years later), to name but two. And Mick and Keith already knew each other...I've no doubt they would've still done something great.

 

Based on what I've read, Brian was the real badboy, while Mick and Keith lived with Mommy and Daddy. They resented him, stole his image and crafted personas based on his wildness....and then they got rid of him.

Keith's constant negative comments about Brian in the bio... that's rationalizations for stealing Brian's girl. I lost a lot of respect for Richards after reading that tripe.

 

Seen from that perspevtive, I tend to agree.

 

It's an unanswerable question, but I've always found it curious that in spite of Mick and Keith's familiarity and obvious talent, they really didn't take off until they hooked up with Brian. Perhaps the rest of Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys were just unremarkable amateurs.

 

OK, yeah, I see that....they did jump around a lot, but yeah, that's got that twin guitar thing, and the idiosyncratic rhythm section right out in front, I see what you mean.

 

I think they had found their high style by the time of 1968-1969, and carried that into the 70s - 'Jack Flash', 'Street Fightin' Man', 'Sympathy', 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', 'Honky Tonk Women'.

'Gimme Shelter' is still often lauded as the Stones' greatest song, and it just might be.

'Brown Sugar', 'Wild Horses', 'Dead Flowers', 'Loving Cup', 'Shine A Light', - all written or recorded in 1969.

They'd already gotten there.

 

Your way off base! The Stones had a distinct sound when Brian was in the band from there debut album to "Beggars Banquet." There change came when Mick Taylor came aboard. Who do you think played the Sitar,Mellotron and a multitude of different instruments that gave the Stones a broader pallet of sounds? Brian Jones.

 

"Stole his image"???
They all were from quite established families (except Keith, who lived with his mother), including Brian.

All of them had an image which was created by the press and Andrew Oldham.
That's were they got their image.

Yeah, Brian had an image as a bad boy: he had about 3 kids with 3 different women, beat his girlfriends, took drugs even before they became famous and ran from the rent and the bills. Not the kind of bad boy to look up to, but to each his own...

All these conspiracy-theories about Brian as 'the real genius' is starting to become irritating.

The guy was a talented musician (one of the best in rock). Nothing more, nothing less. Leave it at that.

He had a big conflicting persona.
He was an abuser of both hard drugs and women whom he was not nice to.
He constantly talked behind people's back and was jealous of his band-mates, even though he couldn't write a tune.

No wonder Keith thought negatively on him. Then we can disagree with him, but at least he is being honest of what he thought of Brian. Like it or not.

As John Lennon once said, Brian was one of those guys which you escaped from, when you heard he was coming or was on the phone. You knew he was trouble.

Sad, but there was a reason he was fired. It was not because the others 'stole' something from him. It was because he was a stone in their machinery, who constantly bought trouble to them.

 

This is lifted from esotericCD's album by album thread. Part 1. Pasted post is by esotericCD:

"One of the interesting developments of the early Stones that we'll be covering as we move through their discography is the change in Brian's role within the group. As he loses status within the group he becomes progressively less interested in the guitar (except for the occasional slide feature) and becomes less the "second guitarist" and more the "primary colorist" of the group. His contributions to Aftermath,Between The Buttons, and Satanic Majesties are crucial (those records wouldn't be nearly what they are without him) even though he's never making his contribution via guitar but rather through some random instrument like sitar, dulcimer, harpsichord, marimbas, or mellotron. Brian Jones practically plays LEAD mellotron on Satanic Majesties!"

 

That distinct sound can be found right in the riff and groove laden Jumpin' Jack Flash, on which Brian plays the electric guitars and organ. I've read Keith only plays the acoustic guitars on it. This can be born out by the fact that on the promo video version it is clear Brian is playing the lead guitar on it.

 

After reading "Life" by Keith Richards, I got a whole new perspective on Brian. Of course, you can argue that Keith was twisting the facts to make he and his memoirs look good. However, he says that Brian was much more vain than Mick, that he was constantly strung out and missing recording sessions and he had to fill in for him.

I'm a big Brian fan and am fully aware of his multi instrumental talent. But Keith ain't chopped liver. He's not a saint either because his drug abuse is legendary. But he always struck me as more focused on songwriting and the band's survival, in spite of the craziness and drugs that are inherent of rock and roll lifestyles. That said, I still love Brian's awesome color palette on the Stones' 60s output. I just don't think he had the stamina and focus to continue with the Stones for 30+ more years. Bill barely made it to 30 years himself.

 

Well said...

 

Couldn't have said it better.

 

You gloss over the facts.....and their established families has nothing to do with it.

Brian was on his own when Keith and Mick met him, and he was a badboy... they were wannabes living at home. That's an established fact.

Oldham didn't invent the image... he took what was already there for Brian, and used it on the band. He was tight with Mick and Keith, but not Brian. Why? Because Brian didn't need him, but Mick and Keith did, so he could control them, but not Brian. Oldham encouraged their songwriting, he pushed them both together and supported it, he gave them Jones' image...you deride it, even use a Lennon quote, while glossing over the truth that it was what the band used to sell itself. They were posers, he was the real deal.

Lennon wasn't too nice to women either, and was also abusive, but somehow that's glossed over while fingers get pointed at Brian.

 

No doubt the Stones triumphed after Brian left but you could still say the bands sound changed when Mick Taylor came on board. They became a heavier band and quite frankly Mick Taylor was the guitarist the stones needed to survive into the 70's. Evolution is a good thing and maybe it was time for Brian to go. You still can't forget the part he played.

 

I'm saying all those color elements -- the sitar, the Mellotron, the duclimers and marimbas -- where not characteristic elements of an identifiable Stones sound...they were extra spices thrown in on top and which changed constantly. If you want to say change was the characteristic Stones sound of the day, okay, but I don't define that as a characteristic sound. Now, I buy the assertion above that there was a characteristic Stonesy sound before the open-G Mick Taylor years and that the twin guitars w/ Brian's cutting rhythm was a big part of that together with the idiosyncratic playing of the rhythm section -- in truth I think the heart of most rock band's characteristics sound is most often found in idiosyncratic rhythm players; and in a song like, say, "Paint It Black" it's not so much the sitar and the guitar, or at least as much as those things it's that bass gliss and the idiosyncratic drumming that give it its characteristic sound. But I don't think all those color instruments are what makes those Stones records "stonesy."

 

Good point. And even though they've known each other as kids, they never seemed to be super close as friends. It always seemed much more a friendship forged through common goals and a working partnership, not like the almost literal brotherhood Lennon and McCartney had.

 

Were is it an 'established fact' that Mick and Keith were 'wannabes'???
Were is it documented that Andrew Oldham 'took what was there from Brian'???
'Posers'??? What do you mean by that sentence? If there was something Brian Jones was, it was a 'poser'. Just look at every photo session, every stage performance and every tv-show. It's Jones who is constantly 'posing' in his wild clothing and the newest haircut!

 

I don't think Brian was the only one to have his controversies haha. Come on it's the stones, there no Beatles