Jones was a master slide guitarist, who put the stinging slide lead on the Rolling Stones’ version of “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which John Lennon and Paul McCartney had written just for the band, as well as “I’m a King Bee,” and “I’m Movin’ On.” His slide playing may have reached its pinnacle on “No Expectations.” Jones played the lead on “Tell Me,” the main guitar lines on “Get Off My Cloud” and the backward guitar solo on “2000 Light Years From Home” off the 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request. While Keith handled most leads, neither player was the official lead guitarist in the band because they developed a style based on the “guitar weaving” they learned from Jimmy Reed records. Keith thought guitar leads reached their pinnacle when Chuck Berry duck-walked his Gibson across a stage. When Brian left, he was replaced by budding guitar legend Eric Clapton.īrian was a notorious blues purist who had nothing but disdain for pop music.
He started a group called the Roosters with Paul Jones, who would go on to put the doo wahs to the diddy-diddies as the singer of the Manfred Mann Earth Band. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist from a musical family, Brian sometimes played under the name Elmo Lewis. There was a deathbed confession, and rumors of cover-ups, most of which contradict each other and only add flavor to the beggars’ banquet of theories.īrian Jones was born February 28, 1942, in Cheltenham, just shy of 100 miles from London, where he moved to jam with the city’s blues musicians after getting his girlfriend pregnant and dropping out of school at 17. Conspiracy theories vary from alleged ties to Princess Margaret to lingering gossip about satanic sacrifice. While Jones’ official cause of death is listed as “misadventure,” many believe it was homicide.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the songs, but Jones brought them together. The same can be said of the lingering questions.īrian Jones founded the Rolling Stones and came up with the band’s name. Both left legacies which influence artists to this very day. Jones may have been intentionally drowned. Their circumstances of their deaths are shrouded with unanswered questions. Johnson and Jones share another honor in the dark mythology of rock and roll. They were the first recognized members of the “27 Club,” artists who died at that age like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Linda Jones, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse. He was 27, the same age as his hero, blues musician Robert Johnson. It has been 50 years since the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones drowned in the swimming pool at his country home and his death is still as much a mystery as it was on July 3, 1969.
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