An astute and insightful delve into the relationships and rivalries within The Rolling Stones in those formative years, Nick Broomfield’s archive-heavy film elegantly explores the freedom and exuberance of the 1960s – a time of intergenerational conflict and sexual turmoil – and how the story of Stones co-founder Brian Jones reflected those glorious but also troubled times. As his biographer Stanley Booth comments: “Brian was a casualty of the war between two generations.”
As he has done with many of his films, director Broomfield brings a personal (though quite a modest one in this case) aspect to the story of Jones and the Stones. In the film he tells how, as a schoolboy aged 14, he met Jones on a train. “I was surprised how open and friendly he was with a soft-spoken middle-class accent…he said he was a train-spotter and this was his favourite line, the Great Western. I remember the shock when I heard he had died tragically just six years later. He seemed at the time to have the world at his feet.”
Though the life and death of Brian Jones has been explored in films and books over the years, his story, Broomfield points out, is not really known by new generations of Rolling Stones fans. As Bill Wyman (Stones’ bass player and the film’s historical consultant) says: “In the early days, who got all the fan mail? Brian! He was brilliant…a brilliant musician. He shocked everybody with the quality of his playing.” Brian in those early days was as popular and famous as Mick – the heart and soul of the early Stones.
Brian’s troubled relationship with his parents would affect him throughout his life. His parents disapproved strongly of his lifestyle, wanting to have a proper job like his father. He was only 19 when he formed the Rolling Stones. There had never been anything like them before and they succeeded in driving the world’s youth wild, and older generations to distraction, with their long hair and contempt for convention and authority. Brian often invited his parents to Rolling Stones concerts, but they never came.
The Stones & Brian Jones – which premiered on UK’s BBC Two and BBC iPlayer as part of a new series of films for the flagship arts strand Arena – essentially takes a chronological structure, but often flips back to examine his younger days and how that relationship with his parents was a key aspect to his life. The film celebrates the skill and style of the music, while also examining the often fractured relationships within the band, and pulls no punches in detailing the frenetic love affairs Brian Jones engaged in, as well as how he could treat friends and lovers with casual contempt.
“He would be really horrible and cruel sometimes,” added Wyman. “He always had to prove himself…if he didn’t get his way he would be aggressive.” This was against a background of the immense pressure from his father about his life as a young man. “He rebelled as a student and put all efforts into music and picking up girls.” says Broomfield.
The film details these early relationships and girlfriends. He met his first girlfriend Val Corbett at 16, and they had a child which was given up for adoption. Aged 17 he was kicked out of his family home, and went on to have a child with Pat Andrews aged 20. In a remarkable archive interview with her she says: “I feel quite sorry for Brian in a way, the kind of person he is – so cynical and got no feelings for anybody. He just uses people for his own good and when he is finished he just throws them aside.” There is also audio interviews with girlfriend Linda Lawrence with whom he had another child – and with whom he seemed to have had a fuller relationship – and with Dawn Molloy (the mother of his fifth child) who takes glowingly about their sexual relationship.
All the time the Stones are enjoying greater success and acclaim, playing a massive 300 gigs in 1963. But there is also a realignment of the hierarchy in the band. As another interviewee comments: “They were all a little weary of Brian…He was supposed to be the leader, but he was no longer the leader. Mick ruled the roost…there was also a little jealousy about the fact that Mick and Keith were so close. He was tormented as he couldn’t write songs like Mick and Keith.”
The arrival of Andrew Loog Oldham as The Rolling Stones manager further sidelined Jones. As Dawn Molloy comments: “Brian wanted to stay playing the blues and Andrew wanted them to be pop. Andrew and Brian just didn’t hit it off – pop sold and Andrew wanted to make money.”
The film charts Brian’s later drug-fuelled relationships with high-profile girlfriends such as Zouzou, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg. Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts comments how “he liked drinking and drugs, but they weren’t very good for him – he wasn’t strong enough mentally or physically…but he did everything to excess.” That period of the late 1960s saw his drug-taking grow alongside a growing sense of self-loathing, until he was eventually kicked out of the band on June 9 1969, with Keith Richards commenting how “he was expecting it.”
The film makes little of his actual death (he was found at the bottom of his swimming pool on July 3 1969) with drugs in his system, but ends instead with the free concert The Rolling Stones played in Hyde Park on July 5, 1969…a concert for Brian. As Broomfield, who attended the concert, says: “His death marked end of the sixties – the concert was a mass funeral for all that had gone before.”
The Stones & Brian Jones makes terrific use of a series of revealing interviews with all the main players, and features previously unseen archive material as it explores the creative musical genius of Jones. It is a fascinating examination of a musical talent unable to deal with the fame surrounding him, but who nevertheless had an enduring impact on the lives of others, and on musical history.
UK, 2023, 93mins
Dir: Nick Broomfield
Production: Lafayette Film, BBC Music, BBC Arts
International sales: Submarine
Producers: Nick Broomfield, Shani Hinton, Marc Hoeferlin, Kyle Gibbon
Cinematography: Sam Mitchell, Marc Hoeferlin, Tristan Copeland
Editor: Jan Le-Francois-Gijzen
