Brian Jones in 1965
Guitar Reviews 4U Why Brian Jones was 'out of time' by 1965
Brian Jones in Cheltenham had a dream of creating a British Blues Band playing the music in that style. He was not alone, in Home Counties Ripley, Surrey, Eric Clapton was doing the same. In Kingston Surrey, Keith Relf and Jeff Beck were into that music and in Dartford, Kent Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were likewise following that star.
Cliff Richard and the Shadows c. 1961
with Hank Marvin on the right with Stratocaster
By this time they had made films and were London Palladium top billing
The British music scene since the mid 1950's had been dominated by American artists with Rock n Roll, a music that like fashions changed quickly. By 1960, the last knockings of the original American RnR performers were still performing, but were being overtaken by smoother crooners and an emerging Detroit sound which would spawn the Motown sound.
where the Rolling Stones had a residency
Britain had not been slow to copy the new music from the other side of the Atlantic, even that as we have seen was not immune to fashionable change. Cliff Richard and the Shadows it would be fair to say had a dominance on the British music scene from 1959-63.
Cliff Richard imported a Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster for Shadows guitarist Hank Marvin in 1959, a guitar that would change British popular music history and Marvin's playing and this guitar would influence thousands of bedroom guitarists - some of whom would later find fame, Jeff Lynne, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Brian May, Mark Knopfler and countless others who never made it past the youth club or pub rock scene.
A very young Rolling Stones in 1963
Brian Jones at right with his Gretsch 6118 2 tone Anniversary guitar
By 1960 there was no shortage of bands in the mould of Cliff and the Shadows, but that did not stop some young players of the time delving back further into the roots of the 1950's RnR to the Blues aspect of that music, just as there had been a 'jazz revival' in Britain at the time in the late 1950's as a counter rock and roll music.
In his Ripley, Surrey back garden, Eric Clapton would endlessly pick at an acoustic guitar, leading to his Kingston Art School studies giving way to a full time music career, fellow Kingston students Keith Relf and Chris Dreyja would also find fame with Clapton in the Yardbirds, before Clapton left to pursue a more authentic Blues vehicle with John Mayall.
The Yardbirds soon adopted a more commercial sound with hit songs from Graham Gouldman who also wrote for the Hollies and later his own band 10cc.
On a Kent railway platform back around the start of the 60's Mick Jagger saw Keith Richards holding a Blues vinyl LP a meeting of minds and people that ignited a musical flame.
1965 - 'This can be the last time performance'
Brian Jones with the iconic Vox 'teardrop' guitar
A music paper advert by Brian Jones in 1962 sowed the seed for the young Jagger and Richards living an almost hand to mouth existence in bohemian Edith Grove Chelsea to audition for Jones. A spot at the Ealing Jazz club run by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies followed and the band that Brian Jones started upa while previously had sifted out players and the Jagger and Richards compound made the formula complete.
Brian Jones in a telephone box on a call to a venue organiser was asked what his band was called, Jones had a copy of the Muddy Walters LP 'Rolling Stone' in his hand and looked at the coer and announced 'The Rolling Stones.' And so a band was born.
The 'British Invasion' pop bands had yet to hit America but this crop of bands that was growing underground in Britain very much located in the south of the country - the Home Counties and London. Motown music would soon hit the UK around 1964 with the establishment of the Mod scene as London became more modernised after WW2.
The Beatles now back from Hamburg in 1962, displaced thanks to the Cliff Richard and the Shadows mania, now in 1963 were starting to make a name for themselves. The future 'invasion bands' of the Yardbirds (with a soon to depart Clapton, replaced by Jeff Beck), The Kinks (Muswell Hill), The Who (Acton based), The Animals (Newcastle based) and the Stones Chelsea) came to the fore in 1963 to 1965.
Although Cliff Richard and many of the popular entertainers of the era managed to stay working, a new vanguard of popular music was hitting the airwaves, with Merseybeat and London sound and other movements such as ska taking the place of the old guard.
The early Rolling Stones chart output was initially confined to cover versions of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly songs, the Beatles who had been doing some BBC Studio sessions in London, came down to Richmond to see the Rolling Stones play and offered them a song they had written - 'I wanna be your man.'
Although this song was 'Bluesed' up by Brian Jones playing slide guitar on it, it was essentially a pop song and outside of the 12 bar 3 chord Blues structure. It was from this point that Brian Jones and his brief and dream of a 'pure blues band' died.
Spurred on by the gift of the Beatles song, Keith and Mick started writing songs together and Brian was effectively displaced in the Rolling Stones as leader. He was no longer the driver of the car. Just another of the riding mechanics.
But Jones was not alone in this position, Eric Clapton too decided to seek purism, outside of the Yardbirds.
We must not write off Brian Jones though, because from the early times of the band, Brian was a very gifted multi-instrumentalist - a fact that drove the Beatles on to constantly reinvent their music to remain commercially relevant.
Brian's formal musical education when most pop players were academically untrained in music, was a rarity. Brian also had that natural ability that allowed him to pick up an unfamiliar instrument and to quickly get something sonically useful out of it that would go onto a recording.
The management of the Rolling Stones saw Jagger and Richards as now the front and centre of the group, Brian's pure Blues band dream had been dashed and even the Blues enthusiast Eric Clapton found his dream of a blues band faded, he joined Cream. (The 'pure Blues' that those players wanted wasn't really realistic for these men, although in America, the old surviving Blues players suddenly found new interest in their music thanks to the British Invasion.)
And although a few of Cream's tracks were based on the 12 bar 3 chord blues, 'Sunshine of your love' and 'Cross roads' - the other tracks were often musical odysseys pushed forward by musicologist Jack Bruce's contributions to poet Pete Brown's often slightly surreal lyrics.
The only place for Brian and Eric's pure Blues would be in the 'revival' of the Blues by the players like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf and John Lee Hooker as examples who had come back into musical fashion. However, we are deviating slightly here.
The Rolling Stones group's success was in part, besides Brian's vision that provided the catalyst that brought those 5 players together in 1962, was his ability to put Saxophone, Clarinet, Bass Pedals, Sitar, Harmonica, Vibes, Marimba, Piano and Hammond Organ onto the bones of the Jagger and Richards words and music and on the studio recordings.
By 1965, Brian Jones was like the Jagger and Richards song - and was literally 'Out of time'. Not because he was musically irrelevant but the band he had started had moved on and away from his original vision and musical brief. Brian's musical contribution to the songs doesn't always get the credit it deserves, sadly.
The Rolling Stones still performs many of those early songs that Brian helped to make iconic.
Perhaps their finest hour was with 'This can be the last time, the Riff was Brian's and they just looked at the height of their powers on this song. It has to be one of the greatest songs ever written and for the energy and the performances of it by the Stones we have on film.
As Keith Richards said 'you always remember the riff'.
We should also remember - No Brian Jones, no Rolling Stones.
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