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Here's a cute (and frankly intriguing ;D!)  story from Anna Wohlin's book The Wild and Wicked World of Brian Jones: "One evening, Brian took my hand and we went up to the bedroom where he opened his wardrobes and started rooting among the clothes. Then he gave me a couple of white suits. 'Try them on!' he said. He lay down on the bed and watched me modelling the suits. Several of them fit me and I finally found one that was perfect. Brian laughed and said I looked exactly like him. 'The suits seem to be made for you' he said. 'You look like a genuine tomboy!' After that first night, we often dressed up. I'd put on one of Brian's suits and play the man, and Brian would dress as a woman. I'd back-comb his hair and put it up or tie it in a ponytail with a big ribbon. But he preferred doing his make-up himself and, to tease me, he always stood in front of the wardrobe doors when he painted his eyelashes. The mascara spattered the mirror, just as it did when I pained my eyelashes! Brian enjoyed seeing me in his clothes. He loved lying on the bed with Emily [the cocker spaniel] at his side while I paraded in front of him." 'You look just like me,' he said contentedly. The suits look good on you. You're gorgeous!'"

Left photo: The Wild and Wicked World of Brian Jones Right photo: 1966 Promotional film for "Have You Seen Your Mother." Screencap from @jonesbrianshining

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"With love hast thou given us holidays for gladness, festivals and seasons for rejoicing." Happy Passover 2024!

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"Sensation" scene from the new revival of The Who's Tommy.

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Ali Louis Bourzgui performs "Pinball Wizard" in the new Broadway revival of The Who's Tommy.

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I remember seeing the original cast of The Who's Tommy at the Macy's parade in 1993. I've been waiting for a revival for years. So glad I got to see the show on Saturday. What a welcome jolt it is! (I also got the Acid Queen drink during intermission, lol.)

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Mick Fleetwood talks about touring with the Stones and meeting Brian in 1964:

"The Cheynes recorded a few singles, gained momentum around London, and in 1964 did a tour with the Rolling Stones just as their star began to rise....That tour was magical to me. The Stones really took care of us, looking after us like little brothers, and that is when and how I got to know Brian Jones quite well. I feel lucky about it because Brian was a special soul, in many ways far too sensitive and perceptive for this world. A brilliant, fluent multi-instrumentalist, he was the one who founded the Rolling Stones and he had the creative vision that helped them to evolve organically from a mop-top blues-pop group into the mystical rock gods they became--something that many people today might not realise.

Brian had a huge heart and we became friends very quickly. We'd sit and talk about the Blues for hours, trading stories we'd heard about the recording of the songs we both loved. Later, Brian and I became even better friends when I was dating the young beauty who became my first wife, Jenny Boyd. Our social circles became intertwined and we saw each other all the time. Jenny and I used to go around to Brian's flat to hang out and even to participate in the seances he'd hold at his new cottage in Fulham. At the time Brian had a girlfriend called ZuZu [Zou Zou] and the two of them would pull out the Ouija board and we'd attempt to communicate with the dead. Peter Bardens' father had written a book about ghosts [Ghosts and Hauntings by Dennis Bardens] that we had all read, so we were scared and fascinated at the same time.

I'm far from the first to have said so, but I'd like to confirm that Brian Jones was, without question, one of the sweetest human beings and the most visionary musician I've ever met. He's yet another who died too young, at twenty-seven, the same age as far too many of his peers--Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, as well as Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse in the years to come."

--Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac, The Autobiography by Mick Fleetwood and Anthony Bozza

Mick Fleetwood's photo: https://youtu.be/NMHT_tFZHoA?si=cLA4V8EZxLaIw6lZ

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"I'm not just 'the man who disappeared from The Stones.' I'm the musician, Brian Jones."

From the manga The Shiori Experience, featuring Brian and the 27 Club.

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Keith Richards. Notice he has a magazine open to a story about Brian Jones.

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"Then there was Brian Jones' hair, longer and thicker than anything we'd seen on a man before. The whispered words, 'He looks like a girl!' circulated around the audience, as if that were the worst possible insults."--Marty Clear, audience member at the Mike Douglas Show, 1964

(from https://brianjonesoftherollingstones.tumblr.com/)

(Mike Douglas appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ycN9EOi8o)

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The Rolling Stones Play "Walking the Dog" But it's Just Brian Jones :)

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Happy International Women's Day! 😊

Dammit, Brian, why do you have to look so good in drag?!

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More from The Shiori Experience manga. Bit of drama as the 27 Club (Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison) discuss what really happened to Brian.

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The Rolling Stones Song About the Death of Brian Jones

“As Jones had fallen so far into his addiction without recognising it, the band felt the only thing they could do was leave him behind. A few months later, he was dead. On the surface, it looked like The Stones responded in a cold and uncaring way. They continued on their road to the top without much acknowledgement of their lost friend or seemingly much upset over the sad passing.

That was until 1972 when one track on Exile On Main St sat as a sad ode to the souring of an old friendship. ‘May the good Lord shine a light on you, make every song your favourite tune,’ Jagger sings on ‘Shine A Light’, a song that was started with Jones but came to be a kind of elegy to the musician.

The earliest version of ‘Shine A Light’ goes back to 1968 when Jones was still in the group. Jagger seemed to begin penning the track right as the guitarist was slipping away from them and becoming estranged from his old friends. As the situation grew uglier, the musician only spiralled deeper into his addiction, and his friends didn’t seem to know what to do about it. That’s where the song begins as Jagger describes a sad scene, singing, “Saw you stretched out in room ten o’nine, with a smile on your face and a tear right in your eye.”

The band didn’t finish the song for years as it seemed to get shelves for a prolonged period. After the death of Jones, however, Jagger returned to the track. As the piece goes on, the verses become more and more heavenly, almost following the timeline from Jones’ final days through to his passing. By the finale, Jagger is singing “come on up now” like a command from God, using the central image of the light as a comment on Jones going to some better place in the afterlife and hopefully finding a healthier and happier version of himself there.

While the Stones’ feelings towards Jones still to this day feel confusing, and the band members never really discussed their friend’s death with much kindness or care beyond cold, business-like statements as it was merely colleagues parting ways, this track feels like an insight into their true emotions. ‘Shine A Light’ stands as their eulogy to a friend and fallen legend who they couldn’t help but hope some power somewhere could after he’d found peace.” 

Shine a Light: https://youtu.be/Vln9V7dDrIY?si=-8XgYJnemgy0ZF9t

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Pete Townshend talks about Brian Jones at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989: "And Brian Jones hurt me by not bothering to take a cure. Because I loved him a lot, he was very very important to me. He was the first real star who befriended me in a real way. I spent a lot of time with him before I really got to know Mick and Keith, who I love very much now. I hung out with him quite a lot and I missed him terribly. And I always felt that when he finally did collapse that the Stones were a very different group..."

(Photo: Far Out magazine)

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Various musicians and media figures discuss Brian Jones' influence on Rolling Stones' hits "Paint it Black," "Lady Jane," and "Ruby Tuesday." It is even speculated that "Ruby Tuesday" should be properly credited as a Richards/Jones composition. From the DVD special, "Rock Milestones - The Rolling Stones - The Singles 1962-1970."

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In the new documentary, The Stones & Brian Jones, Bill Wyman talks about Brian Jones' efforts to write a song (with Michael Aldred). And we actually get to hear Brian's voice and melody in a quick outtake. Wyman laments that it was never recorded as a finished song. However, fans have noted that the melody is very present in Jones' soundtrack for the 1967 film, A Degree of Murder. I've put the two clips together, so you can hear the progression, from outtake to soundtrack.

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“Had Brian Jones not taken his guitar to this cellar bar…impressed Alexis Korner with his playing, relocated to London and formed The Rolling Stones, the world’s cultural history would have been very different. There would have been no pop industry as we know it today, with its ever present musical acknowledgment of the influence of the blues. The pentatonic minor scale, which can be heard ad infinitum on countless electric guitar tracks recorded over the last six decades, would probably rarely be heard. And countless young people who came of age in the 1960s, including this writer, would never have become fascinated by a sound originally created by the descendants of black slaves in the Americas.”—John Phillpott, Blues in Britain, 2024