Did Bob Dylan make Brian Jones cry in public?
Whilst Bob Dylan is primarily known for his artistic brilliance, over the years, a handful of stories have emerged that display the pricklier side of his character. One of the most surprising tells, however, is how he allegedly made the late Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones burst into tears by criticising his musical limitations in front of a group of hangers-on.
It is well-known that The Rolling Stones were big fans of Bob Dylan, with Jones particularly admiring the ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ musician. On one specific night, a time when Jones had the opportunity to hang out with Dylan and his friends, the supposedly nasty way in which Dylan met him was enough to reduce him to tears. It is one of the most potent reminders not to get too close to your heroes.
It’s also an interesting moment because Jones and Dylan have long been tied together due to the latter’s Highway 61 Revisited track, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. A segment of the lyrics read: “Because something is happening here / But you don’t know what it is / Do you, Mister Jones?” This has long been deemed a reference to The Rolling Stones founding member.
Dylan fuelled the rumour during a 1965 performance at Carnegie Hall when he said: “That was about Mr. Jones,” he said, before adding, “This one is for Jones,” and jumping into the classic ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. One of the greatest mysteries of Dylan’s career, in his typically ambiguous way, he told biographer Robert Shelton: “I could tell you who Mr. Jones is in my life, but, like, everybody has got their Mr. Jones.”
So, were Bob Dylan and Brian Jones friends?
Jones greatly admired Dylan’s work, and the two enjoyed a friendship for a time, taking copious amounts of acid together. “They had a mutual respect because Brian obviously thought he’d found a head that understood him,” filmmaker Nick Reynolds told the Express. “He was very complicated and very sensitive, and I guess Bob Dylan was as well. They had a mutual understanding.”
Broadly speaking, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan experienced something of a complicated relationship during their heyday. They even nearly came to blows one particularly tempestuous night. Allegedly, after Jones and his bandmate Keith Richards tore into Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ in London in 1966, to which the Duluth troubadour replied: “I could have written ‘Satisfaction’, but no way could you fuckers could have written ‘Mr Tambourine Man'”. A chaotic scene ensued.
How did Bob Dylan make Brian Jones cry?
Dylan and Jones’ personal friendship also turned ugly during this era of extreme fame. One night, American folk musician Bob Neuwirth brought Jones to the table Dylan and his friends occupied. Here, Dylan demonstrated some of the natural vitriol he’s been known to dispense at points across his career. He quickly turned on Jones, per a report by Cheat Sheet.
“First of all, he declared that the Stones were a joke — they could not be taken seriously,” Daniel Mark Epstein wrote in the extensive 2011 biography The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait. “Now everyone could laugh at that, true or not, because the comment cost nothing, drew no blood. But then he explained to Jones that he had no talent and that the band, joke that it was, ought to replace him with someone who could sing.”
Naturally, such a hurtful reading of his work wounded Jones. “This made Jones unhappy, after he had been so happy to see Dylan in the bar,” Epstein continued. “The Englishman swept his flowing hair out of his eyes, which were tearing up as Dylan went into detail about Jones’s musical handicaps. Jones began to cry. Now the whole mob could see his weakness; it was a terrible sight, the flowing locks, the lacy sleeves, the weeping — just the wrong image for a group called the ‘Rolling Stones,’ Dylan concluded.”
Jones made such a mark on Bob Dylan that it is claimed that ‘I Want You’ also contains references to him.
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