Hear Me Out: Brian Jones would’ve ruined The Rolling Stones
“But Brian Jones started The Rolling Stones!”—the choir is already preaching to the headline, arguing that without him, the band wouldn’t even exist. It’s true that no one should ever question Jones’ vital importance in that regard. However, if the band hadn’t booted their founding member and if tragedy hadn’t struck, the Stones might never have evolved beyond their early days. They would never have reached the dizzying heights they did, starting from the rocky ground they were built on.
There is no denying that Jones was foundational. It was Jones who first went forth into the London music scene and began carving out the space that the Stones would come to fill and dominate. His origins merged his love for blues music with the jazz circles he landed in, which immediately set the tone that the band would never be a typical, straightforward rock and roll group. When Jones eventually met Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at Ealing Jazz Club, it was on his home turf and on his terms. The pair were auditioning for Jones’ band, and history has done its best to remind them and the rest of us forever of that fact.
However, while Jones was foundational and the fact that it was always his group is undeniable, the first bricks laid on his ground were cemented by Jagger and Richards. Similar to the partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the Stones writers are a fearsome duo because of their natural synchronicity, which is more akin to brothers than friends. Originally meeting in primary school and then reuniting as teenagers when they bonded over the Chuck Berry record Jagger was carrying under his arm. It was kismet as Richards wrote to his aunt, “You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles but one mornin’ on Dartford Stn. (that’s so I don’t have to write a long word like station) I was holding one of Chuck’s records when a guy I knew at primary school 7-11 yrs y’know came up to me”.
In a statement that seems to hold all the potential that was to come, he added, “That Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don’t mean maybe.”
From then on, Richards and Jagger really learned the ropes of how to be musicians together. Similar to the Beatles boys up in Liverpool, they understood how to write songs together, developing their style as a duo, so understandably becoming a tight ship, able to create together with this telepathic ease. While the band was technically owned by Jones, the Stones were built off the back of the Jagger and Richards duo and their shared vision. As early as their 1964 debut, their first self-written songs like ‘Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)’ were Jagger-Richards creations. Sure, Jones was there, adding his own textures, but it always felt like the duo could do it and would do it without him. They were always bound to be in a band; they just happened to fall into Jones’.
More so than that, Mick Jagger was always bound to lead a band. He’s the frontman to end all frontmen, with a captivating swagger and stage presence that people have now been trying to copy for decades. It’s his vocals that made the group what they are, merging the rock and roll spirit of the British invasion with an American blues edge, helping to set them apart from The Who, The Beatles, or any number of UK bands coming up at the same time. But to match his charisma, Jagger has the know-how. The Stones have no doubt benefitted immeasurably from Jagger’s clear business mind, turning the band into a machine of merch, marketing and smart moves, allowing them to still be stepping up and up into bigger things even now.
Unfortunately, Jones would have held that back. It’s a sad reality as that thought is tied so tight to the ways he succumbed to addiction during an era where the severity of drug use and the danger of hedonism like that weren’t taken seriously. It was a time when addiction wasn’t understood with the empathy and care that it thankfully is now, helping to support musicians through and out the other side of these problems. But without that set-up, Jones was on a spiral causing carnage that the band might never have recovered from if they hadn’t fired him in 1969.
As Jones’ fall-out with Richards was only getting worse, jeopardising the band with personal rifts, there was also the simple matter of productivity. Jones could never hack his own habits, too often disappearing during recording sessions, not being able to pull off his parts, and leaving the rest of the band to pick up his slack. By the Beggar’s Banquet sessions, they’d resorted to turning off all his mics or locking him away in a different room just so they could get on with it. On the other hand, Jagger and Richards are the poster children for high-functioning chaos. Even during the worst days of their fall-outs or during their own struggles with substance abuse, they remained some of the busiest and most prolific men in music. Had they been stuck trying to balance all that with Jones’ behaviours, the weight would have held them back.
It was really only after Jones had left and after his sad death that the Stones boomed to whole new levels of success. In the 1970s, they raced ahead, really motivated to become what they are now, which is the biggest rock band in history. With Jagger and Richards’ ever-evolving style, using that life-long connection to continue expanding their sound together, the songs got bigger and better than they were with Jones. While it’s wrong to cast Jones’ issues off as a burden, it feels like with him in tow; the band would never have been able to race into the future like they did because while the band was Jones’ to start, it was always going to be bigger than him.
