Brian Jones on how Britain became the epicentre of rock and roll: “It could have been anywhere”
Luck is a core principle of the music industry, and for groups like The Rolling Stones, who were espousing their brand of blues rock rebellion in the setting of early 1960s London, the phrase ‘right place, right time’ could not have been more apt; something that band leader Brian Jones was all too aware of.
That is not to suggest, of course, that The Rolling Stones were void of any musical merit. Building upon the central inspiration of their blues heroes – Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf being the prevailing examples – the group typified the rebellious attitudes of Britain’s post-war youth, penning a plethora of rock’s most iconic records in the process.
Had they been formed in Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, or virtually any other city on the planet, though, the chances are that we would have never heard of them.
London was, after all, a happening place back in the 1960s, characterised by vast cultural, generational shifts in the realms of music, art, film, and virtually every other aspect of youth culture. The Rolling Stones were always at the centre of that blossoming scene and, when audiences in the United States started to get wind of what was occurring on the other side of the Atlantic, Britain became the epicentre of the global rock and roll world.
Rendering the American rockstars of the early 1960s virtually obsolete, the so-called British invasion period was first ushered in by The Beatles’ transatlantic trip in 1964, but The Stones weren’t far behind. In fact, once they touched down on US soil, the group wasted no time in soaking up the songwriting inspiration of the States, striking upon their distinctive, R&B-infused sound and finding the inspiration for some of their earliest solid gold hits.
It was also during this period that Brian Jones, the originator of The Stones and their blues-heavy sound, started to be pushed out of his leadership role by the emerging songwriting talents of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Jones was never particularly convinced of the British invasion tag often attached to the group, and was quick to point out during a 1966 interview in Amsterdam that the entire scene owed itself largely to the power of luck.
“It just happened that England had the right type of sound, the right sort of visual image, that the kids over the world wanted at that particular time,” Jones theorised of the British invasion period and how it came to be. According to the multi-instrumentalist, the nationality of that particular movement was rather superfluous.
“It just happened, it could have been anywhere,” he argued. “It could have been France, it just happened to be England.”
Admittedly, the fact that it just so happened to be England that was placed under a cultural magnifying glass back in the 1960s certainly worked out well for The Rolling Stones, launching one of the most enduring careers in rock history and forever cementing London as one of the world’s premier cities for rock and roll expression.
Nevertheless, perhaps if the youth of the world had started paying attention to the Parisian music scene instead, The Rolling Stones would have been virtual unknowns, and it would have been the likes of Jacques Dutronc being mobbed at JFK airport instead.
