Madness in Marrakech: The terrifying trip that The Rolling Stones never recovered from
Morocco, 1967: The fierce North African sun beats down upon a barely conscious Brian Jones, sweating out booze and a cocktail of psychedelic substances. The Rolling Stones’ once-mighty leader was without his faithful gang of wild young rockers, left alone to wallow in the consequences of rock and roll excess. The band’s trip to Marrakech had been envisioned as a method of bringing the group closer together, escaping the sensationalism of the tabloid press back in Blighty, but it ended up tearing the blues devotees apart.
English society back in the 1960s was considerably more stuffy than we are used to in the present day – think men with umbrellas and bowler hats walking around London doing important business and repressing all emotions. As you can imagine, therefore, the advent of the swinging sixties came as quite a shock to the establishment. The sudden influx of mini skirts, long hair, and raucous rock and roll was completely at odds with the prim and proper ways of old London Town, and The Rolling Stones were often viewed as the harbingers of this pop culture plague.
In fairness, the band brought that reputation upon themselves, often making headlines with their wild antics and rebellious lifestyle. In February 1967, the British press were delighted when Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were arrested during a drug bust at Richards’ Redlands Estate in Sussex. Although the band members were released the following day, the event had left the group shaken up, and the mounting presence of the press was becoming increasingly difficult for the young men to handle.
So, in an effort to get away from the suffocating atmosphere of their homeland, the Stones decided to travel to sunnier climbs, Marrakech, to be specific. This holiday was envisioned as a way for the band members to reunite and clear their heads, but, as you might expect, it didn’t exactly go to plan. The issues began before the band ever reached North Africa, with Brian Jones falling ill and being forced to stay in Toulouse, while his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards pushed on through France and Spain to rendezvous with Jagger in Morocco.
In the few days that Jones spent confined to bed-rest in Toulouse, his bandmate moved in on his partner. By the time the band’s founder made it to Morocco, Pallenberg and Richards had already struck up a romantic relationship of their own, leaving Jones feeling betrayed and outcast from the rest of the group. His poor health, coupled with this ultimate betrayal by Richards and his ever-increasing issues with the musical direction of The Rolling Stones, caused a seriously bad trip for Brian Jones in Marrakech.
While the other band members spent their time in Morocco soaking up the local atmosphere and recovering from the turbulence of life in the UK, Jones self-medicated with LSD and ‘kif’ – the Moroccan name for cannabis. Inevitably, these substances, coupled with Jones’ particularly poor headspace at the time, culminated in a rapidly decaying mental state. Although he combatted this by attempting to find local musicians to record with, the musician was a shadow of his former self.
His bandmates were not particularly sympathetic to Jones’ struggles with mental health or drug addiction, choosing instead to return to England – with Jones’ now ex-girlfriend in tow – without even informing the band’s supposed leader. Alone in the intense heat and seemingly endless drug supply of the Moroccan city, the Rolling Stone fell deeper into his LSD-fueled period of grieving.
Not long after Jones returned to England, he was cruelly booted out of The Rolling Stones – the band he had formed back in 1962. Reportedly, the other band members had grown tired of Jones’ unpredictable mental state, along with his increasing dependence on drugs. So, he was out of the picture, quickly replaced by Mick Taylor. Arguably, that trip to Marrakech marked the beginning of the end for the band’s founder; a month after his departure from The Rolling Stones, Jones was found dead at his home in Sussex, aged 27.
