Brian Jones

Brian Jones (1942-1969) was a founding member of The Rolling Stones before worsening drug issues forced him out and quickly killed him at age 27.

Jones had been a musician since childhood. The son of two piano players, he began playing saxophone at 15, picked up the guitar soon after and quickly became a regular at local jazz clubs. Ever the rebel, he was frequently in trouble as a schoolkid, ultimately dropping out after fathering an illegitimate son at age 17 (the first of many). In 1962, he moved to London and fell in with a crowd of R&B musicians.

That summer, he took out an ad in a newspaper and formed a band. While on the phone booking one of their first shows, he was prompted for the band’s name. On the spot, he spied a Muddy Waters record on the floor and named them for the song “Rollin' Stone”. They’d soon become one of the most famous acts of the 20th century.

By the mid-60s, he began to feel alienated and overlooked in his own band and his drug and alcohol problems skyrocketed. Hostility towards him grew in the band and he was arrested for drug possession twice in as many years. By the beginning of the Let It Bleed sessions, it had gotten out of control – he’d contributed only two small parts to the album and crashed his motorcycle into a shop window several weeks before the photo sessions for Through the Past Darkly. On the 8th of June 1969, Jones was fired from the band.

He retreated to his home, a manor previously owned by A.A. Milne. At midnight on July 2nd, he was found unconscious at the bottom of his pool and was pronounced dead shortly after. The coroner ruled it “death by misadventure”. Though many have claimed that Jones was murdered (the most likely culprit being Frank Thorogood who reportedly confessed to it on his deathbed), official investigations have never found evidence of foul play.