Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon (27 page)

Read Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon Online

Authors: Pamela Des Barres

It’s a few days later and Rick James has gotten some superbad news. Judge Michael Hoff told the Grammy Award winner that he was lucky he wasn’t headed to prison for a dozen years, perhaps even for life, calling the shorter sentence (five years and four months) “a gift” (because of the discovery of the investigator’s improper contacts with Frances Alley). James’s lawyer, Mark Werksman, was mighty angry. “For fifteen years he has been known as the Super Freak. They rejected the Super Freak. They never bothered to learn about the real Rick James.” Or the real James Johnson, I suppose.
Today he’s serving out his very hard time in Folsom Prison. The experts who evaluated Rick James agreed that he would have benefited from the state’s drug program and probably would not have hurt the women if he hadn’t been sucking on the devil’s dick.
BRIAN JONES
T
he flaxen-haired founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, the foppish dandy—bastard son of Oscar Wilde and Muddy Waters—was the first of the rock-and-roll giants to die under debauched, drug-related circumstances. It was a brutal wake-up call for the love generation.
I met him only once. Just a kid in the Rolling Stones candy store, I was hanging around the Ambassador Hotel, circling the hallowed Hollywood bungalows, waiting for a glimpse of the gods, when Brian sauntered by wearing thick red cords and a black turtleneck sweater. It was a gloomy day and his blond mane shone like a halo. When he said hi to me, I was struck dumb by the dazzling incandescence. He had an amused expression on his face, haughty and expectant—too much awareness. Later I peered into his bungalow window and saw Brian wearing skimpy underwear and a long red scarf around his neck, being very naughty with two Spanish ladies wearing black garters. My teenage heart was pounding at the illicit sight. There was banging at his front door, interrupting his pleasure fest. As I watched, agog, Brian threw open the
door, grabbed hold of a broom with one hand and his privates with another, and said, “If you girls don’t get the hell out of here, I’ll drag you in here and fuck you.” The teenybops scampered back into the sunshine, squealing with a mixture of fear and delight. Wow. Brian Jones said the “F” word with such aplomb, and it was only 1965.
Brian Lewis Jones was a huge fan of R&B and already appearing in clubs and coffeehouses when he got his first important gig, playing a mean slide guitar with British bluesman Alexis Korner in April 1962. In the audience that night were two very impressed Dartford lads—Mick Jagger, a bored student at the London School of Economics, and delinquent art pupil Keith Richards. Fascinated with his rooted musical vision and haughty bravado, the two friends successfully auditioned for Brian’s new band, which he named after Muddy Waters’s “Rollin’ Stone Blues.” Apparently Mick and Keith despised the name but had to accept it because, after all, it was Brian’s band.
Brian’s band went on to ignite the music world—to scare, shock, and dismay parents of panting teenage girls and stir tepid authority figures to unparalleled rage, and the press to taunting headlines: WOULD YOU LET YOUR DAUGHTER MARRY A ROLLING STONE? The Beatles had long hair but they also had little matching suits and smiled for the cameras. The Stones were a dangerous-looking lot—scruffy and snarling, mismatched and menacing. As their records dominated the charts, the Stones’ reputation as a real threat to proper society grew.
It was a deserved reputation. By 1965 Brian had already fathered three illegitimate baby boys with three different adoring girls (all in all, Brian would have six sons). In fact, two paternity suits were filed at the same time. Pat Andrews alleged breach of marriage, enticement, and association for toddler Mark Julian, and Linda Lawrence sought a lump-sum settlement for baby Julian Mark. Pat Andrews said, “I would never have gone public about Mark until I read it in the papers about Linda, and their calling the baby Julian Mark.“What was Brian thinking? Already a hard-core drinker, Brian plunged headfirst into drugs, flamboyantly leading the way like a psychedelic, bejeweled Pied Piper.
Brian Jones, the Prince of the Monterey Pop Festival. (HENRY DILTZ)
Brian was undoubtedly the leader of the band in the early days, golden-haired and gorgeous, by far the most popular Stone. He could pick up any instrument, from a saxophone to a sitar, and master it in thirty minutes. There were even times when Brian threatened to “get rid of Mick” because his voice was too weak to sing night after night, and the two of them constantly vied for the spotlight, each attempting to upstage the other. But when Mick and Keith began to write songs together, it affected Brian’s confidence in a big way. He felt left out, pushed aside, unimportant, and pissed off about it.
Still, Brian invented and then epitomized the British pop star, reveling in the opulent, hedonistic Rolling Stone lifestyle. A friend of mine, fourteen years old when she and Brian had their fling, had this to say: “Brian was totally self-obsessed—in the mirror with the silks and satins, brooches, pins, floppy hats, frock coats, feathers, and velvets, capes to the floor. He couldn’t get out of the bloody mirror, he was so in love with his image. But he was brooding and uncommunicative, and talked to you like he was holding court, very grandiose. And he would take anything—Tuinals, Mandrax, acid, always mixing methedrine and whiskey.” I asked what sex with him was like, and my friend smiled. “Oh, he was wild in bed. A wild man. Highly sexed. One night he wanted me to pee on him, and I wouldn’t do it. He was insistent on it, for hours he harped on it. He was so disappointed. He wanted a three-way with Anita, but I wasn’t into it. She saw us at a party together and broke a bottle of champagne over his head. Brian and I went back to the hotel and had sex anyway.”
Into the libertine stew waltzed Anita Pallenberg, a mischievous, wanton, clever minx who would eventually tear out Brian’s heart. For a while, however, Anita and Brian were the zenith of rock royalty. After being introduced to him backstage at a gig in Munich, Anita says she “decided to kidnap Brian … . He seemed to be the most sexually flexible. I knew I could just talk to Brian. As a matter of fact, when I met him I was his groupie, really. I got backstage with a photographer … . I had some amyl nitrate and a piece of hash. I asked Brian if he wanted a joint and he said yes, so he asked me back to his hotel and cried all night. He was so upset about Mick and Keith still, saying they had teamed up on him. I felt so sorry for him. Brian was fantastic, he had everything going for him, but he was just too complicated.”
The reigning couple began to walk, talk, dress, and think alike, taking up astrology and magic, consorting with young dukes, lords, and ladies, turning their high-born admirers on to the potent joys of LSD. Brian felt he had one up on Mick and Keith, knowing they secretly coveted his majestic, lean-and-mean
mistress, but deep down he had a wicked fear of losing her. Passionate and volatile, the couple argued about everything, with Anita usually coming out the victor. Ultimately, Brian challenged her with his fists one too many times, and she found solace and compassion in the arms of Keith Richards.
The Stones were being relentlessly pursued by British police after a series of sordid exposes in the
News of the World
about their shameless, debauched lifestyles. After a tip, supposedly from this illustrious newspaper, Keith Richards’s stately pad in West Wittering was raided. Traces of cannabis were found, as well as four pep pills in Mick Jagger’s jacket. This was only the beginning of a dauntless quest to destroy these “menaces to the establishment.”
Keith made plans to escape the media tirade and hired Tom Keylock, Brian’s burly minder/chauffeur, to drive him to France, and Brian suggested he and Anita join them and extend the trip through Spain and Morocco. Some have said Brian overdosed in the backseat halfway through the drive and had to be taken to the nearest hospital, but it’s likely that the thin air affected his asthma, which made him ill enough for the hospital visit. Either way, Anita went on with Keith, leaving Brian to torment himself on his twenty-fifth birthday, sleepless in the South of France. His fears were warranted: Keith and Anita slept together that night in Tangier. Even though Anita met Brian back at the hospital so they could fly to Marrakesh and meet the others, Brian immediately suspected what had happened and dealt Anita the first of many pummelings on the trip. The next day, after observing Keith and Anita eyeing each other by the pool, Brian disappeared, returning with two tattooed Berber whores, and invited Anita to join them. When she declined the offer, he viciously beat her again as the naked prostitutes watched.
Then a plan was hatched that confirmed all of Brian’s twisted, paranoid nightmares: Brion Gysin, a friend along on the trip, was told by Mick, Keith, and Tom Keylock that a posse of British reporters was headed for Marrakesh, and to take Brian out for the day to keep him from talking to the press. Brian, excited by the prospect of taping his beloved Joujouka musicians, went happily to the huge town square, getting bombed with two self-proclaimed holy men, the “Hash Head Brothers,” taping his precious music, feeling more lighthearted than he had in quite a long time.
Upon returning to the hotel with tapes and pipe in hand, Brian realized he had been abandoned and became frantic, running around the hotel, demanding over and over that the desk clerk make sure no note had been left for him. When he broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, Brion Gysin feared his friend might be suicidal and called a doctor, and Brian was sedated.
This treacherous act on the part of his girlfriend and band mates had a devastating effect on Brian, and a feeling of desertion and loneliness set in from which he never fully recovered. To his friend Dave Thompson, Brian said,
“First they took my music, then they took my band, and now they’ve taken my love.” He checked into Priory Clinic in Roehampton, suffering from depression, but two weeks later had to be out on the road with the Stones. Not surprisingly, Brian quadrupled his drug and alcohol intake, seeking escape from the dire humiliation of standing onstage with Anita’s new amour, Keith Richards. Then he was the next Stone to be busted. After being held overnight and charged with “unlawful possession of dangerous drugs,” Brian sent his parents a telegram: “Please don’t worry, don’t jump to nasty conclusions and don’t judge me too harshly.”
Two of Brian’s psychiatrists concluded that he was suffering from paranoia, but what they didn’t realize, even though it was often drug induced, was that it was paranoia based on reality. Said
News of the World’s
Trevor Kempson, “Of course, Brian was being set up, all through 1967 and later in 1968. First the police would be tipped off that Brian was holding drugs and a few minutes later the tip-off would come to me. I think that what happened was that someone in the Stones’ organization also wanted him out of the way.”
After another bust, Brian narrowly escaped several months in Wormwood Scrubs Prison when his psychiatrist testified on his behalf: “It would completely destroy his mental health, he would go into psychotic depression, he might even attempt to injure himself.” When he was almost caught with drugs in his Rolls-Royce, Brian leapt from the car, threatening to jump into the Thames. Rescued by his driver, Brian once again checked into the Priory Clinic. He tried to slip away quietly, but as ever, headlines blared BRIAN JONES IN NURSING HOME.
Needless to say, relations with the Stones were strained for Brian, but he had been uncannily accurate in his brutal assessment of the
Sgt. Pepper
copycat album,
Their Satanic Majesties Request,
and was given more musical leeway on
Beggar’s Banquet,
which the critics would hail as “Brian’s singular triumph.” It was to be his last album with the Stones.
On the morning of May 20, 1968, Brian was awakened by pounding on the front door, then a loud crash as three policemen started digging around in his flat. They came up with a piece of cannabis, hidden in an unlikely ball of yarn. Hustled off to Chelsea Police Station, Brian was deathly white, clumsily dressed in mismatched clothes thrown on during his arrest, claiming he was innocent of the charges: The wool wasn’t his. Understandably, when the trial got to court, Brian expected the worst.
Brian’s defense lawyer was Lord Michael Havers.
JONES:
I was asleep when I heard this loud banging at the door. I did not immediately become aware of what it was. A minute might have passed before I knew it was somebody very intent on entering the flat. I put on a caftan-kimono sort of thing, went to the door and looked through the spy-hole.
HAVERS
: What did you see?
JONES
: I remember seeing … three large gentlemen … of a sort I don’t usually
see …
through the spy-hole of my door.
HAVERS
: Who did you think they were?
JONES
: Police perhaps, or agents … I was afraid.
HAVERS
: Of the police?
JONES
: Yes, since last year I seem to have had an inborn fear of the police.
FRISBY (PROSECUTOR
): If it please the court,
inborn
means you’ve had it all your life.
JONES
: Ah, an acquired fear. I went back to the bedroom on tiptoe. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to call my secretary or my solicitor. I was very worried.

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