Read Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon Online

Authors: Pamela Des Barres

Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon (28 page)

HAVERS:
The police have said that ten minutes passed before they came into the flat. Do you agree with this estimate?
JONES:
I can’t agree or disagree. Some time passed. Certainly long enough to have disposed of anything I shouldn’t have had.
HAVERS
: How did you feel when they showed you the resin?
JONES:
I couldn’t believe it. I was absolutely shattered.
HAVERS
: When Constable asked if the wool were yours, did you say, “It might be.”
JONES
: I never had a ball of wool in my life. I don’t darn socks. I don’t have a girlfriend who darns socks.
HAVERS
: Later when you were at the police station, you said that you never take cannabis because it makes you so paranoid. What did you mean?
JONES:
That refers back to the events of last year. The effect of the drug for me was a heightening of experience that I found most unpleasant. That made me very frightened of it.
HAVERS
: Would you be advised what would be the consequences of breaking probation by using drugs?
JONES:
Yes sir. I have taken no chances.
HAVERS
: Had you the slightest knowledge that the resin was in that wool?
JONES:
No, absolutely not.
The jury retired for forty-five minutes, bringing back the verdict of guilty, and Brian slumped in his seat. “No, no, no, it can’t be true,” he moaned. But Chairman Seaton, who had seemed so callous at Brian’s previous hearing, rapped his gavel and said, “Mr. Jones, you have been found guilty. I am going to treat you as I would any other young man before this court. I am going to fine you … according to your means. Fifty pounds with a hundred and five pounds’ costs … . You really must watch your step and stay clear of this stuff.”
Immensely relieved, Brian grabbed hold of the latest blonde in his life and posed for photographs in front of the courthouse. “It’s wonderful to be free,” he said. “Someone planted that drug in my flat but I don’t know who. I will state to my death that I did not commit this offense.”
On a visit to Ceylon, just before the year’s end, Brian had his astrological chart done and supposedly received a curious warning: “Be careful swimming in the coming year. Don’t go into water without a friend.”
Weary of being harassed in London, as well as of being the only Stone who hadn’t acquired his own stately manor, Brain bought A. A. Milne’s Cotchford Farm, his very own house at Pooh Corner, filling the cozy fifteenth-century farmhouse with priceless antiques, rugs, screens, and tapestries, amassed from his frequent sojourns to Morocco. He would drag friends through the copious gardens, showing off the life-size statue of Christopher Robin, proudly announcing that Milne had buried the original Pooh manuscript under the sundial. Brian slowed down his drug intake, built a music studio, swam laps in his beautiful swimming pool, got friendly with the locals—his life finally on an upswing. And despite his angst over Anita Pallenberg, Brian never lacked for female company, once claiming to have bedded sixty-four women in one month. One blonde had moved into Cotchford with him and, soon after, another had taken her place—Anna Wohlin, a Swedish student with a striking resemblance to Anita. Even though things seemed to be going well for Brian, his precarious position in the band kept his mind troubled. He started putting on weight, the bags under his eyes getting heavier and darker.
Some alterations needed to be done on the house, so Brian took Keith’s recommendation that Frank Thorogood, an old school chum of Tom Keylock’s, do the job for him. Frank moved into the garage flat, hired several workmen, and renovations began. From the beginning, however, Brian complained about Thorogood, telling his friend Tony Sanchez, “Those builders aren’t doing what they’re meant to be doing! They act as if they own the place, as if I wasn’t there! People just arrive saying they have come to fix this or that and they stick around for days.” The builders soon became party guests, and the renovations took second place to revelry. Cotchford was constantly in chaos. Brian, never one for confrontation, actually let Thorogood move into the main house, bitterly resenting the intrusion, distrustful but saying nothing.
The pool at Pooh Corner where Brian Jones drowned. (
PA NEWS
)
When Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards paid a visit to the farm one warm June night, Brian knew he was out of the Stones. Some reports have him begging and weeping, others that he felt relief and excitement about starting up his own band with the likes of John Lennon, Mitch
Mitchell, Steve Marriott, and Steve Winwood. To Tony Sanchez, Brian said excitedly, “We’re going to be bigger than anyone would believe,” announcing that he wanted to “go back to real rock and roll, and cut out all the commercial crap the Stones are putting out.” Brian was offered a hundred thousand pounds on top of his share of Stones royalties, and it was reported that he left the band to work on his own solo projects. Then Brian Jones was replaced by John Mayall’s guitarist, twenty-year-old Mick Taylor. An announcement was made soon after that the Stones would play a free concert in Hyde Park. To Anna Brian said bitterly, “I’d probably be the only one they would charge to get in.”
On Tuesday, July 2, Frank Thorogood went to the Stones’ offices to pick up wages for himself and his workmen and found out a bit of bad news: Brian had requested that all payments to Frank and his builders cease immediately. True to form, Brian had someone else do his dirty work for him. When Frank confronted his boss at Cotchford, Brian made good on his decision to sack the builders, telling Frank that he and his girlfriend, Janet Lawson, were to start packing. Frank demanded that more money was owed him, and an uneasy truce was reached: He and his builders would be paid in full on the condition that they leave the next day.
That night, just before midnight, Brian Lewis Jones, age twenty-seven, drowned in his swimming pool at Pooh Corner.
Despite the fact that Brian was deemed to have drowned while swimming under the influence of alcohol and drugs—“death by misadventure”—the conflicting reports given by the three people with him have caused speculation for over twenty-five years. According to Anna, at about 10:15 Brian was keen to swim and went over to Frank and Janet’s to ask them to join him. At about eleven P.M. Brian changed into his trunks and, followed by Anna, got into the pool to swim. Frank swore in his police statement that “Brian was staggering, but I was not concerned because I had seen him in worse condition and he was able to swim safely.” Janet Lawson disagreed: “I saw that Brian had great difficulty in holding his balance on the springboard.” As to what happened next, none of the three statements confirms the exact sequence, except that the women left the pool area and went into the house before Thorogood, leaving him alone with Brian in the pool for more than a half hour. Then Anna claims that the phone rang and, as she answered it, “Frank came in and picked up the phone in the kitchen, then I heard Janet shout, ‘Something has happened to Brian!’ I rushed out about the same time as Frank. Janet was there and I saw Brian lying on the bottom of the pool.” Janet says that when Frank came into the house, he asked her for a towel. “Then I went to the pool and on the bottom I saw Brian. He was facedown in the deep end. He was motionless and I sensed the worst right away.” Thorogood told police, “After we had been in the pool about twenty minutes I got out and went into the house
for a cigarette, leaving Brian in the pool. I honestly don’t remember asking Janet for a towel. I know I got a cigarette and lit it, and when I went back to the pool, Anna appeared from the house about the same time. She said to me, ‘He is laying at the bottom,’ or something like that. I saw Brian facedown in the deep end of the pool.” Each of the witnesses had a different version of how Brian was pulled from the pool. “I felt Brian’s hand grip mine,” claimed Anna.
The Stones found out while in the studio that Brian was dead, and though it’s been said that Charlie Watts couldn’t stop crying, they continued to record and went ahead and taped a spot for “Top of the Pops” that same evening. A few days later the Rolling Stones, featuring Mick Taylor, played the free gig at Hyde Park in front of a gigantic blowup of Brian’s face. Clad in a billowing white dress, Mike Jagger appealed for quiet: “Cool it and listen,” he said. “I want to say something for Brian.” He then read two verses from Shelley’s “Adonais,” after which thousands of white butterflies were released from cardboard boxes. “Peace, Peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! / He hath awakened from the dream of life … .”
On November 7, 1993, Tom Keylock went to the North Middlesex Hospital to visit his old friend Frank Thorogood. “When I saw Frank, I feared the worst,” Keylock said. “He looked really rough. We started talking and he told me he wanted to put his house in order. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. It will probably shock you, but we’ve been friends for so many years that I feel I can tell you:’” Thorogood asked Tom not to speak about what he was about to tell him while he was still alive. “‘It was me that did Brian,’ he said. ‘I just finally snapped, it just happened, that’s all there is to wit.’” Tom wanted to ask a lot more questions, but Thorogood couldn’t continue. He died that night.
Someone else says that Thorogood didn’t act alone. One member of the rock group the Walker Brothers said that Brian invited him to a party the night he drowned, and that some of the men at the party were hostile toward Brian, poking fun at him and taunting him. He saw one man holding Brian down in the pool, and another standing on Brian’s head to keep him from getting out of the water. It was dark, he said, and he couldn’t tell whether or not they were just trying to scare Brian. He left the party to avoid involvement. A. E. Hotchner, the author of
Blown Away,
dug up one of Thorogood’s builders, referred to by the pseudonym “Marty.” “There was two guys in particular really had it in for Brian,” Marty said. “Been on his back for weeks, I mean always making remarks, the rich fag, all that kinda stuff … . Anyway, this night Brian was swimming a lot. He could swim good, bounce off the diving board, lots better than any of us lads, and the girls was watching him, also because he was a celebrity they sort of gave him attention. These two guys got pissed about that—they was drinkin’ pretty good by then—it was kind of like when it started, kind of like teasing. Sort of grabbing Brian by the leg and pulling him
down, meanwhile saying bitchy things … . Then it started to get rough and these lads really got worked up at Brian the more he resisted, I mean really bad-mouthing him now and ducking him and then sort of holding him underwater and keeping him under and then letting him up for a coupla seconds and he was gasping and then down again … . They seemed to get more steamed about Brian the more they pushed him down, and I could tell it was turning ugly as hell. Finally one lad wanted to let Brian out, but the other wouldn’t let him and they was kind of tugging on him. It got real crazy and the next thing I heard somebody say was ‘He’s drowned.’ That’s the first we knew what these guys had done and someone said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ and we ran for it.”
And so the life of Brian Jones was snuffed out. How could it have happened? Even though foul play was suspected by some, on August 7, 1969, Detective Chief Inspector Lawrence Finley said that the police had no further interest in the death of Brian Jones, and the case was officially closed.
Spacey-eyed Brian staring out to … who knows what. (LONDON FEATURES INTERNATIONAL)
Brian was buried on July 10, 1969, at the Priory Road Cemetery in Cheltenham, a few yards from the church where he sang as a choirboy. Canon Hopkins, who conducted the service, read aloud to the mourners Brian’s own epitaph: “Please don’t judge me too harshly.” Only two members of Brian’s band turned up—Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.

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