27: Brian Jones Read Online Free PDF

Hollies unnerved Brian, as he explained on the Stones’ return to Edith Grove, ready for their regular two Sunday shows in London. From now on the Stones worked on their harmonies. Hence the additions of the songs ‘Fortune Teller’ and ‘Poison Ivy’ to their sets, which Brian – still functioning as musical director – found worked well with the group singing various parts.
    On 14 September, the band was given their second slot on Thank Your Lucky Stars. As the programme was by now recorded and broadcast from Birmingham, they were also able to fit in two gigs at separate venues in Britain’s second city on the same day as they performed on the television show. After the shows Mick and Keith were the only group members to drive back in Andrew’s car. ‘Who could realize, at this early stage, that the splitting of the group in that way would mark our future?’ reflected Bill Wyman. ‘Keith and Mick were quite prepared to go along with anything Andrew said,’ said Ian Stewart. ‘They fed off each other. We had very little contact with them in those days. Edicts would just be issued from the Oldham office.’
    The days at 102 Edith Grove were virtually over. At the end of September 1963, the twelve-month lease on the flat ran out. Mick and Keith immediately moved into a place in Mapesbury Road, off Shoot-up Hill in Willesden but sufficiently near the more salubrious-sounding West Hampstead for Mick and Keith to claim that was the area in which they lived. Brian went to stay with Linda Lawrence at her parents’ house in Windsor, twelve miles outside London. Her parents may have had cause to regret their free-thinking welcome: Brian’s extraordinary fecundity clearly unabated, Linda was soon pregnant. A son, Julian Brian, would be born to Linda Lawrence on 23 July 1964.
    By locking himself away outside London, Brian Jones had made a further tactical blunder, removing himself from the centre of power within the Rolling Stones. His timing was off: concerned that the Stones were little more than a high-end covers group, Andrew Loog Oldham was urging Mick and Keith to write their own material. Their co-manager knew he needed a songwriting partnership in the group to push the Stones to the top. He also was aware that Brian Jones, the blues crusader, was too concerned with musical integrity to be bothered about this. ‘Andrew knew he had to bring Mick and Keith together. His problem here was in breaking Keith’s natural musical partnership with Brian: from the beginning, as the two guitarists, they had interlinked their lines and worked really well together,’ explained Bill.
    Almost as soon as Mick and Keith had left Edith Grove for their flat in Mapesbury Road, Andrew Loog Oldham had also moved in with them. Now he had the Dartford pair under his eye. Andrew’s constant physical presence in the lives of Mick and Keith split the Rolling Stones into two factions. As the team of Jagger, Richards and Oldham began to run roughshod over everyone else in the group, Mick and Keith would travel to gigs with Andrew in his car, while the rest of the group would be driven by Stu in the van.
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    That autumn Andrew Loog Oldham secured the Rolling Stones a support slot on a tour that the Everly Brothers were headlining; the fact that Bo Diddley was also on the bill was a further bonus that certainly did not go amiss. The tour was colossally successful for the Stones, climaxing at the Hammersmith Odeon where, playing on home ground, they had a formidable reception. The Everlys had paper cups thrown at them.
    Unfortunately for Brian Jones, it was during these dates that the rest of the group learned Brian was being paid an extra £5 a week for being leader of the group. He had also expressed a desire to stay in more expensive hotels than the rest of the Stones. ‘He had this arrangement with Easton,’ Keith said, ‘that as leader of the band he was