Lewis Jones told the police that he and his wife had stayed with Brian at Cotchford Farm in May, and he had last spoken to Brian by telephone three weeks ago – ‘at that time he was full of beans’. In an interview with the Daily Express, Mr Jones reflected on his son’s short life, admitting that Brian ‘exasperated me beyond measure in his younger days’, but adding that the family had been reconciled recently, and that Brian had telephoned frequently during his problems ‘to seek our understanding and sympathy’.
Few of Brian’s celebrity friends seemed shocked by his death. Pete Townshend said cynically that it was ‘a pretty normal day’ for Brian. ‘He always seemed to be losing out one way or another.’ In California, Jim Morrison wrote an elegy, ‘Ode to LA While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased’, recalling his ‘porky satyr’s leer’, an evocative image of the dissipated and overweight guitarist of recent years. The Stones’ concert in Hyde Park on Saturday took a poetic turn when Mick Jagger read from Shelley’s elegy ‘Adonais’ in memory of Brian. The choice was apposite, not least because Shelley also drowned in his twenties.
In answer to questions from the coroner at the inquest, on 7 July, Anna Wohlin said she had seen Brian taking his black pills the day he died. Janet Lawson emphasised that she had warned Brian and Frank Thorogood not to swim in their inebriated condition. ‘They disregarded my warning.’ The pathologist said Brian’s liver was twice normal size, his heart was larger than it should have been, and he had taken a fairly large quantity of a drug, though he didn’t specify what. The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure. Brian had drowned ‘whilst under the influence of alcohol and drugs’.
The funeral took place three days later at St Mary’s Parish Church in Cheltenham. Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman attended, as did the Stones’ keyboard player Ian Stewart, but not Mick Jagger or Keith Richards. Of Brian’s many lovers, the only identifiable attendees were Linda Lawrence and Suki Poitier. Anna Wohlin had already returned to Sweden. Pat Andrews says she would have come from London if the man from the News of the World had given her a lift, as he promised, but he didn’t. ‘So I had no way of going, did I?’ Still, there was a large crowd of press and curious onlookers at what was one of the first big pop-star funerals, and the first major 27 Club funeral, not that anybody used that term yet. The crowd followed the hearse to Cheltenham Cemetery where they watched the coffin lowered into the earth.
3
The death of Brian Jones seems clear cut. The inquest evidence was simple and convincing. Brian drowned in his swimming pool under the influence of drink and drugs.
Death was ascribed to misadventure, a legal word for accident. And so it was. But some deaths are more accidental than others. Musicians on the 27 Club long-list who died in road accidents, such as Dennis Boon of the Minutemen, who broke his neck after being thrown from his band’s tour van, or those who perished in plane crashes, like keyboardist Wally Yohn, clearly died through no fault of their own. Then there are others, including Brian Jones, whose death was the direct result of his behaviour. To mix alcohol and drugs, and then dive into a swimming-pool, was to swim into the arms of Death. Brian may not have meant to die at that moment, but he had been so careless for so long that it is not surprising he lost his life.
As clear as this seems, the death of Brian Jones has become one of the mysteries of rock ’n’ roll, with many people questioning the official version of what happened at Cotchford Farm. Even members of the Rolling Stones are doubtful. ‘And still the mystery of his death hasn’t been solved,’ Keith Richards has said. ‘I don’t know what happened, but there was some nasty business going on.’
He was referring to the widespread belief that Brian was murdered. The prime suspect is Frank Thorogood. It was well-known that Jones and Thorogood clashed over the building work at Cotchford Farm. The commonly suggested motive is that Brian wanted to fire Thorogood. This is unconvincing, not least because Thorogood was still on the job when Brian died, still friendly enough with his boss to socialise with him. Why would Brian ask Thorogood to his home for drinks and dinner if he meant to fire him? And why would Thorogood want to kill the man who paid his wages?
That is not to say that Thorogood was a nice person. There were incidents after Brian’s death that showed the builder in a poor light. Friends and neighbours were surprised when Thorogood and Tom Keylock made a bonfire of Brian’s possessions in the garden of the house shortly after the musician died. Why they did so is unclear. ‘[Frank] said they was told to do it,’ says handyman Les Hallett. ‘I went down there that evening after he died and on the bloomin’ bonfire was a sitar, half burned away. They chucked out a lot of stuff, burned it.’ Items went missing from the house during this clear-out, possibly stolen. Thorogood also took part in a drunken wake at the house that seemed like an excuse to have a party at Brian’s expense rather than honouring his memory. Then a local taxi driver who’d worked for Brian, Joan Fitzsimons, was beaten up and admitted to hospital with a fractured skull. The police looked into a suggestion that Thorogood may have been behind the assault, because of Fitzsimons’s supposed knowledge of what had happened to Brian. This led to a story in the Daily Express in August 1969, the first to question the official account of Brian’s death: ‘Brian Jones Death: New Probe’. But there was nothing to this. Fitzsimons had been assaulted by her boyfriend. He was later convicted of the crime.
For every question about Brian’s death, there is a simple and convincing explanation. Yet theorists tend to turn a blind eye to the facts, focusing instead on discrepancies in the story, or introducing new ‘evidence’, which is actually speculation or make-belief.
Those who claim that Brian was unlawfully killed typically argue that he was too good a swimmer to drown, pointing out that he had been a lifeguard in his youth. They forget that Brian was in poor health by 1969. He was also doped and drunk, though theorists dispute this. Linda Lawrence, mother of Brian’s son Julian (the second), is typical of the theorists in stating in an interview for this book that Brian consumed only ‘a couple of beers’ the night he died, which was not what the witnesses said or what the post-mortem found. Brian was drunk, having consumed the equivalent of seven shots of whisky, or three and a half pints of beer, according to blood analysis. The post-mortem also revealed that he had ingested drugs, the potency of which would have been enhanced by alcohol.
Nicholas Fitzgerald, who claimed to be a friend of Brian, was an early theorist. He said he actually witnessed Brian’s ‘murder’. His sensational story is undermined by the fact that he waited seventeen years to go public, finally telling his tale in a 1986 book, Brian Jones: The Inside Story of the Original Rolling Stone. On the night in question, Fitzgerald claimed he tried and failed to reach Brian on the telephone, so he and a friend went to Cotchford Farm. They were walking through the grounds in the dark when they saw Brian climbing out of his pool. Three men came forward, pushed Brian into the water and drowned him. Fitzgerald couldn’t identify the men because the lights ‘blotted out their features and made their faces look like blobs’. He claimed he had kept quiet for years for fear of his life. Sussex Police interviewed Fitzgerald and concluded that he was not a credible witness. ‘All we have here are unsubstantiated allegations from a man who will not make a statement, and whose memory, temperament and motives are questionable,’ the police informed HM Coroner.
The willingness of the media to report such stories, however wild, has encouraged theorists, especially around anniversaries in the case, which provide an excuse to revisit the story. In advance of the 25th anniversary of Brian’s death, Terry Rawlings began work on a book in conjunction with Tom Keylock, who now had an extraordinary story to tell. Keylock said that he had visited Frank Thorogood in hospital in the autumn of 1993, shortly before the builder’s death, and during the visit Thorogood had made a startling confession. ‘We started talking and he told me he wanted to put his house in order,’ Keylock is quoted as saying in Rawlings’s book, Who Killed Christopher Robin?
‘There�
�s something I have to tell you,’ said Thorogood. ‘It was me that did Brian.’
Keylock asked why.
‘Well, I just finally snapped, it just happened. That’s all there is to it.’
This confession is unconvincing, not least because it lacks detail. There is just the bald statement ‘It was me that did Brian’, which reads like a line from pulp fiction. And there is only Keylock’s word for it. Frank Thorogood’s daughter has disputed that her late father said any such thing, pointing out that he didn’t know he was about to die, so he was unlikely to incriminate himself. Nevertheless, the ‘deathbed confession’ became the centrepiece of Rawlings’s 1994 book. The ‘murder’ as described was apparently preceded by an argument between Brian and Thorogood over money, and Brian’s decision to fire his builder. The author concluded that the men argued again in the pool. ‘Frank became enraged [and] began plunging Brian repeatedly under’ until he drowned.
Another, even less impressive, book was published to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Brian’s death. In Paint it Black, Geoffrey Giuliano presented his readers with a transcript of an interview he claimed to have recorded with a man who approached him in a hotel in 1991 saying that he had been a labourer at Cotchford Farm in 1969, and had been in the pool with Brian and another workman the night Brian died. In fact, he and his mate had killed Brian. They had drowned him at the behest of Frank Thorogood. Giuliano referred to the confessor as Joe, an invented name, he admitted, adding that he didn’t know his real name. The confession is as absurd as it is unconvincing. Indeed, I air this and other theories not because they have merit but as examples of the fantastical stories typically told about the 27s after death.
Anna Wohlin chipped in with a book of her own, The Murder of Brian Jones. She disputes that Brian had a drink problem at the time of his death, or that he was abusing drugs, legal or illegal, as many theorists do. Yet she contradicts herself with stories of Brian doing exactly that. Wohlin was using prescription drugs at the time to get high, as she writes, keeping her drugs hidden from Brian. The couple had a fight when Brian discovered her stash. ‘My drugs are my business,’ she retorted. In the hours after Brian died, when the police were at Cotchford Farm, one of Wohlin’s priorities was to hide her pills. She also admitted to popping pills on the day she gave evidence at the inquest. Her book is most valuable for the insight it gives into the personality and behaviour of the woman Brian lived with at the end of his life.
As for how Brian died, the title of Wohlin’s book implies murder, but she doesn’t make a compelling case. Wohlin writes that Brian and Frank Thorogood were horsing around in the water, Brian pulling Frank under, the builder dunking Brian in return. Then she had gone indoors so she didn’t see what happened next. She drew her conclusions from the way Frank behaved afterwards – head bowed, hands shaking – and from a comment he made the next day, warning her to think about what she told the police. As a result she wrote that she had ‘concealed the truth’ from the authorities. If anything her vague allegations would point to manslaughter, not murder, but there is no hard evidence for either scenario.
Poor though these three books are, they served as the basis for a 2005 feature film, Stoned, which dramatised Brian’s life and death. In the movie Frank Thorogood is shown drowning Brian accidentally during horseplay in the pool. Partly as a result of the film this is the story that has gained popular acceptance. In fact, there is no strong evidence that Thorogood drowned Brian either accidentally or on purpose.
Coinciding with the release of Stoned the Brian Jones Fan Club issued a request for the police investigation to be reopened. Trevor Hobley, who runs the club, and Brian’s former lover Pat Andrews were of the opinion that Brian had been murdered, and believed that the best way to settle the matter was for his body to be exhumed and a new post-mortem conducted. That the musician had been buried in a metal casket offered hope that his remains were preserved. Despite their efforts, Brian continued to rest in peace.
Having kept silent for years, the nurse Janet Lawson re-entered the story, apparently telling a journalist that her 1969 police statement had been ‘a pack of lies … a load of rubbish’. She was quoted in the Mail on Sunday in 2008 saying the police put words into her mouth, which is hard to accept, considering her oral evidence to the coroner matched her sworn statement. She now believed Frank Thorogood drowned Brian accidentally during horseplay. Janet didn’t see Frank do it, any more than anyone else had. Like Anna Wohlin, she inferred guilt from the way the builder behaved: apparently he was slow to react when the alarm was raised, and he was shaking afterwards. Still, Sussex Police found no reason to reopen the case.
One by one the people involved in the story of Brian’s life and death were themselves dying. Frank Thorogood died in 1993. Janet Lawson died in 2008. Tom Keylock died in 2009. So did Allen Klein, the American accountant who had taken over management of the Stones in the 1960s, also getting involved in the management of the Beatles. Both bands fell out with Klein, who is often characterised as a crooked, even sinister figure. The most serious proven indictment against him was for tax evasion, for which he served a short prison sentence. Posthumously, he is named by theorists as the Mr Big behind Brian’s assassination.
‘Brian was murdered,’ asserts Brian’s ex, Linda Lawrence. ‘We’ve got evidence now.’ She is referring to herself and Trevor Hobley, of the fan club, whose research underpins her beliefs. Hobley is of the view that Brian was attacked by a gang of three workmen at Cotchford Farm on 2 July 1969 (though no such people were mentioned in the police statements). Hobley says that two of the three killers are still alive. He claims to know who they are, but doesn’t have sufficient evidence to name them, adding that neither has been spoken to by police. He says Brian was ‘rendered unconscious’ by these men and then drowned, while Tom Keylock and Frank Thorogood watched, Keylock apparently directing the murder (thought he wasn’t at the house, according to the inquest).
‘It was a horse trough that he’d been drowned in,’ says Linda Lawrence. This stems from a statement made years ago by the discredited Nicholas Fitzgerald, who said he had seen Brian being held upside down in a trough at the farm (though he wrote contradictorily in his book that Brian was drowned in the pool). The fact that the post-mortem states that Brian drowned in fresh water is used by theorists as corroboration that it was a horse trough. If he had drowned in the swimming-pool, Hobley and Lawrence presume tests would show the water in his lungs to be chlorinated. ‘He’d been pushed down into a horse trough,’ says Linda Lawrence, firmly. She is sure, having spoken to a mysterious figure – whom she and Hobley don’t name – who was apparently an assistant to the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem. What this person had to say convinced the theorists that officials in the case falsified evidence at the time – Lawrence says they were paid off – all of which is part of a conspiracy.
Linda Lawrence isn’t shy about using the c-word. ‘There’s been conspiracies all over the world about many, many things, and that’s just one of them,’ she says, further alleging that it was Allen Klein who ordered the assassination of Brian to gain control of the Rolling Stones, not wanting to deal with the band’s founder, who may have had a claim to ownership of the name and was due a substantial pay-off. ‘The Stones were broke at the time and Allen Klein, who I knew very well, and Don* and I knew very well, [he was] Mafia,’ she says. Pat Andrews also believes Klein was behind Brian’s death. By this argument not only Klein, but the pathologist, HM Coroner, Sussex Police, the three witnesses, and goodness knows who else, would all have been involved in one of the greatest crimes in show-business history and would have had to lie for decades to cover up the truth. This is not credible. And people are only free to talk in this way about Klein, without fear of being sued, because he is dead. ‘I would have said it to his face,’ asserts Lawrence. She had opportunities to do so. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t, but again I have a life of my own.’
Linda Lawrence and Pat Andrews are passionate on the
subject of the ‘murder’ of Brian Jones partly because of their sons, Brian’s children, the two Julians, now middle-aged men, and the millions they feel their boys are owed. Brian died broke. Although he founded the Rolling Stones, he had fallen behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in earnings because they wrote the songs. He also wasted money, as young people do, the 27s being typical in that respect. His estate was valued at only £33,787 ($53,721), most of which was the value of Cotchford Farm. His liabilities were much larger, £191,707 ($304,814). Because Brian didn’t make a will, his estate passed to his hapless parents. Lewis Jones said at the time that royalties and other money due would probably cancel his son’s debts. It is not known what if any agreement the family subsequently came to with the Rolling Stones over Brian’s share in the band, but a financial settlement was seemingly reached. Brian’s parents moved to a slightly bigger house in Cheltenham where they lived out their lives in modest comfort. In contrast, the surviving Stones became fabulously wealthy. Sir Mick Jagger was worth an estimated £200 million by 2013 ($318 million). But money has not percolated down to Brian’s sons, to the irritation of their mothers.
Pat Andrews maintains that her boy, Julian Mark (Julian I), should have inherited the Rolling Stones name, which she considers his birthright. Instead, she and Julian received nothing, and have had to put up with Jagger and Richards downplaying Brian’s role in the band, sometimes denigrating Brian personally. ‘And my life’s ambition has been to get justice for Brian,’ says Pat. ‘Yeah, he was a swine. He wasn’t the best of people. He didn’t always do what was right. He didn’t always treat people – particularly women – [well]. I’m not saying he was perfect, because he wasn’t.’ Nevertheless she loved him, and she believes he was murdered for money, a crime orchestrated by Allen Klein. ‘I think that deep down inside that’s what I believe,’ she says. Then she adds, with less conviction: ‘Maybe I watch too many detective [shows].’
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