PETE TOWNSHEND
REMEMBERING BRIAN JONES
"Brian Jones was a friend of mine in the early Who years. We first met the Stones when were ere still called The Detours, before Keith Moon joined the band…Brian looked like a pretty sheepdog. But the Mod girls in the audience screamed more at him than at Mick Jagger.
Brian played very well, I thought, and played harmonica, too, in a slightly more country style than Mick. On the song Last Time it was his guitar that repeated the intoxicating riff-catch. Brian was musical, almost a musicologist, in nature and loved to talk about music.
Brian and I hung out a lot from about 1964 to 1966. Part of the time he was seeing Anita Pallenberg. She was a stunning creature…One time in Paris I remember they took some drug and were so sexually stimulated they could hardly wait for me to leave the room before starting to shag. I felt Brian was living on a higher plane of decadence than anyone I would ever meet.
Brian and I used to go to a club called Scotch of St. James. Everyone hung out there. We were together when we first heard the song I Got You Babe. Brain was really excited and enthused by the song. He loved pop music as well as R&B — that appealed to me. I hated snobbery, although I'm said to say I later became rather snobbish about pop versus rock. We sat together there to watch Stevie Wonder's first UK show.
Brian never offered me drugs. I didn't use them, and he didn't press me. I was not seeing my girlfriend at the time. Had I been, he may have hit on her and I would have hated him, but in fact he was always very kind to me.
Brian was always very encouraging of my song writing. Brian loved my first Who song, I Can't Explain.
When we performed @ the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus I was very upset about Brian's condition. I was upset at Keith Richards' green complexion, too, but he seemed in good spirits. Brian seemed to be defeated. I took Mick and Keith aside and they were frank about it all. They said Brian had ceased to function, they were afraid he would slip away. They certainly were not hard-nosed about him. But they were determined not to let him drag them down, that was clear. Brian certainly slipped away that evening. He died soon after.
I was melodramatically upset when Brian died. He was the first friend of mine that had ever died. Brian was the first person I knew well in the business that died. It seemed to me to be a portent and thus, it proved to me. He deserved better and one day he will get it.
I've become angry about a business in which people (especially the press) sneer if someone tries to save their skin by going into rehab after raising hell.
Oliver Reed (actor)
This week my friend Oliver Reed died of raising hell. We applaud, we wait, then we nod sagely when they burn out. It's despicable. Oliver Reed should have been sacked every time he drank on a film set.
Brian Jones in his final days
Brian should have been sectioned into a mental hospital like a street-drunk, not allowed to flounder around in a heated swimming pool. If I'm honest, I suppose I was one of those friends who should have called the ambulance. Brian was a pleasant and quite well-educated fellow. Really.
Keith Moon? Well, I tried. But I know it isn't always possible to save the skin of someone whose number is up. But let no one pretend it's part of the pop myth.
I told Jim Morrison he was turning into a fat drunk in 1971. I could tell from his startled expression that until then no one had indicated they might even care.
A little while before he died Jimi Hendrix told me he owed me a lot. (He meant with respect to the guidance I gave him on what amplifiers to use when he first came to London but perhaps due to my unadulterated support).
A Normal Day for Brian, A Man Who Died Everyday’,
This was an eight-line tribute by Pete Townshend
That was published in The Times
shortly after Jones’ passing:
"I used to play my guitar as a kid
wishing that I could be like him
But today I changed my mind
I decided that I don’t want to die
But it was a normal day for Brian
Rock and Roll’s that way
It was a normal day for Brian
A man who died every day"
Notably, Townshend reneges on one of his most famous lines: “I hope I die before I get old” from ‘My Generation’. Whether the rebuke was purposefully meant to invoke ‘My Generation’ or not, it was powerful for a figure so deeply tied to the fatalistic freedom of youth to change his view due to the passing of a peer.
Jones’ legacy would forever be tied to his death, especially some the artists who paid tribute to him, notably Hendrix and Morrison, both passed at the same age within a few years. Townshend outlived them all and continues to carry the torch for rock and roll, solidifying the truth in his words that he didn’t want to live like a man who died every day."
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