Free 27: Brian Jones by Chris Salewicz Page B

their careers – especially when it became widely believed that Mick had actually had penetrative intercourse with Anita during the filming of one of the film’s several sex scenes.
    Having temporarily moved into Redlands during this period, Brian had bought his own house in the country, Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield in Sussex. It was the former home of A.A. Milne, the writer of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, and it boasted a full-size swimming-pool in the garden. On 26 September Brian’s drug case was heard in court, with both Mick and Keith attending to give him moral support. Although Brian was found guilty, he escaped with a fine and a severe warning. Mick was learning how to play the guitar, with lessons from Eric Clapton. Did he imagine there might soon be a position to fill in the Rolling Stones?
    On 4 December, a launch party for the release of Beggars Banquet was held at Kensington’s Gore Hotel. A seven-course Elizabethan banquet was served. After the meal, Mick picked up a foam custard pie and thrust it into Brian’s face. Masochistically, Brian seemed to delight in this, as though it proved he was still part of the group.
    Especially in the United States, Beggars Banquet was very well received critically, almost with a breath of relief that the Stones had weathered their various storms and were back on form. The return to their blues and rock roots served them well, as did Jimmy Miller’s crisp and juicy production. ‘We were just coming out of Satanic Majesties . Mick was making movies, everything was on the point of dispersal. I had nicked Brian’s old lady. It was a mess. And Jimmy pulled Beggars Banquet out of all that,’ Keith told Crawdaddy! magazine in 1975.
    In fact, several of the ten songs on the album were relatively nondescript and time shows the record to be patchy. However, it contained a number of bona fide classics, notably its opener, the infamous but fantastic ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, ‘Street Fighting Man’, inspired by Mick’s participation in the Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam War riot, and the extraordinary ‘Stray Cat Blues’, almost an ode to paedophilia with its line ‘ I don’t care if you’re 15-years-old ’. Brian provided graceful slide guitar on the beautiful slow blues ‘No Expectations’. This was to be his last significant contribution to the group, like a reprise of his slide sound on Slim Harpo’s ‘I’m a King Bee’ on the group’s first album.
    However, the breadth of the album, coupled with Jimmy Miller’s experience in producing such specifically ‘album’ acts as Traffic and Spooky Tooth, marked Beggars Banquet as the Stones’ first ‘rock’ LP. They had successfully made the transition into the next stage of their career.
    It was not an evolution in which Brian Jones would participate, however. On 30 May 1969 Mick Taylor, a guitarist with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, was invited to come to Olympic. The next day he recorded ‘Honky Tonk Women’ with the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Miller adding the sound of the cowbell that gave the record its utterly distinctive sound. Brian had not been told about the recording session.
    Early in the morning of Saturday 7 June Keith crashed his Mercedes eight miles from Redlands. Although the car was written off on the tree he hit, Keith was unhurt, but Anita broke a collarbone. The day after the crash, Keith and Mick, along with Charlie, drove down to the country. Already, at Mick’s request, Alexis Korner had been down to Cotchford Farm to let Brian know how worried the group were about him. Now the three Stones themselves had gone down to see Brian at his new house. They discussed their differences over the direction of the group’s music:, and Brian agreed he couldn’t carry on in the Stones. ‘What we were trying to say was a very difficult thing,’ Keith admitted to the American