Get a Line On You [Brian Jones]

Patti Smith

I actually wanted to write this chapter in forever, sadly university is being a bitch and I don't have much time for Wattpad anymore or even to look through stuff by the Stones, which got to the point I managed to misspell Brian Jones and started to look for Brain Pones on Google. 👏

I seriously need a break. Well never mind, let's talk about Patti Smith. 

First things first, Brian and her didn't know each other, so why talk about her then?

Well she's a huge Brian fan, I appreciate her a lot and this is my book, so why not talk about her?

Well the only question is where to start?

Maybe with this:

"We saw Godard's One Plus One. The film made a huge impression on me politically and renewed my affection for the Rolling Stones. Only days later, the French papers were covered  with the face of Brian Jones: Est Mort, 27 Ans. I mourned the fact we could not attend the free concert the remaining Stones held in his memory for over 250,000 in Hyde Park, where Mick Jagger released 3,500 white butterflies into the London sky. I laid my drawing pencils aside and began a cycle of poems to Brian Jones, for the first time expressing my love for rock and roll within my own work."

 This is an extract of Patti's book Just Kids. (It's a great book and definitely worth to read, not only because of the random Brian Jones mentions.)

"One evening, having read my notebook, Robert designed a totem for Brian Jones. It was shaped like an arrow, with rabbit hair for the White Rabbit, a line from Winnie the Pooh, and a locket sized portrait for Brian. We finished it together and hung it over our bed."

There are a few more mentions of Brian throughout the book, but I suppose this is enough to give a first impression. 

Now on to the poems, as already mentioned above she wrote a few for Brian. (She wrote several for Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull as well, she even dedicated a book to Anita, which I thought really cool and now I'm considering doing the same if I ever manage to get a book published. Sorry for these random notes, but this book seems to be the only place I can get rid of them without sounding totally insane. )

Anyway, you don't find many traces of them, well I found one on YouTube:

Brian Jones - Patti Smith

 After some more research I stumbled upon this as well:

"I grabbed Brian Jones' ankle once. It was in 1964 and they were playing with Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles in a high school auditorium in South Jersey. Mick Jagger looked very nervous. The funniest one was Keith because he was really young and nervous and his ears were big and he had pimples and his teeth were kind of bucked and cute. But I loved Brian Jones. He was sitting on the floor playing one of those Ventures electric sitars, and these girls kept pushing me and pushing me. They pushed me right on the stage and then I felt myself going under and I was gonna be trampled and out of total desperation I reached up and grabbed the first thing I saw; Brian Jones' ankle. I was grabbing him to save myself. And he looked at me. And I looked at him. And he smiled. He just smiled at me. (sigh) My Brian Jones story. " - Patti Smith

No idea if that is indeed true or not, but I thought it was a cute story. 

Another Brian themed poem by Patti is Death by Water:

How long ago was man promised?
never again. no not again.
no death by water.

yet how many questions arise like yeast.
like the perfect dead:

was the red sea really?
does man rule the river?
did she/he drown?
was it natural causes?
was it sorrow?

How many tears on your pillow.
crocodile or real. water shed.
brian jones drowned. face down.
in a child's pool of water. youth fountain.

Jim Morrison. our leather lamb. he feared
the bathroom. he warned us. hyacinth house.
how did he know. how did christ know no
doubt about it. a marked man is always the
first to know. he died in a bathtub. slumped
over like Marat. the only clue was the red
rash over his heart.
someone said there were last words. water
poured from his eyes. he was truly immaculate
yet surprised. outside it was raining. storm
cloudes. danger waters. the tub was overflowing.
he looked up. then he cried out:
"but you promised"

This one was indeed published in a poetry collection named Seventh Heaven, in which one can find a few more references to Brian Jones:

"glittering bones
second blond child
after brian jones"

(...)

"And I'd like to see
her rise again
her white white bones
with baby brian jones
baby brian jones
like blushing
baby dolls"

- Patti Smith, Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971)

There are a few interviews where she mentions him as well or rather talks about him in length and she reads poems to him on his birthday, while trying to look for more on that, I found this and thought this to be an interesting theory:

 "Watching early Rolling Stones footage, Brian Jones appears to be the wild one, but at the same time he seemed so sensitive and hurt, like a vulnerable "bad girl" who cares so much she doesn't care. Maybe that's it--the Brian Jones story as rock-n-roll allegory that bad girls can identify with? Surely we aren't given a place of our own in the rock-n-roll pantheon. With very few exceptions, our voices weren't documented. Girls have to identify with what little there was (is) and make do by twisting things around in our own heads; reconfiguring all the "she's" to "he's" in pop songs, reversing gender roles in our minds, creating ambiguity & fluidity -- recreating ourselves by actively making new meanings, like little girls making their Ken dolls have sex with each other and cutting off all Barbie's hair. If we are artists, we sometimes do this by mining pop culture for fossils we turn into broken mirrors we use to cast new reflections with.

This could explain Patti Smith's fascination with Brian. Both were androgynous: Brian wearing lady's jewelry and decorative dandy clothing and growing his hair long; Patti staying thin like an adolescent boy without any hips even after she gave her baby up for adoption."  

One of the main reasons I found this interesting is probably that I wondered if this was indeed true. I can only speak for myself of course, and well I probably fit into the category of a bad girl/rebel, according to the people around me and well I suppose I might have a fascination with Brian as well. I don't exactly see myself as a rebel though, I just speak my mind and it's not my fault nobody shares my opinion or that I have to disagree with everyone. Again sorry for this a bit more personal bit. This really seems to be the only place to talk about such things. 😅

Questions, Submissions or anything else is welcome. 

I think there might have been one on the last few chapters, if I missed it I'm sorry. As soon as I have a bit more time I'll look through this book and try to write everything down I still wanted to do a chapter about and well reply to any missed comments. 

Well thanks for reading, voting & commenting!♡♡♡