Get a Line On You [Brian Jones]

Keith Richards (Rolling Stone Interview) Part 2

Time for the second part of this long af interview.

What was Brian like onstage?
He'd worked out these movements. In those days, little chicks would all have their favorites. Yeah, when you think the Rolling Stones magazine, the Beatles magazine came out once a month. Big sort of fan thing. It was a very old thing that one had the feeling had to change. All those teenyboppers.

Brian had some kind of genius for finding people, didn't he?
He did. He got us together . . . Charlie, Mick and me.

He brought Nico to the Velvet Underground.
He was into Dylan too, very early on. He was the only one of us who hung out with Dylan for a bit. A lot of people know Brian that I don't know, that I didn't know knew him who come up and say, "Yeah, I knew Brian."

He was great. It was only when you had to work with him that he got very hung up. Anita could tell you a lot about Brian, obviously, because she was Brian's chick for a long time. Brian did have that thing for pulling people together, for meeting people, didn't he?

Anita: Mixing. Mix it. Mix it, Charlie. Fix it, Charlie.

Keith: We're just trying to figure out why Brian couldn't be with Mick and me at the same time. "Why can't Mick come in?" "No, no," he'd say . . . he was a big whisperer too, Brian. Little giggles . . . you don't meet people like that. Since everybody got stoned, people just say what they want to say.

Brain got very fragile. As he went along, he got more and more fragile and delicate. His personality and physically. I think all that touring did a lot to break him. We worked our asses off from '63 to '66, right through those three years, non-stop. I believe we had two weeks off. That's nothing, I mean I tell that to B.B. King and he'll say, "I been doing it for years." But for cats like Brian . . . He was tough but one thing and another he slowly became more fragile. When I first met Brian he was like a little Welsh bull. He was broad, and he seemed to be very tough.

For a start, people were always laying stuff on him because he was a Stone. And he'd try it. He'd take anything. Any other sort of trip too, head trips. He never had time to work it out 'cause we were on the road all the time, always on the plane the next day. Eventually, it caught up.

Right until the last, Brian was trying to get it together. Just before he died, he was rehearsing with more people. Because it happened so quickly, people think . . .

Anita: They think he was really down. But he was really up.

Keith: And they also think that he was one of the Stones when he died. But in actual fact, he'd left. We went down to see him and he said, "I can't do it again. I can't start again and go on the road again like that again." And we said, "We understand. We'll come and see you in a couple weeks and see how you feel. Meantime, how do you want to say. Do you want to say that you've left?" And he said, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's say I've left and if I want to I can come back." "Because we've got to know. We've got to get someone to take your place because we're starting to think about getting it together for another tour. We've got itchy feet and we've got Mick Taylor lined up." We didn't really, we didn't have Mick waiting in the wings to bring on. But we wanted to know if we should get someone else or if Brian wanted to get back into it again. "I don't think I can," he said, "I don't think I can go to America and do those one-nighters anymore. I just can't." Two weeks later, they found him in the pool, man.

In those two weeks, he'd had musicians down there every day. He was rehearsing. I'd talk to him every day and he'd say, "It's coming along fine. Gonna get a really funky little band together and work and make a record."

Do you think his death was an accident?
Well, I don't want to say. Some very weird things happened that night, that's all I can say.

It could have as well been an accident. There were people there that suddenly disappeared . . . the whole thing with Brian is . . .