Read Online 27: Brian Jones by Chris Salewicz - Free Book Online Page A

sexual science-fiction fantasy Barbarella , had not in fact committed herself to Keith – although she had committed to leaving Brian. Just to add to the atmosphere of confusion, despite having apparently won Anita, Keith began an affair with a German model called Uschi Obermaier, who accompanied him to the quartet of German shows. This seemed only to rub Brian’s face even deeper into the dirt of his depression, a personal shame that would have been magnified a thousand times if he had appreciated this was the last time that he would tour with the Stones.
    In mid-May Keith and Anita flew to Cannes for the annual film festival. A Degree of Murder was Germany’s official entry that year. As Brian had composed the musical soundtrack, he also arrived in the south of France, checking into the same hotel as Keith and Anita. The first night he was there, Brian tried to persuade Anita to go back to him, as Keith waited patiently in his room.
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    At 4 p.m. on 22 June 1967, around the same time as Mick and Keith – having elected for trial by jury – were leaving court at West Sussex Quarter Sessions, Brian was busted for possession of cannabis at the flat in Courtfield Road. With him was a friend, 24-year-old Prince Stanislaus ‘Stash’ Klossowski de Rola. The pair appeared the next morning at West London Magistrates, where Brian also elected for trial by jury. Ever a worrier, Brian was to be driven literally sick by these events.
    On 15 June Mick and Keith added vocals to ‘All You Need Is Love’, the Beatles’ next single. When it was released on 7 July, the B-side – ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’ – featured Brian playing soprano saxophone. The day after the recording at Abbey Road, Keith and Anita flew to Paris. Mick, Marianne, and Marianne’s son Nicholas and his nanny went to Tangier.
    Brian, however, flew to northern California, accompanied by Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham, for the weekend of 16 to 18 June. His destination was Monterey Pop, south of San Francisco. This was the first of the ‘Love Generation’ mass festivals, at which Brian arrived in the Mamas and Papas’ private plane, and where Brian introduced the set by his friend Jimi Hendrix. The event, at which drug consumption was blatant, marked a significant cultural shift: the symbolic inauguration of ‘rock music’ as a creative entity – and marketing force.
    Brian’s presence at Monterey indicated that – unlike the rest of the Rolling Stones – he was as in touch with the zeitgeist as when he had decided to form a blues group. So moved was Brian by the festival’s spirit that he gave a rare interview, to Beat magazine. ‘I just came away for a few days and it’s so nice to get on someone else’s scene. It’s a very beautiful scene happening here,’ he told the reporter, saying he regretted the other Stones had not also come to California with him. ‘We record practically all the time as the Beatles do. We just got about a week off so I came over here with Andrew. The others have sort of split to various places, I think, I’m not quite sure. But nobody seemed to get it together to come over here. I wish they had ’cause they have missed a very nice scene.’
    In the lace-encrusted wrap he wore at the festival, Brian looked like a mediaeval English monarch – apart from the can of Budweiser that was permanently in his hand. Hanging at Monterey with Nico, singer with emerging act the Velvet Underground, earned them the rubric of the King and Queen of Monterey Pop.
    â€˜A lot of people have been sort of critical of this kind of happening in this country. The uptight people,’ the Beat interviewer said to him.
    â€˜They’re frightened of trouble but I don’t expect any trouble, do you?’ considered Brian. ‘It has been wonderful. I have been walking freely amongst everybody. Yesterday I was