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

walking through and joining rings of kids and fans. You know I’ve never had a chance to do that much before. People are very nice here. I like it.’
    Brian also revealed how he’d been spending his time: ‘I did a Beatles’ session the other night, actually. On soprano saxophone, of all things. I’ve taken up playing reeds again. I used to play reed instruments. I bought a soprano saxophone the other day and ever since I have been doing sessions on it. There are soprano saxophones on the Stones’ records, future Beatle records. You know, it’s a funny thing – you get hold of something and put it on everyone’s records. It’s great. There’s a very nice recording scene going on right now in London.’
    Most of his time, he said, had of late been spent working on the new Stones’ album , Their Satanic Majesties Request : ‘The big job at hand is to get the LP done and we’re spending an awful lot of time on it this time. It’s going to be more of a production. We’ve really put some thought into it because people are still liking our albums so we’re trying to really give them something that will take them on a stage further. And so that they will take us on a stage further. We feel at the moment that our important work is to be done in the studio rather than in baseball halls and stadiums around the country. You see, once you’ve been around the country once or twice people have seen you and it’s a question of what’s to be gained by going around again. But, there’s a lot to be gained by letting them share our progressions because we are progressing musically very fast.’
    Of Monterey Pop itself, Brian Jones seemed to sense its far-reaching effect, giving a glimpse of his abiding political idealism: ‘I would like to see these affairs become a regular part of young community life because I think these people here – from what I’ve seen so far – are acting as a community. They have the community spirit, the community feeling. I haven’t seen any signs of any trouble or enmity. It’s very nice. People are showing each other around and it’s very beautiful. I’m glad I came. I’ll have lots of nice things to say when I get back home.’ [25]
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    On 13 September, Keith, Brian, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman arrived in New York to shoot the sleeve shot for Their Satanic Majesties Request . At immigration Keith was taken to one side and questioned for thirty minutes over the drugs trial. Then he was ordered to report to immigration offices in Manhattan the next day. As Brian’s case had not yet come to trial in Britain, he sailed through immigration. Mick Jagger, sporting the newly de rigueur mutton chop sideburns, arrived in New York on a later flight and went through an almost identical experience to Keith. While the Stones were in New York there was a climactic management meeting with Allen Klein. On 20 September, there was an announcement that Andrew Loog Oldham was being replaced as Stones’ manager by Klein.
    Brian, however, continued to disintegrate. He had spent ten days at the Priory in London on his return from Monterey . London was awash with rumours that he was about to leave the group. All the same, whatever state he was in he was working at Olympic Studios in west London with the Stones. After sessions on 5, 6 and 7 September, he had flown to Marbella in the south of Spain with Suki Poitier, the Portuguese-born former girlfriend of Tara Browne who had been with the Guinness heir in his fatal car smash the previous December. He returned to the Spanish resort with Suki, a doppelganger for Anita Pallenberg, on 20 October for several days. Brian needed to rest up: his court case was set for the end of the month.
    On 30 October 1967 he appeared in court. He was shaky and wan despite his faint tan, a consequence as much as anything of his previous night’s excesses with Jimi