BRIAN JONES:

THE DROWNING

Part 1

Forty years ago, Rolling Stones' founder, Brian Jones, drowned in his swimming pool. At the time, 1969, authorities called it “death by misadventure.” The Sussex police have just announced that they may reopen the case as a homicide. The decision is based in part on a recent eyewitness report that the guitarist was in fact drowned by his live-in carpenter, Frank Thorogood. 

Before dying of cancer in 1994,  Thorogood himself was said to have confessed the murder to Stones’ chauffeur, Tom Keylock. In her 2001 memoir, Jones’s girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, another eyewitness to the tragedy, also fingered Thorogood. She alleged that band managers put her on the next plane back to Sweden, threatening her life should she talk to authorities. 

The Jones case harks back to that of his friend, Jimi Hendrix, who died in London a year later under even more mysterious circumstances. In 1993, the case was reopened by Scotland Yard as a possible homicide only to be reclosed months later due to insufficient evidence. 

Similar mysteries surround other deceased stars, notably Kurt Cobain and, now, Michael Jackson. 

Strangely, many had predicted early ends for themselves. Like Jones, both Hendrix and Cobain (as well as Morrison and Janis) died at age 27. Once Jones, while tripping on acid, was told by his bandmate, Keith Richards: “You’ll never make thirty, man.” Brian replied: “I know.” Not long before, when the guitarist saw a goat being led to slaughter in Morocco, he had cried, “That’s ME!” The Stones laughed and agreed. 

In her autobiography, Jagger’s ex-lover, Marianne Faithfull, related how he and and Keith had "a real vendetta,” against Brian, and "unmercifully taunted" him. Guitarist, Ry Cooder, observed the same thing during the Let It Bleed sessions, two months before the drowning. “Jagger was always very contemptuous of Brian and told him he was washed up,” he recalled. 

While the singer later conceded that he had been hard on his hypersensitive, drugged-out bandmate, he declared, “We carried Brian for quite a long time. We put up with his tirades and his not turning up for over a year.” 

At last the Stones traveled out to Brian’s Cotchford Farm, the former residence of Winnie-the-Pooh’s A.A. Milne, and fired him. “I felt sorry for him,” drummer Charlie Watts later wrote. “We took his one thing away, which was being in a band. I’m sure it nearly killed him when we sacked him.” 

Charlie and bassist, Bill Wyman, were the only Stones to attend Brian's funeral weeks later. 

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