BRIAN JONES:

THE DROWNING

Part 2

Brian Jones’s death by drowning was hauntingly uncanny. Days after the sacking, Mick and Marianne threw the I-Ching to see what the future might hold for him. “Death by water,” came up. The prophecy was repeated on a second throw.

Perhaps this reminded Jagger of an incident the year before at Richards’s country estate. Freaked over the possibility of jail time for his most recent drug bust, Brian plunged into Keith’s moat, screaming that he was going to kill himself. Keith laughed while Mick dove into the water after him.

“You want to drown, you bastard?” he cried, dragging him ashore. “Well, I’m going to bloody well drown you, then. Look at these velvet trousers – cost me fifty quid. You’ve ruined them!”

Even Frank Thorogood, the resident carpenter at Cotchford, bullied him and berated him as a “pampered rock star.” At last, Brian threatened to fire the contractor for shoddy work and for extortionate charges. That night, Thorogood drowned his employer in the estate swimming pool. Anna Wohlin, indoors at the time, insisted that Brian was a good swimmer and not intoxicated.  

Two days later, the Rolling Stones – with new guitarist, Mick Taylor – threw a memorial concert for Jones in Hyde Park. Jagger read two stanzas from Shelley’s “Adonais,” then released two-thousand butterflies, most dead from suffocation. 

Soon the Doors' Jim Morrison -- who, two years later, would die on the same day as Brian -- wrote "Ode To L.A. While Thinking Of Brian Jones, Deceased.” Then the Who’s Pete Townshend followed with his poem, "A Normal Day For Brian, A Man Who Died Every Day."  

Marianne Faithfull had a different perspective on her ex-lover whom she called her “twin.” “One of the things that keeps you alive when you’re on the skids is that people care what happens to you,” she wrote. “It’s your life line, and with Brian nobody really cared anymore.”  

Except her. After Brian’s death the As Tears Go By star took a massive overdose of Tuinol and fell into a six-day coma. “Everyone was taking his death so in stride, for God’s sake!” she said. “Well, I thought, I’ll show you! You want pain and suffering? I’ll show you pain and suffering!” In her coma she was met by the resplendent ghost of Brian decked in medieval costume, his hair green, and “Buddhist lightning bolts tattooed on his palms.” 

Beckoning her to a cliffside, he called: “Death is the next great adventure… Coming?”

When Marianne finally opened her eyes, she found an incredulous Mick Jagger at her bedside. She tried to tell him her dream, but he refused to hear it. Then he left her for good. 

“Either you’re dead, or you move along,” Sir Mick, the consummate rock survivor, had always said.