Here's the detail that tells you everything: in the Rolling Stones' earliest days, Brian Jones paid himself five pounds more than his bandmates — because it was his band. He founded it, named it, booked it, and shaped its sound. Within seven years he'd been pushed to its margins, and within a month of leaving it he was dead at 27, at the bottom of a swimming pool at Winnie-the-Pooh's old house. The 27 Club as popular legend begins with him.
The founder
Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones was born February 28, 1942, in genteel Cheltenham, a gifted, rebellious musician who fled to London to play the blues. In 1962 he placed the ad, assembled the players — including a couple of R&B fanatics named Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — and christened the group from a Muddy Waters song. In the beginning, the Rolling Stones were Brian's: he ran rehearsals, negotiated the gigs, and served as the band's blond, dangerous visual centerpiece.
The colorist
What secured Jones's musical immortality wasn't leadership but ears. As Jagger and Richards grew into songwriters — a shift managed by Andrew Loog Oldham that steadily demoted Jones — he reinvented himself as rock's great colorist, picking up nearly any instrument and finding the sound a song needed: the sitar snaking through "Paint It Black," the marimba on "Under My Thumb," the dulcimer on "Lady Jane," the recorder on "Ruby Tuesday," the mellotron on "2000 Light Years from Home," and the slide guitar that had defined the band's early records. The Stones' most adventurous stretch is, sonically, the Brian Jones era.
He was also years ahead of the culture: in 1968 he traveled to Morocco to record the Master Musicians of Joujouka, producing one of the first true world-music field recordings by a rock star, released after his death.
The fall
The decline was steep and painful: drug busts that made touring America impossible, worsening health, deepening isolation from a band that had outgrown its founder — compounded when Anita Pallenberg left him for Richards. By June 1969, when Jagger, Richards, and Charlie Watts drove to his farmhouse to make the split official, Jones had barely played on the band's recent work.
That farmhouse was Cotchford Farm — the former home of A.A. Milne, where the real Hundred Acre Wood stories were written. There, less than a month later, on the night of July 2–3, 1969, Jones was found motionless in his swimming pool. The coroner ruled death by misadventure, noting drink, drugs, and an enlarged heart and liver. He was 27. Theories of foul play — centering on a builder living at the property — have circulated for decades, fueled by alleged confessions, but no charges were ever brought.
Legacy
Two days after his death, the Stones played their free concert in Hyde Park before a quarter million people and turned it into his wake — Jagger read from Shelley's elegy "Adonais" and thousands of white butterflies were released over the crowd. Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Stones in 1989. And his death fixed a date in cultural memory: July 3, 1969 — the day the 27 Club, as the world would come to know it, truly began. Jim Morrison died two years later to the day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Brian Jones found the Rolling Stones? Yes — he formed the band in 1962, named it after a Muddy Waters song, and led it in its early years before Jagger and Richards's songwriting shifted the power balance.
What instruments did Brian Jones play? Nearly everything: guitar and slide guitar, sitar ("Paint It Black"), marimba ("Under My Thumb"), dulcimer ("Lady Jane"), recorder ("Ruby Tuesday"), mellotron, harmonica, and more.
How did Brian Jones die? He was found in his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm on the night of July 2–3, 1969, weeks after leaving the Stones. The coroner ruled death by misadventure; foul-play theories persist but were never proven.
What is the connection between Brian Jones and Winnie-the-Pooh? His home, Cotchford Farm, previously belonged to A.A. Milne, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books.