After a moment he addressed the matter of the moment: ‘Now listen … cool it for a minute. I really would like to say something about Brian. About how we feel about him just goin’ when we didn’t expect it.’
He announced that he was going to read something by Shelley. Mick’s slurred enunciation made many of the audience at first believe it to be a poem by ‘Che’, the revolutionary leader. Then he proceeded to read first stanza 39 and then stanza 52 from Shelley’s Adonaïs:
Peace, peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep!
He hath awakened from the dream of life.
’Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings! We decay
Like corpses in a charnel. Fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
And then:
The One remains, the many change and pass.
Heaven’s light for ever shines, earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass
Stains the white radiance of Eternity
Until Death tramples it to fragments. – Die,
Before the group could plunge into the opening riff of ‘Honky Tonk Women’, several cardboard boxes were emptied into the air: hundreds of white butterflies rose above the stage. Yet it became apparent that, rather fittingly, this tribute to the memory of Brian Jones was somewhat flawed. The long, hot hours imprisoned in the cardboard boxes had led to the deaths of most of the butterflies, and only a small percentage escaped their prisons. For the entirety of their set, Mick and the Stones felt the corpses of desiccated butterflies scrunching beneath their feet as they moved about the stage. Thus did they enact their tribute to Brian, founder of the Rolling Stones.
Bibliography
BEAT Magazine 15 July 1967.
Booth, Stanley. Keith: Standing in the Shadows (New York: St. Martin's Gr) 1995.
Gorman, Paul. The Look: Adventures in Rock & Pop Fashion (London: Penguin) 2006.
Jackson, Laura. Brian Jones: The untold life and mysterious death of a rock legend (London: Piatkus) 2009.
Wyman, Bill. Stone Alone: Story of a Rock 'n' Roll Band (New York: Da Capo Press) 1997.
27: Brian Jones is the third in a new series of ebooks from Chris Salewicz.
The '27s' will examine the fate of, and myth surrounding, seven iconic music legends: Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Jim Morrison.
All were young stars with an abundance of artistic talent, an ability to capture the popular imagination, and an appetite for self-destruction.
All were dead at 27. Must the ferociously good die young?
***
27: Amy Winehouse - Out December 2011 - ISBN 9781780875378
27: Kurt Cobain - Out April 2012 - ISBN 9781780875385
27: Jimi Hendrix - Out June 2012 - ISBN 9781780875408
27: Janis Joplin - Out September 2012 - ISBN 9781780875415
27: Robert Johnson - Out December 2012 - ISBN 9781780875392
1 Jackson, pages 135–6
2 Jackson, ibid
3 [insert Paul Gorman ref.]
4 Jackson, page 63
5 Jackson, ibid.
6 Jackson, page 6
7 Jackson, page 5
8 Jackson, page 8
9 Jackson, page 11
10 Jackson, page 17
11 Jackson, page 21
12 Jackson, page 26
13 Jackson, page 33
14 Jackson, pages 52–3
15 Jackson, ibid.
17 Booth, page 38
18 Wyman, page 105
19 Wyman, ibid
20 Bill, page 116
21 Wyman, page 105
22 Jackson, page 163
23 Jackson, page 165
24 Jackson, page 167
25 BEAT Magazine
26 Gorman, page 109
27 Booth, page 104