Gary James' Interview With A Friend Of Rolling Stones' Guitarist Brian Jones
Prince Stash Klossowski De Rola



A new film is being released in April, 2020 titled Rolling Stone: Life And Death Of Brian Jones. Brian Jones of course was the guitarist and original member of The Rolling Stones who died under mysterious circumstances at his home in England on July 3^rd, 1969. Prince Stash De Rola appears in this new documentary. He was a close friend of Brian Jones. We spoke with him about his friendship with Brian Jones and this new film.

Q - Prince Stash, I just have to ask, are you a real Prince? Am I talking to royalty?

A - There's an American confusion between royalty and nobility. I'm from very ancient nobility. I'd say I have some royal blood. I'm not a royal prince.

Q - You're in this new documentary on Brian Jones, produced by Danny Garcia.

A - You know there's several of them. There's another one that I'm in as well that is coming out, done by the French. I suppose they have more money so they'll have Rolling Stones' music in it.

Q - Last year was the 50^th anniversary of Brian's death. I wonder why these films are surfacing this year. (2020)

A - The French Cultural Channel is doing one. Danny (Garcia - Rolling Stone: Life And Death Of Brian Jones producer) didn't get it out last year. Donovan and a number of people organized a tribute concert. We tried to do a number of things. We tried to get a statue in Cheltenham. It was just conflicting with the classical festival. So, it wasn't feasible to do it on the date. In any case, the emphasis on his death is rather sordid to me and more hurtful than anything else.

Q - How did you meet Brian Jones and what did you guys have in common?

A - Well, first of all we met because I was in a band with a legendary fellow called Vince Taylor. He was a rock 'n' roller who was a star when The Stones were just beginning, even before. He was sort of a sexy version of Gene Vincent initially and by the time I was with him he had a different look. We were in this very successful band. We toured very successfully, causing a sensation, etc. Then came the call from the record company that we were to co-headline with The Stones at the Paris Olympic during the Easter weekend of 1965, which actually means we played a series of gigs with them. I refute the term "opening for" because we didn't open for The Stones. It was a Battle Of The Bands more or less. There were a great number of acts on the same bill that played one, two numbers and went off. There was even a magician. Then we came on and we played our entire set which was about twenty-odd minutes just like The Stones. In the wake of The Stones had come a great number of young teenage English girls and we were determined to win them over, and indeed we did. The Stones were not in their dressing room when we played. They were right in the wings, observing every move we made. So, at the end of the first night, which was Good Friday, 1965, we were coming off the stage. It had been a very successful set. Mick sort of intercepted Vince Taylor with the rest of us as we filed out off stage and he said, "Have you been on?" Vince said, "No. We've been rehearsing," and kind of blew him off without even breaking stride. But, as I was walking past Brian Jones I locked eyes and he came and shook my hand. It was magic instantly. We became instant friends at that moment. I said, "I'm taking you out." I had Anita Pallenberg with me, oddly enough. My old friend Zouzou was dating Brian at the time. It was an occasional girlfriend of Brian's. A number of people joined us and we hit all the fashionable clubs, the best clubs in Paris. Then we went to Donald Cammell and Deborah Dixon's apartment for a party there, Donald Cammell being the future director of Performance, the film with Mick Jagger, Jamie Fox and Anita Pallenberg. So, we did all that and then we took Brian back to his hotel at dawn and there were these English girls who staggered. They were sleeping on newspapers in the street in front of the hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of Brian as he came in. We staggered in and they launched a barrage of Instamatics. I always tell people I wish some of those pictures would surface because it must have been quite a sight. We were quite disheveled and out of our minds. (laughs) It was very early in the morning.

Q - What instrument did you play?

A - I was a percussionist and the second singer in the band. It was an act where you just didn't stand in front. It involved a lot of dancing. It was very sexy. I was the first rock 'n' roller to wear glitter. It was amazing. They only had their first albums out.

Q - Vince Taylor wasn't a Blues artist then, but more of a Pop artist?

A - Rock 'n' Roll. We didn't do any Blues, in fact at that time The Stones weren't doing Blues music. They were doing Rhythm And Blues. The fact The Rolling Stones were the only band that I have ever known who could take one of those great, at the time, obscure American, Black, Rhythm And Blues songs and turn it into something extraordinary. It wasn't just a cover. There was something always extra and sensational to their version. Oddly enough, they were really appreciated by the Black community in America. When they came up with "Satisfaction" it impressed a lot of important African-American musicians. It's amazing. The whole thing is extraordinary. Otis Redding covered "Satisfaction". It was one of those things, the cross pollination that happened with The Stones.

Q - It took a few tours for The Stones to catch on in the U.S., didn't it?

A - Exactly. The first tour was organized by that idiot, Eric Easton. They always blame Andrew Oldham for things, but Eric Easton was a nasty piece of work.

Q - I was led to believe he was the silent business partner.

A - Yeah, right. He was the one who said this band would only last a couple of years and you've got to squeeze it like a lemon. He's the one who grabbed publishing. Nobody understood what publishing was all about. You could be fleeced like a sheep in those days by those type of people because nobody understood the money aspect of things, the huge earnings that could be derived from publishing.

Q - You say the British establishment hated The Stones?

A - And how. In '67 they considered The Stones were a menace to society.

Q - How can that be? Look at all the tourist dollars coming into England because of the British Invasion.

A - The establishment view was that this was... I was the target of all that abuse as well just for having long hair. I mean, it's hard for any 21^st Century person to even come close to comprehending that when I personally stepped out on the street in a place like Geneva, Switzerland, the entire street would freeze-frame and everybody would look at you with expressions of utter wonder and disarray or outright hostility. I came back from America in '65 to Switzerland and this person, thinking I was some American hippie at Customs said, "Well, if my son looked like that I'd kill him with my own hands." He said it with such an expression of hatred. It was absolutely outstanding and constantly one came across that kind of nagging hostility which went from people trying to provoke you. They went so far that at times you really had to fight your way through this because people would randomly attack you.

Q - Your hair wasn't long, was it? It probably touched your collar?

A - Initially I had longer hair than in the pictures from '67. Vidal Sassoon cut my hair in the Prince Valiant style and that became a kind of trademark for the world, but I had much longer hair in the earlier pictures. In '65 I had quite long hair like nobody, very few people.

Q - As I look back on the reaction of people to long hair in the 1960s, it's really strange. Great men in history have had long hair.

A - I know, but there was something about it. What it was, was the young girls liked it. Your average young guy with short hair or a crew cut suddenly found himself threatened in his own masculinity. It was a challenge to their whole scene. The girls were flocking to us and they didn't like that. That was one of those things, "Are you a boy or are you a girl?" They'd always taunt you like that.

Q - Yes, and The Barbarians actually had a hit record with that title, "Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl?"

A - I don't remember, but we experienced that in '65. But anyway, that's how we met. As Bill Wyman writes in Stone Alone, we became friends for life with Brian.

Q - What I didn't realize is that Brian lost a sister to leukemia and his parents became distant to him. Is that true?

A - We don't know that. That's what they say. Parents were not lolly gaggling kids like they do today. My generation was Brian's generation. He was only a few months older than me. We were both born in the same year. He in February. I in October. I never saw my parents. My mother would ring the footman. He'd tell the nurse and we would be brought in the presence of Mother for fifteen minutes in the morning and that was it. We hardly ever saw our father. It was very, very different in those days. I those days Brian and I didn't speak much about our parents 'cause we were kind of rebellious youth.

Q - The first couple of tours of England, The Stones were really a cover band. They didn't write their own material. Andrew Loog Oldham told Mick and Keith to get to the next level they would have to write their own songs. So he locked them in a room and they came up with "Tell Me", if I'm not mistaken.

A - One of those.

Q - Why wasn't Brian included in the songwriting?

A - Because Brian... this is something that the biographies get wrong. First of all, there was this dreadful sort of Edith Grove sort of apartment which was a real slum. There was a time when Mick, Keith and young Andrew (Loog Oldham), who was a young kid as well, were living in the same apartment, whereas Brian had migrated to the Lawrence family. He was with Linda Lawrence, who would have his son. He'd already fathered a number of kids, but at the time it looked like he would marry Linda Lawrence. So, he was living in Windsor. That's why he wasn't included in that. It was a geographic matter and he was off on his own scene at that time. It wasn't a rejection of him.

Q - Mick and Keith couldn't have asked Brian to come over where they were living and asked him to participate in the songwriting?

A - I can only guess about this in a certain way. What I know for sure is they started trying this thing out thinking they would fail. They found a way to come up with some things and after a lot of trial and error they did discover they had the knack to come up with those songs, which Brian was delighted (with). Brian couldn't write a Pop song to save his life. He was far too much of a perfectionist and he couldn't come up with those sort of ideas. Paradoxically, his own musicality prevented him from doing that. It's a knack whether you can juggle or write a song. It's not something that's a spontaneous thing. What Brian did, and people seem to forget, is that Brian then would rule the studio. He would come up with how to fix these songs. They would come up with a melody and lyrics and Brian would add not much more than color. What he did was absolutely extraordinary. He was like an alchemist taking raw matter and turning it into a magnificent, immortal substance.

Q - Would The Stones let you in on their recording sessions?

A - Yes. I was in on many, many recording sessions over time.

Q - Lucky you!

A - I played on a few of them.

Q - What did you play on?

A - I played percussion on a few tracks. I saw it first hand how Brian did it. I think I saw on film how he did the "Ruby Tuesday" part, the recording part, that recorder part. It was fabulous. I walked up to him and he said, "I'm doing it again." I said, "Why?" He said, "I'm going to alter the tone of it." He had that kind of extraordinary perfectionism. He was a great perfectionist, which is why he didn't write. He would think, "Oh no, this is embarrassing." He was also quite shy about showing something that was less than perfect. However, in sharp contrast to what I'm telling you, when we worked together in '67, we worked on avant garde ideas and he didn't think of those... He asked me directly, "Do you mind if we do that as a Rolling Stones thing, as a thing for The Stones to do?" I said no. There was no doubt in his mind that this could be used in the future in some Rolling Stones recording.

Q - I interviewed someone awhile back who told me he can teach people how to write hit songs. I say if that were true, everybody would be writing hit songs. And you say what to that?

A - That's completely absurd. But nowadays of course you have to remember Gary that today you can do things that were absolutely impossible. You have computers. You have with a couple of electronic devices do a little bit here and a little bit there. You can cut and splice without having to use scissors and Scotch tape. You can do all that stuff electronically. So, you can probably illusion yourself that you can do stuff like that person said to you.

Q - Because Brian didn't write with Mick and Keith, is that when he started to fall apart? He was so strong in the beginning. He named the group. He put the group together. He was the best dressed. He was the best looking.

A - Alright, alright. Hold on a second. Let's take one thing at a time. Yes, he did come out firstly with the name. The group was an amalgam, as he himself points out, of two different groups. Initially they were very enthusiastic about one another. Initially the band was Brian, Stu (pianist Ian Stewart), with whoever could play drums and bass. They didn't get anywhere. Then, Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys was this other group of fellas that included Dick Taylor, Mick and Keith. They still didn't have Charlie Watts. They still didn't have Bill Wyman until much later. Some people say Brian hired the musicians. No, he wasn't Count Basie. Hiring musicians and having your band is when you're a band leader and you can pay those people and you can dismiss them. This was like forming a group. It's very different and people get very bellicose about this. So, that's what I wanted to point out, as a free association of musicians that got together, fledgling musicians.

Q - But, he played a very prominent part in the band in the beginning.

A - Oh, he played the foremost part. There's no doubt about it.

Q - When he wasn't part of the songwriting process.

A - That a red herring, Gary. That's a complete red herring. He was absolutely included. You can write all the songs you want until you have them and get to the studio. It doesn't mean anything. It's not because he wasn't included at the beginning of those songs. That sort of thing that he was dissatisfied is a complete legend. He wasn't dissatisfied about that. He had such a key part to play in getting those songs on wax and putting them in shape, adding the instruments, doing all that. All Brian's contributions made those songs when you think of it. All the ones that immediately come to mind, "Under My Thumb", "Paint It Black", etc, etc. "Ruby Tuesday", "Lady Jane". As the years went by, Brian's innovations and his sound and his arranging of those songs were absolutely key to their success. So, how would he have been estranged, as people say? There is and was in all bands, especially in English bands, there's that thing where you wind each other up. You tease each other mercilessly. And Brian sometimes took it less well than others. He was over sensitive at times. But you know these moments of discouragement to exhaustion and over-sensitivity and he was of weaker health than the others, all played a part in his being discouraged at times, but he was very enthusiastic. It's a complete legend that from the beginning they dissed him and he was so distressed.

Q - Did you sense any jealousy on the part of Mick and/or Keith towards Brian?

A - No. Absolutely not. Brian and Keith were very close. Very, very close. Do you know that at one point both of them went to take flamenco lessons? They sort of gave up. It exasperated them. They weren't that good about it. They just picked up vaguely and got very dated with the whole thing and gave up immediately. But Keith always played a bit of flamenco (guitar) to this day.

Q - Is it your belief that Brian was murdered?

A - My belief? He wasn't murdered, it was more like a kind of; my sense of it was it was more like manslaughter, tragic, sordid manslaughter type of thing. The key to the whole thing was there were these dreadful louts, builders, leeched on Brian and did little work or shoddy work and it took forever. English builders are not very good at things. They'll take out a hammer, give one hammer blow and then put it down and say, "Put the kettle on," and they start to have tea. When you have a place in England there's always endless delays in getting it completed. With Brian it was extreme. They just stalled the materials, piled on the fake costs. They did all that kind of thing and he was fairly oblivious to it, but growing increasingly dissatisfied. Then there was the perennial problem that affected all of The Stones of Allen Klein handling the money in America and never sending the required funds. It was always late. People's phone bills weren't paid. It wasn't just to Brian that this happened. But in Brian's case it had tragic consequences because when he wanted to fire the builders they presented him with outrageous bills and the money still wasn't there to pay.

Q - It it true that the builders actually moved into Brian's house?

A - This one guy did move into a place there because it was convenient supposedly

Q - So, he had Brian's approval then?

A - Yeah, yeah. But they stole left and right. Brian might have been oblivious. They did the classic thing, they inflated all the supply bills. The ordered things for their own places. That's why this one guy got fired from Redlands and still got the job, because Tom Keylock is very much maligned, but he was someone we were quite fond of who was a Mr. Fix It sort of thing for everything and he knew the guys. So, the guy got the job.

Q - As I've always understood it, it was horseplay that led to Brian's death.

A - But nobody knows for sure.

Q - Could it just be that Brian went for a swim and had a heart attack?

A - He was subject to seizures, which I never witnessed, but other people have where you had to turn him on his side. There are two or three reliable witnesses to Brian suddenly blacking out. We thought initially he must have had swum under water and there's a reflex which gliders in Special Forces experience. It's one of the perils of those things. When you push your body in sudden circumstances your body suddenly reacts desperately, acting to wanting to take in air and you take in water and that's how you drown. You breath water instead of air and the body is fooled for a second. There's a word for that. The possibility had been for that kind of thing. Then when conspiracy theories spiraled, I talked to many people and I said, "What could have happened?" The closest thing I could imagine was that. Putting two and two together there was this possibility that Tom Keylock had been at the place. His girlfriend announced that she was pregnant and Tom was afraid of only one person and that was his wife, and so that would have been the major reason why your cover up was organized, not because Tom was directly involved himself, but because he had to insure that this whole situation didn't come to light, which is why he would have called his brother Frank who was high up n the C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Division). Tom had this incredible gift, what you call the gift of gab, which means he could talk birds off trees. He could make people believe all kinds of things. There was in any case an extremely shoddy investigation that was marred by intervention from other people above them, and the local cops just botched up the whole thing. We could go on and on about what was wrong with that thing, the investigation.

Q - In an August 19^th, 1971 Rolling Stone interview with Keith Richards by Robert Greenfield, Keith was asked about Brian's death and if was murdered. Keith replies, "Well, I don't want to say. Some very weird things happened that night, that's all I can say." Keith never goes on to say what weird things he's talking about.

A - Well, it was totally unclear and feared, including the family, that it was as a result of some sort of overdose.

Q - When you talk about a seizure you're not saying that Brian, who had asthma, had an asthma attack, are you?

A - Apparently he had some other condition. I can't vouch for that because I never saw it in all the time we were together. The asthma he had. A number of reliable people have reported that he was subject to these seizures at some point. You have to understand that Brian was completely fine despite all the drama that happened in Morocco and his falling ill on that fateful trip to Morocco and was hospitalized in France. He had pneumonia. It started like that. He told me when he got to Morocco, Anita (Pallenberg, Brian's ex-girlfriend) wrote to him every single day and Brian wrote to her from those hospital beds. Brian had written the music for the film A Degree Of Murder, which Anita was in. I had a job in Hollywood to be in this film and I was trying to wrap up my affairs in England and leave for America and I was ready to do so. Brian said, "Look, do you think I have a chance to get Anita back?" I said, "Yes. I think you do," because he explained everything. He said, "Well, in that case will you come with me to Cannes?" I said, "I can't." He started to demand that I go with him. Then he said he wouldn't go unless I did. So, people started calling me from the production and saying, "You've got to go." I finally changed my mind and went with him. We had a very good time in Cannes, although it became clear on the night of the after-party, after the premiere (of the film) which Keith (Richards) didn't attend very tactfully. And we went off, Anita, Brian and myself and Al Vandenburg, to this party. Although it was extremely nice, we realized that she wasn't going to go back to him. So, Brian and I went to Paris and I suggested that we send for another girl that we both had had flings with, which was Suki Potier. He said, "Oh, yeah." Suki came and I stepped out of the way so those two could be together. I thought she would make an acceptable substitute for Anita. In a way, physically she was very cute, but she wasn't Anita. For awhile it would've worked. Then we get back to London and Mick and Keith are up on trial. Front page of all the papers. The press is calling endlessly. We'd take turns answering the phones. They are saying, "Have you been busted?" We said, "What? What are you talking about?" These reporters had gone crazy with this Mick and Keith stuff. We wondered is it possible they tried to bust us. It seems incredible. We said should we look if there's anything here? Where do we begin? Do we have anything? No. So, forget it. And later that day, with great fanfare and with the TV present, the police managed to gain entrance and bust us. It was absurd. There was an empty, small vial which if you hold in the light had a few crystals. "Hard to say what's been in there," said this policeman. We said, "What?" He said, "Cocaine." We said, "No." He said, "I'm not gonna bust you for that. What could be in there, 1,000^th of a gram?" Some other policeman found an old, moldy bottle of some fake methedrine, which even the most desperate drunk couldn't have used. But as soon as they entered the flat they flipped Brian's bed and under the mattress and found a sort of tawdry, little, purple wallet, kind of Moroccan style with some what looked like inferior grade grass, which obviously the police had planted. It's the only possible explanation. So, I thought, "What stupid girl left that behind?" They were so triumphant. The found it right away. The whole thing was absurd.

Q - Some people would like to see the investigation into Brian's death reopened. And you say what to that?

A - To reopen an investigation means having to go into tax payer's funds. Every single person connected with that is now dead. So, what are you going to do? I would be totally opposed to Brian being exhumed to discover what? And to do what about it? It's completely ludicrous and horrible and inconceivable. If there was somebody, a criminal out there who could be brought to justice, I'm not saying there is, but if there was, believe me we would have done something about it without going through reopening an investigation. Can I point out one other thing to you?

Q - Sure.

A - The whole disintegration of Brian started from that bust, from the consequences of that bust. When Brian, through the weeks that followed our initial arrest, Brian became increasingly isolated and increasingly paranoid. He was introduced by some dreadful person to Mandrax and then he really fell apart. That was the beginning of the end, if you will. From that moment on, until 1967 when we went to trial before a jury and they announced as I walked into court that they were dropping all charges against me, which meant that in effect the case was crumbling and I ran to Brian and said, "Look, we're going to win!" He said, "No, I'm pleading guilty." I spent as much time as I could desperately trying to convince him otherwise. But the lawyer had drilled into him this sort of guilt thing and he thought erroneously by throwing himself on the mercy of the court and making amends as it were for his lifestyle, he would redeem himself in the eyes of the public, which was a fateful miscalculation, a capitol mistake. But, the first key nail into his coffin was a disaster. He would never get a working visa with a conviction for drugs on his record. The complete crumbling of Brian begins during that summer of '67. By then he had two years to live and those last two years were kind of unfortunate, Yes, he had moments of crystal greatness. Yes, he played "No Expectation" in such a marvelous manner, but he steadily went to pieces. It's a complete fantasy that he was going to get better. It was the end. He relied heavily not only on illegal drugs, but on prescription drugs, and he drank far too much. If you don't know anything about him, you can just look at the photographs from those four years that separate his heyday in looks to what happens to him by '69. It's very shaking. By then he's only twenty-seven when he finally dies. While there's this capitol axiom, "No Jones, no Stones", absolutely true, if The Rolling Stones had quit, as some obnoxious fans insist they should have when Brian died, nobody today would be remembering somebody who died more than fifty years ago, would they? There's too many examples of great musicians who were totally forgotten by today's generation. It's because "No Jones, no Stones" I respect because both factions are correct, because The Stones have soldiered on, for better or for worse that the name Brian (Jones) shines bright.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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