On June 7, 1969, The Rolling Stones opted to fire one of their founding members, Brian Jones. Their relationship with the guitarist had broken down significantly, and it was clear there was no fixing it. Jones, though, would go on to insinuate that he left of his own volition by saying he was leaving to “play my kind of music.”
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Tragically, Jones would pass away less than a month later.
Brian Jones is best known as a founding member of The Rolling Stones, where he first performed as a slide guitarist before opting for backing vocals and a range of additional instruments. He helped found the band in 1962, originally as a blues outfit. Jones is often credited with naming the band.
Sadly, like many rock stars of his caliber and time, Jones fell into drug and alcohol addiction. According to accounts from his former bandmates, Jones became extremely unreliable when it came to recording, and his ability to perform was similarly difficult to predict. He was essentially “demoted” in the band before the other members officially dismissed him on June 8, 1969. Mick Taylor would replace him.
The Firing and Downfall of The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones
Brian Jones, ideally, would have taken this opportunity to get sober and possibly start a new band. Sadly, that didn’t happen. Tragically, on the night of July 2, Jones was pronounced dead by paramedics after being found drowned at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was only 27 years old, and his death was later labeled “death by misadventure.”
Naturally, some fans of Jones blamed his death on The Rolling Stones. Some believed that getting the pink slip from the band had pushed Jones over the edge. When asked about it by Rolling Stone in 1995, Mick Jagger was forthright about how difficult a person Jones was to work with when it came to his drug abuse.
“He was very, very jealous, very difficult, very manipulative, and if you do that in this kind of a group of people, you get back as good as you give, to be honest,” said Jagger. “I wasn’t understanding enough about his drug addiction.”
Later, member Bill Wyman would say that Jones deserved a “free pardon.”
“Brian Jones is a legend, and his legacy is there for all to hear,” said Wyman. “While The Rolling Stones damaged all of us in some way, Brian was the only one that died.”
Photo by Georges Chevrier / INA via Getty Images
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