Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones (2019) User Reviews

VIEWS ON FILM review of Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones

[burlesonjesse5 · 5/10 · 8 June 2022]

"His reputation wasn't very good". Whatev. That's the words of someone talking about Brian Jones, the original founder of the Rolling Stones. I'm not the hugest Stones fan but I've dug their music for a majority of my lifetime. 1966's "Paint it Black" (a famous Rolling Stones ditty) had the distinctive sound of Jones playing that good old sitar.

Strange in its approach not by look or feel, Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones is a documentary that says everything in the title. It's about well, you know. Annexed, "Life and Death" doesn't involve members of the Rolling Stones nor does it feature their legendary music. The film feels more like an outside entity that decided to roll its bones out fifty years after Brian's mysterious passing. Jones was always kinda "under their thumb".

Brian Jones died in 1969 at age 27 (he is a member of the urban legend, 27 club). Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones tells its story chronologically with decent archive footage (via pictures added) and plenty of long-winded interviews.

What's almost laughable about this docu is that the people confabbing are ones you've never heard of until 2019. They don't talk particularly fondly about Jones and worse, they act as if they were in his head or walking in his shoes. Jones has been gone for over five decades and well, he obviously wasn't present to defend himself. At least the dude got posthumously inducted with his fellow bandmates into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (circa 1989).

As I mentioned in the second paragraph, Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones doesn't let you hear anything from anyone in the Stones. Besides showing them on screen from time to time, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts are nowhere to be found. "Life and Death" may be well-made, conspiracy theory-d, and eerie but introverted in its tack. It gets "no real satisfaction" from me.

Brian Jones Was More Than A Corpse

[TheFearmakers · 4/10 · 2 October 2020]

Someone needs to make a documentary about Brian Jones and center on his music, his guitar playing, whether slide or perfect rhythm to Keith Richards' rough, messy leads, and not just center on his death as if he only lived to die...

What's here could be best described as a kind of gossip-documentary coming from various friends, none of them that important, memorable, or famous except Ian Stewart's voice from an obviously very old interview...

The same images of Brian are shown that we've seen a hundred times, and never strumming more than once on a guitar but making cute faces and messing around. What's worse here is the music. They couldn't afford The Rolling Stones so they settle for really bad renditions of what sounds like a cover band warming up.

A terrible documentary

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 2/10 · 7 January 2021]

Yikes, this was awful.

As someone who's only listened to a few albums in The Rolling Stones' discography (most without Jones' involvement), I was ready to be convinced that Jones was the true mastermind behind the band, and a musical genius... but the first hour largely fails to present a compelling argument to what made him so great (he played the cool sitar part on Paint it Black is all I can remember - and there are disappointingly no Rolling Stones tracks used, so you just have to hum said sitar part to yourself. Any music examples would have helped the "underrated music genius" argument, but the song rights clearly weren't within the film's budget).

Then it just turns into a tedious and not particularly well made true crime documentary in the last half hour, and even if some interviewees disputed the conspiracies, the ones that did try to push them didn't make many great arguments.

Honestly, Brian Jones seems like a bit of a tag-along, and given that so much great music was made by the band after his departure, I'm thoroughly unconvinced that he was the secret mastermind behind the band. The documentary describes him as being constantly drunk and/or high around (and then after) the time the band started to find popularity, too.

I also remain highly skeptical of any possibility that he was murdered. This documentary tried very hard to put forth that he was misunderstood musical genius + hE wAs MuRdErEd as it's two main arguments, but fails almost completely.

Some really dodgy interviewees, too, who barely even seem to make sense some of the time. ("Brian could resist everything but temptation" one of them sincerely says at one point. That's literally as dumb as the "pain don't hurt" line from Roadhouse).

Missed opportunity

[hewlett61 · 3/10 · 24 October 2020]

15 minutes into this I thought it might be a mockumentary. Kind of like Spinal Tap with marbled mouth geriatrics telling the story. Here are some serious issues I had with this. 1. It has the premise that Brian was the creative force behind the Stones. Yet, it only gives 3 verbal, not musical examples. Sitar on Paint it Black. The Marimba on Under My Thumb. And slide guitar on No Expectations. He wrote none of them, so I fail to see how he could be more significant musically than Mick and Keith. In fact the movie states several times, Brian can not write music. It also implies Brian was jealous of Satisfaction. Exactly how was he the driving force of the band? I have heard this for years, but this film gave no answers, yet stated it multiple times. 2. Most of the women mentioned in the movie are ONLY mentioned by first name, as if the average viewer has any idea who they were. Some hold significant parts, especially Anita, whom I had to research to find out who she was. 3.There is no coherent concept in this film. It is an onslaught interviews of "who the F are these guys". It desperately needed a narrator to tie up all of these disparate, and sometimes irrelevant interviews of people that you have no idea how they fit into the story. 4. Not one mention of Charlie Watts' name in the whole 2 hours. Wyman mentioned once. Mick and Keith are portrayed as lesser talents. Coincidence that the golden era of the Stones commenced upon Brian's departure? They even describe Keith as not as much into drugs as Brian, then say his death was not substance abuse related.(?) 5. Most annoying. Harsh British and French accents speaking rapidly, whilst simultaneously putting writing on the screen of information that is relevant to the story, yet not what the speaker is saying. How is one to follow dialog and reading at the same time? 6. No rights to the music. If you can not procure rights to the musician you are documenting, maybe re-think the whole idea of making this project. And quit using the same 4 second video clips repeatedly through the whole movie.

This film left me frustrated. The subject is clearly worthy of a well made documentary. This is not it.

This was a great documentary until it descended into conspiracy theories

[Blaine1942 · 4/10 · 1 September 2020]

I'd say, don't waste your time. Or maybe, watch it up until the point where Brian Jones dies. The conspiracy theories about his death don't make for compelling watching unless you aren't a critical thinker.

The Life and Death of Brian

[Lejink · 4/10 · 18 November 2022]

He never wrote a single song for the band, I'm not sure you even hear him sing on any of their songs and yet, as the "founder-member" of the infamous "27" club of prominent young musicians coincidentally dying at that age, Rolling Stone Brian Jones has retained his status in rock lore, aided, it has to be said in this, by the strange circumstances of his death.

Often credited with originally getting the band together, he was a talented multi-instrumentalist (that's him on dulcimer on "Ruby Tuesday", the marimbas on "Under My Thumb" and especially the sitar on "Paint It, Black,") and fashion icon with his bobbed haircut and candy-stripe-and-ruffles look, while there are still people who say the Stones' music hasn't been the same since he died.

This film tells his musical life story (comparatively little is revealed about his early years bar some fascinating home-movies showing him as a young teenager with his family) but is hindered in this by the lack of any original Stones music on the soundtrack or any participation by any of his former band-mates, even long-since ex-member Bill Wyman, who had previously disagreed with Jones's ousting from the group.

Instead, we get lots of so-called original, but very bad background music supposedly fitting for the times, in fact at one point, someone praises in glowing terms his guitar solo on "No Expectations" before moving swiftly on to the next talking head rather than play the darned thing. About those talking heads, we get lots of those, ageing acolytes of the band with the same stories to tell they've no doubt peddled to biographers of the group since the year dot.

Initially, the film shows some interesting, rare footage of Jones during his time with the band, some of it clearly of home-movies but these are looped and repeated over and over again as the film goes on, greatly reducing the effect.

The last half-hour speculates on his death when, despite being a strong swimmer, he was found drowned at the bottom of his own swimming pool. Other books and films have been made on this subject alone and the producers here fall into line by accusing the shady builder to whom Jones owed money and who'd practically moved into his house anyway, as the perpetrator. The film tries to explain away the lax police investigation at the time, quickly passing the death off as suicide under the weak premise that this would send out an anti-drugs message to the youth of the day, although I suspect it was just typical lazy policing. There's even some silly speculation about the possible involvement of the Stones' then new manager Allan Klein and Jagger and Richards themselves which really ought to have been edited out.

On the whole, I found this to be a rather shoddily assembled and untrustworthy film which barely scratched the surface of this turbulent but obviously talented individual.

To paraphrase Dylan talking about his own Mr Jones, as regards the producers of this film, there's clearly something happening but they don't know what it is...