While the Paul Trynka Brian Jones book that came out last year was a good rebuttal to Life, that is all that it was. It's scope I'm finding is very narrow. I don't know why but I find it's tone way too dark. Yes Brian had a hard time of it, but he wasn't always brooding. Even the high points are tinged with more angst than I think there were was. For instance I bet the Stones were getting along fine circa the Aftermath sessions, and even Oldham has said nice things about Brian in regards to them. I see nothing wrong at with Brian on the 1966 "Let's Spend The Night Together" video, yet he's described as a wreck.
Yes Brian needed much defense, but you can't deny the Stones have been human to him sometimes.
I also am disturbed by the nonsense regarding Brian's sex life. It gets disgusting in detail particularly the passage about Nico, and nobody needs to know this shit about anyone. All the Devil Pan crap gets tiresome too.
I think that when the music is the focus the book is very, very good and Paul proved Brian helped write a good many songs. Had he focused a lot more on the albums and songs, I would love this book. Passages about the "Degree of Murder" sessions (until they go back to the endless insecurity analysis) introducing Howling Wolf on Shindig, "Paint It Black", and "Ruby Tuesday", are excellent. Yet Between the Buttons and Number 2 don't even get reviews. Out Of Our Heads gets a brief review with no specific songs mentioned. He talks a lot about the debut being Brian's baby without talking much about the songs and what Brian did so brilliantly on so many of them.
He says "Little Red Rooster" wasa session Brian only overdubbed when it's obvious they built it around him not the other way around. He buys into Keith being the lead instrument in "Mothers Little Helper", "I Can't Be Satisfied" is a chapter title but not reviewed. "Two Trains", "Gompher" dozens of other Brian highlights overlooked. Hardly one TV or film show is described.
It would have made the book a lot more fun to just talk about the joy of the music. Yes again it is a needed rebuttal to Life but I would have done it with the music itself as much as talking about what @#$%& the unholy trinity were.
Though some are good, a few of the interviews are scrapping the bottom of the barrel. I am starting to realize that a lot of the people close to Brian are gone or won't talk.
I can't dislike the book because it positive to Brian. Still I was hoping it be a defense that would be 70 percent music 30 percent personal life and got the other way around. I mean at least he should have reviewed each UK album or major single, and the tone could have been lightened ever so slightly. Wish it wouldn't have gone all xxx either.
To be fair, it is pretty excellent up to the first IBC session. Yet the one with "You Can't Judge A Book" isn't even mentioned. Back to IBC he wrongly says "Come On" was recorded instead of "Diddley Daddy". He thinks Glyn Johns is talking about "Come On", when it is obviously "I Want To Be Loved".
At the end of that chapter we get about four times as much on Brian, Mick, and Keith sharing women then we do n their early sessions! It's sadly that kind of book. I personally don't need details about Brian's @#$%& habits. I want to know what he did for the Stones in detail, thankfully it's found elsewhere.
Other than putting the Howling Wolf introduction and the Degree Of Murder session in context, the main thing this book confirmed musically is that Brian did indeed co-write a lot of the songs. I just think comparing Brian to dark forces is so stupid in 2014-15 and takes away a lot of needed space that should have been focused on Stones sessions, shoes, records, and songs,
It's a book that was needed, but it could have been so much more. It's a matter of direction I think. I applaud him for not doing the death thing, but I sneer at him for always looking for Brian's excesses and feuds including some we need no detail on. Mick, Keith, and Andrew treated Brian like shit, but it doesn't need to be the crux of every single mention of them.
It needed to be said, but the great collaborations between them also should have been stressed. That Brian also brought out the best in the other Stones and that at times they did and do acknowledge that, just frustratingly inconsistently. He would have you believe they never give Brian credit, and that isn't true either.
I think he could have really dug into all the boots and official recordings and gone into what Brian added to everything. Again it's frustrating because he get's this part right when he wants to. It's just he would rather go on about Pan than what Brian did on Between The Buttons. I mean there is literally nothing about the album at all.
Not the way I would have done it, and he really is no place to judge what Brian could have done in 1969. "You Got The Silver" is the only major piece we have from the period. It doesn't show a musician in decline, and that's all we have to go on except people's opinions.
Trynka's is the best book on proving Brian wrote music, and on his early years but Aftel has the very best interviews from the prime Stones years. and it's basic balance of man and musician is what's missing here. For all that is missing I still like this one best for having the feel of the times intact.
Actually Golden Stone gets something of a bad rap for being fawning, but it does try to do what was done here, and Jackson should got a lot of credit in seeing that Brian needed a book of musical and personal defense way back in 1993. She also gets some great interviews and reveals a lot about Pat Andrews for the first time. If not as a songwriter, Brian's musicianship is probably more of a focus here too. Yes he's made blameless, but I can understand why.
Again he get's some real basic things wrong on the music and really it's group books like Martin Elliott's, Phil Norman's, and Bill Wyman's that remain the fairest to Brian.

I have most of the Brian Jones biographies. This book (Paul Trynka) gives the best description of Brian the person, what he was really like, and it's balanced. Yes, the author did focus on Brian the person rather than the Stones' music. Of course you can disagree with the author's psychoanalyzing, but he did seek out and document recollections from a lot of people who were there at the time and haven't been sourced before.

Mandy Aftel's book seemed to rely mainly on Brian's girlfriend Linda Lawrence Leitch, and I am still trying to get rid of the fiction book by Nicholas Fitzgerald (who wrote that he attended Brian's funeral and saw Keith and Anita there!). Laura Jackson's book was informative, but Trynaka's book is the best researched Brian bio.

by Paul Trynka (July 21, 2015):

Here’s a snippet from an intriguing, stimulating interview that wasn’t that heavily featured in Sympathy For The Devil – but gives an insightful view of how Brian Jones was regarded in hipster circles. Nigel Waymouth opened the celebrated clothing shop, Granny Takes A Trip, then teamed up with Michael English to form Hapshash and the Coloured Coat – the influential designer duo, responsible for a string of celebrated psychedelic posters, who later became recording artists in their own right, assisted by one LBH Jones.

Tell me about when you first bumped into Brian, was that around when you opened Granny Takes A Trip (in February ’66)?.
I got to know him around then but I’d seen him before ‘cos I was very keen on blues and collected old records, there was a small contingent of people from the Roundhouse Pub on Soho and the Railway Hotel in Ealing, with Alexis Korer, Cyril Davies who sort of broadcast the enthusiasm for the new sound that was to become British R&B. So I’d seen him there, but didn’t get to know him until later.

He was a key customer at Granny Takes A Trip, wasn’t he?
He was, he was keen, he loved coming in and looking at the clothes, he and Anita would also come in occasionally after hours and choose some shirts.

He was one of the leading peacocks?
There was this peacock side. He was the pretty boy. Let’s face it, it he was young and on the pull and wanted to dress up and show off. He put on the stlyle. I don’t know what his finances were like, he always dressed beautifully and was probably the most flamboyant. Not in a vulgar way. I remember him in jackets from Hung On You, Trousers from Granny’s, with that big hat.

Was he particularly adventurous?
A lot of people picked out what they wanted and made their own look. Lots of peacocks made it their business. He was one of the most famous peacocks. People think he was the only one, that’s not necessarily the truth, but he was probably the most famous. At our shop there was this self-conscious aesthetic movement, this Wildean, fin de siecle thing… the vanity!

You were friends with Suki [Potier, Brian's girlfriend from April '67], and hung out with them, didn’t you?
I rmemerb going round to see him at the [Royal Garden] hotel in Kensington. The Monkees were staying in rooms nearby and came to visit him. He loved the adulation. He was like every rock star, fed off the fans and the audience.. he was a performer after all. [This period marked another attempted police bust, described by Stan Blackbourne in the book].

Tell us about the Hapshash album – that features him, correct?
We made the record with Guy Stevens… everybody picked up something, a tambourine, a whistle or a flute.. I can’t say for certain he was on the record.. there was a bass core of a rhythm section that Guy had got from Spooky Tooth, and something came out of it, a cacophany… it was to do with the sound Guy wanted to produce of everyone together. A gathering.

And Brian played on a follow-up?
Then someone wanted to do another one, Peter Williams I think at Liberty, Brian said I’d love to come along and help. And he was very sweet. A nice guy. Just friendly. There was the dark side I guess… There was a lot of tension in the band between him and I think… I don’t mean in a disparaging way.. I don’t think he had the bottle to stand up against someone like Mick and Keith. Brian was a romantic and had a lot of imagination. You can see that in his contributions to the band. He was a great musician, he had a touch that lent the Stones a certain je ne sais quoi. He was a much gentler soul but like a lot of gentle souls there was a lot of anger, self-destruction. I don’t want to go deeper as I didn’t see it from the inside, but he did crack up.

What did he play at that second session?
He came along to the thing, Mick turned up too, but I think Mick turned up to see what Brian was doing. The thing was fun but never went anywhere. At the end, the producer went up to Brian and said, Thank you, would you like some money, and brought out £20! Totally misunderstood the cameraderie we all had. Like a lot of us, Brian was a victim because he wasn’t playing the game like some people did.

When he split with Anita, and was having problems with the band, did he open up about it all?
No. He was very English. He didn’t. I wasn’t one of his closest buddies so he probably wouldn’t do that anyway… [but] it was apparent to people he was fragile and he was cracking up.

You know Suki well, what was she like as a person?
She was delightful. Very sweet. But she was very stoned. Every time I aw her she was out of it. Rather beautiful-looking blonde and pretty. She was very alluring .. But at the same time she was very stoned. I remember at the Royal Garden, she suddenly emerged from the bedroom with a blanket around her at mid day, I was thinking, Hang On.. she was in the depths of something, wasn’t with the living as such. She was lovely, she was beautiful, but she was slightly sleepwalking through things. I saw her later and she never really escaped the web of drugs.

Your second session with Brian – how did it turn out? Was it a single track?
I can’t add a lot more, it was for a single, not an album, I think I wasn’t enthused by the whole thing, I went along with Michael English and others clattered and banged things and it was a fun thing to do. I think he just came along and picked up a guitar. He was maybe pretty out of it, so it wasn’t a particularly significant moment musically. But Brian was amazing in other ways. As my friend Joe Boyd, the musicologist and producer says, he is responsible for the first World Music album. said.. he is responsible for the first world music album. When he broke up with Anita he went up to the mountain and they made that album which is pretty amazing. He saw things creatively in terms of music. He understood it all.


[trynka.net]

The book features a photo of Brian playing soprano saxophone in the snow... This gets tagged as being in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Lol.

Interesting as a revisionist take on that period, but too tendentious for me. Brian's many, many shortcomings and character flaws are acknowledged and minimized while Mick's and Keith's -- like Brian, young, fallible men in wildly extraordinary circumstances -- are somehow unforgivable.

As a Brit might say, that's rubbish.

Saw this today, something to keep in mind when reading the book.







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-08-24 15:15 by His Majesty.

I'm not sure ALO is in a position to get too high and mighty about fellow biographers.
His own books, as entertaining as they are, clearly show a certain flexibility regarding facts, in particular his role in some off the business disasters concerning the Stones and Immediate Records.

Quote
jlowe
I'm not sure ALO is in a position to get too high and mighty about fellow biographers.
His own books, as entertaining as they are, clearly show a certain flexibility regarding facts, in particular his role in some off the business disasters concerning the Stones and Immediate Records.

Maybe, but this doesn't take away from what he say's about Trynka.

How many pages are there in the Paul Trynka book?

Just wondering how much he came up with to write about.

The British Blues scene is way over-rated in my view. Weren't that many people playing blues. The audiences was more 'clubbers' than blues enthusiasts - would have gone to the clubs what ever was was on. It more or less ended when the Stones left Richmond Station Hotel and went pop. Bands sprung up playing R & B - with Stones/Beatles long hair - as it was seen a new route to getting a record deal.All of a sudden there were loads of bands playing Chuck Berry in pubs, but they wern't blues bands. Doubt id there was a 100 blues musos all together.

Hey if you are the real Phelge hello! You would not remember me but back in 1999 or so we were going to do an interview on your book when I was in college for a class I had. I think you moved so it didn't go ahead, but we talked several times. You were staying in Chicago at the time.

I think the book is about 400 some pages long, it get's that era OK until the demo they made at IBC where he gets the titles wrong.

Here is a fantastic article on Brian which has the tone I wish Trynka's book had. Like I said this book is much needed, but ultimately went in the wrong direction by sinking to the level of gossip like to combat ALO, Keith etc. It could have and should of done it with the music. It only got halfway there but this article goes all out for Brian.
http://recordcollectornews.com/2015/01/brian-jones/]

Quoted to get the link to work - not sure what went wrong there

Quote
mikeeder
Hey if you are the real Phelge hello! You would not remember me but back in 1999 or so we were going to do an interview on your book when I was in college for a class I had. I think you moved so it didn't go ahead, but we talked several times. You were staying in Chicago at the time.

I think the book is about 400 some pages long, it get's that era OK until the demo they made at IBC where he gets the titles wrong.

Here is a fantastic article on Brian which has the tone I wish Trynka's book had. Like I said this book is much needed, but ultimately went in the wrong direction by sinking to the level of gossip like to combat ALO, Keith etc. It could have and should of done it with the music. It only got halfway there but this article goes all out for Brian.

[recordcollectornews.com]

]

Thank you Green Lady. I think it's one of the very best things about Brian ever done on him with new stories for once.

Quote
mikeeder
Hey if you are the real Phelge hello! You would not remember me but back in 1999 or so we were going to do an interview on your book when I was in college for a class I had. I think you moved so it didn't go ahead, but we talked several times. You were staying in Chicago at the time.

I think the book is about 400 some pages long, it get's that era OK until the demo they made at IBC where he gets the titles wrong.

Here is a fantastic article on Brian which has the tone I wish Trynka's book had. Like I said this book is much needed, but ultimately went in the wrong direction by sinking to the level of gossip like to combat ALO, Keith etc. It could have and should of done it with the music. It only got halfway there but this article goes all out for Brian.
http://recordcollectornews.com/2015/01/brian-jones/]

Were you the person who was planning to do a class or something on Stones history etc? I remember a conversation along those lines.. I met a lot of Stones followers on those trips and I remember quie a few incidences. Gets a bit confusing when I meet a lot of people at once - like at a concert. Can remember people in pubs easier..)

The one I've enjoyed the most was the long form article Mojo did on Brian around 1999(?).

Hi James, I'm flattered you kind of remember this after so long.

I wasn't a teacher, but a student that needed to interview a person of interest for a media class, I was going to do your history with the Stones for my class assignment, but yeah we talked on the phone about 4-5 times right before you left the area and we did have our meeting set. I cannot remember where exactly , but it was going to be in a pub in the area you were staying. Drinks on me of course! Shame we never got to meet, but I enjoyed our conversations very much.

I never have got to publish anything on Stones, but have got a book on Elvis Presley published. Thanks for encouraging me early on. The publishing business is quite brutal indeed and your warnings helped.

I remember there being some emails on the subject. For some reason I seem th#to think you were in the Memphis / Arkansa area. I can't remember where we were staying at this time