The Stones & Brian Jones
Nick Broomfield / United Kingdom / 2023 / 93 min
Genius, sex symbol, lost soul. The director of 'Kurt and Courtney' and 'Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love' unravels the story of the Rolling Stones icon who mysteriously ended his days at the bottom of a swimming pool aged just 27.
With in-depth interviews and archival footage seen here for the first time, Brian Jones’ glamorous and self-destructive life as a founding member of the arguably greatest rock band in music history, The Rolling Stones, is mapped out. The man with the distinctive blonde helmet of hair wrote some of the band’s most seminal songs and received more fan letters than any other member in the early 60s. But with the success, Jones was marginalised by his bandmates, and the money was spent on an escalating drug habit. Nick Broomfield’s own perspective is, as always, present in the film, insinuating that his relationship with Jones’ conformist parents – who turned their backs on their son and his path in life – also played a large part in his fatal downfall. Most of all, however, the film is exactly what you want from a film about the Stones: Sex, drugs & rock n’ roll at full blast.