The Rolling Stones legend wanted to replace Brian Jones

On By Yukito

Brian Jones – Playing Guitar at Home – Bent Rej

(Source: Bent Rej)

The dynamics of any team are never easier to manage. Trying to explain the differences between Simon and Garfunkel as a duo is one thing, but when that number grows to four to six people, it becomes difficult to make executive decisions and make sure everyone is completely satisfied. Although Brian Jones had the idea to form The Rolling Stones years before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards got involved, there was a good chance that Jimmy Page could have been behind the fretboard in one of the group’s early incarnations.

When word gets out, Jones never wanted to take the Stones in the direction they ultimately went. He had always been a child of the blues, and although the first albums they worked on contained many such songs, it was only a matter of time before “The Glimmer Twins” began to stretch themselves, writing songs like “Satisfaction” and appealing to their audience. audiences around the world who were more interested in dancing the night away.

Looking back, the way the Stones let Jones go is all the more tragic. Because he was often sidelined, his eventual dismissal felt like an artist losing his drive to create and eventually hitting rock bottom in the late 1960s. But if he couldn’t play just the blues, he used any instrument he could to make his point.

Aside from the guitar, some of the best instrumental flourishes on Stones records come from Jones using the right track for any given song. Although think of a band as dangerous as them dealing with baroque pop Between the buttons sounded terrible, Jones is the glue that holds everything together most of the time.

But Page was already such an animal before he started working with The Yardbirds. His talents were mostly limited to guitar, but given the number of sessions and genres of music he played in, it was not impossible that the Stones thought of him as a potential replacement when Jones first started going off the rails midway through 1960s.

As Bill Wyman recalls, he didn’t think it was a bad idea to let Jones years in advance and kidnap Page before Zeppelin happened, saying, “In 1965, we almost asked (Brian) to leave before Zeppelin happened, when we were going to ask Jimmy Page. We considered asking him to leave five or six times.

However, looking at what Page did after Zeppelin, it doesn’t seem like it was the best move. Outside of a few one-off supergroups and collaborations with other artists, Page always had the final say in what he did, and since he was the de facto leader of Led Zeppelin, there was no way he was going to just kick back and play whatever Jagger or Richards wanted him to played in any song.

And when you start looking at Jones’ greatest moments on Stones records, the world would have missed something if they didn’t have him in the band playing sitar on “Paint It Black” or various lead lines on their early records. material. The Stones were indeed going from strength to strength when Mick Taylor joined the group, but they may not have known what they had in common with Jones.

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