Life of Brian

Producer-turned-director Stephen Woolley discusses 'Stoned', his new film about the death of Brian Jones.

Nov 17 2005

A new film about the death of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones shows up the social division at the heart of the Swinging '60s says its director, Stephen Woolley…

The Brian Jones project, which is released in cinemas this week as 'Stoned', began 11 years ago when I first read 'Fade to Black' and 'Who Killed Christopher Robin?', two books that persuaded me that the death of Rolling Stone guitarist Brian Jones was suspicious.

Soon, it occurred to me that my new-found interest really began in the mid-'60s when any child growing up in Islington was forced to nail his colours to the mast: Spurs or Arsenal? Stones or Beatles? Despite my family's proximity to Highbury, I chose the more glamorous Spurs and the more rebellious Stones. Arsenal were truly boring and the Stones were London's raw riposte to the cuddly Liverpudlian moptops.

The '60s careered ahead and the intense rivalry between massively successful pop groups, as manipulated by clever PR men, led to playground spats and grown adults coming to angry blows.

Young and old fought to comprehend this new phase of cultural upheaval. Most of my uncles had fought in World War II. They witnessed unspeakable horrors and lost friends and family both overseas and in the Blitz. These men believed they were returning to Nirvana, a London presided over by a Labour party determined to implement a welfare state and rebuild Britain as a socialist utopia.

But London was one giant bombsite. Food rationing was maintained. There was bitterness and frustration across the UK, but particularly in London, where the black market thrived and petty criminality became the norm.

Men in their late 30s and early 40s at the time of the pop explosion watched the blossoming of the long-haired, effeminate British music scene with anger and bemusement.

Most families owned or rented a radio and TV, both of which began to pump out exotic images and sounds. The fashions and amoral values associated with these outrageous performers were communicated across the entire nation and, as kids, we got the message: short skirts, flared and colourful trousers, unisex clothes, exaggerated make-up, a generation growing up within the ambit of their heroes like The Kinks, The Who and, of course, the kings of outrage, The Stones.

In reality, for 99.9 per cent of the population it meant, at most, a more colourful tie, larger lapels, collar-length hair and a school skirt rucked up two inches. In the '60s, it wasn't cheap to swing.

Middle class viewers perceived Johnny Speight's brilliant creation Alf Garnett in 'Till Death Do Us Part' as a grotesque caricature. But far from it; he was as real as Vietnam and the moon mission, and it was this world from which Frank Thorogood – Brian Jones's handyman and a key character in 'Stoned' – emerged.

It was a world defined by the daily drudgery of a lost generation who had been deprived of the fruits of war and was witness both to a new age dominated by American technological and economic advances and to a new breed of teenage, idealistic brats. While the ungrateful younger generation made hay, Frank and millions like him took comfort in taking the moral high ground.

In 'Stoned', Frank Thorogood and Brian Jones are cyphers for two very different – but real – types of their time. Emotionally, aesthetically and sartorially, Brian was party to sexual blurring and drug-induced, musical mantras. Frank was the anguished, naïve builder from a generation that gave us our liberty and freedom; Brian was the original anarchic rebel who symbolised the decadence of his age. The collision course they were on fascinated me.

I tracked down witnesses and re-examined the evidence thoroughly. I tried to fashion the music of the film to reflect Brian's obsessions – obsessions shared by a new generation of musicians today; the guitar-based blues of the Mississippi Delta, the haunting sounds of North Africa, and latterly in Jones's life the West Coast and Timothy Leary-inspired acid rock.

And in the presentation of this material I have attempted to bring the imagination of both Brian and Frank visually to the screen. Using 8mm, 16mm, Bolex, dated reversal stock and 35mm, I hope that each flashback evokes another aspect of the textures and bold colours of the time.

My own fanaticism, for both Spurs and the Stones, waned in the early '70s when Arsenal achieved the double (still boring) and I discovered the real source of the Stones' and Beatles' power: original Afro-American R&B and blues which were now widely available on LPs. Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf – the music that Brian Jones sought out.

I was moving towards Zappa and Miles Davis (my own jazz phase was soon supplanted by punk). But, unlike Spurs, the Stones went from strength to strength, especially in the US where they became a sensational stadium rock act. I finally caught up with them in 1977 at Earls Court. By then I'd been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and had witnessed the Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith et al.

The Stones seemed tired in comparison and I wondered why I applauded them as rebellious demigods until 17 years later when I discovered the two books and commissioned Rob Wade and Neal Purvis (soon to become Eon's Bond writers and Working Title darlings) to write a script.

The movie 'Stoned' took eight weeks to shoot but, in reality, the development process took 40 years. As a seven-year-old kid in London, when the Beatles and Stones broke big in '62/'63, I experienced both the excitement and the cynicism of that era: the bitterness and the world-weariness of working class ennui: no car, no fridge, no phone. But I also thrilled to the prospect of what was to come.

The music and the world belonged to us. By reconstructing and deconstructing those dreams, they can now be considered as artificial as a shimmering oasis but, back then, they filled our fantasies to the brim.

'Stoned' opens on Friday and is reviewed here.

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