16 July 2009

DVD Review- "Stoned The Sory Of The Original Rolling Stone"


I digress from my posts about Hendrix's final days to review "Stoned" a film about Brian Jones the founding member of "The Rolling Stones" who also died in mysterious circumstances when he was 27 (weird how they all seemed to die at that age isn't it?)

I saw the film yesterday for the first time and thought it was very well made with some great actors, David Walliams from Little Britain makes a couple of appearances, and David Morrisey plays The Stones road manager and gets across the arrogant slightly unsavoury hippy judging cockney bastard very well.
The only thing that bothers me is they seemed to gloss over a few things quite a lot, for example they covered Jones's alleged violence towards women and interest in the occult in one scene, yes that’s right in one scene he’s seen practising black magic and beating the Mrs, then nothing.
I haven’t read much about how Jones is supposed to have died though I know he was found dead in his swimming pool in mysterious circumstances, but I couldn’t help feeling they kind of copped out when they showed it as he had a row with the builder/minder sent by the management “Frank” who subsequently drowned him.
As a minder old "Frank" apparently didn’t do a good job getting into drugs himself and letting Jones slip into psychosis, and he was also apparently a terrible builder, so quite what they were really paying him for I don't know.
It’s also made clear that The Stones management were pissed off with Jones’s constant over spending and masses of illegitimate children and this is partly why he was dropped from the Stones.
So they build up all that tension then make out that “Frank” just got pissed off because he hadn’t been paid, began to resent Jones and was perhaps jealous of his relationships with women, and this all led to Frank holding Jones under the water till he died.
Doesn’t it seem that if Frank did do it he was under orders from “The management”? Maybe it wasn’t just because he didn’t like Jones’s long hair and fancied his blonde Swedish bird?
Another thing that seemed strange too, after Jones’s death the road manger is shown burning all of his clothes (Jones’s that is) and when asked why he says it’s because he doesn’t want kids to break in and go through his stuff, and he doesn’t want the Police to find any drugs he may have stashed in his clothes. But by that logic shouldn’t he have torched the whole house? Surely Brian Jones had more possessions in that bloody great mansion than just clothes for the kids to go through, and maybe with drugs stashed in them?
Please don’t get me wrong I recommend this film it was really well made and it’s raised a lot of questions in my mind about Jones’s death, which was hopefully the film makers intent.
I also understand the people they were talking about are for the most part still alive (except poor Brian) so they couldn’t say what they really wanted to without being taken to court.



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