"Brian Jones, rock'n'roll godstar, founder member of The Rolling Stones, the murdered androgyne whose fragile psyche was ultimately broken by an industry which, nonetheless, provided him with the means to luxuriate in the bizarre and unorthodox.
Jones's alcohol and drugs excesses, his tormented and often psychotic states, his dandified propensity to cross-dress, his love of literature, priveleged background and refined speaking voice all placed him in the decadent tradition, the last of a rarefied aesthete's lineage. His tragic murder at the age of twenty-seven further substantiated his place in the Byronic legend of the chosen one who dies young.
In The Last Decadent, author Jeremy Reed locates in Jones's obsessive fantasy world a terrain firmly aligned with the opium visions of Charles Baudelaire, the sartorial extravagance of Oscar Wilde, the sybaritic indulgences of Count Stenbock. Reed vividly recolours Brian Jones's brief, but incandescent and extraordinarily subversive life amidst the pop and fashion whirlwind of the Sixties, and in doing so presents perhaps the most illuminating and evocative portrait yet written of a fallen rock'n'roll angel."
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My Review: A very well written book, this will no doubt create controversy in opening new doors on the private life of Brian Jones.
By comparing Brian to such decadents as Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, we are given the author's opinion of Brian's eccentricity and sexuality. The controversial evidence that Brian was bi-sexual is only proved by one person who admits to sharing feelings with Brian, Nicholas Fitzgerald. When you only hear one side of the story it is easy to believe what you read. I found such theories interesting, but was not fully convinced by the evidence. Brian sexuality is intriguing, but this only investigates half of it.
The comparisons with fellow debauched deacdents is very interesting though. The claim that Brian could dress eccentrically in public because he was protected and surrounded by bodyguards most of the time is revealing. Without doubt, this is a fascinating, intelligent and thought-provoking book. But I did get the feeling that it is written as one person's opinion and therefore tends to be one-sided arguments, with little or no evidence to support it.
My advice? Buy this book! Decide for yourself what the basis of Brian's decadence was, and just how his sexuality did affect him. Also, the pictures are fantastic............Buy it!!!