Working out other instruments like they were logic puzzles was one thing. Charlie Watts, versed in the ways of the jazz apprentice, doesn't necessarily think this made him a great musician. "Brian was one of these people - Ronnie's the same - if you left him in a room with an accordion, he'd play you a song in about two hours flat. He has a natural ability with an instrument. But they get fed up with it halfway through. He'd play dulcimer for a year and be very good on it, and it'd be on a lot of our records, Lady Jane and all those, but then he got fed up and that was it. He could play the Mellotron, he could play this, he could play a bit of that. He could have been very good if he'd have stuck at any of it."
"Brian did have the ability to pick up things," agrees Jagger. "He was a clarinet player, then he played guitar, and then he liked to dabble on the piano, then George Harrison played the sitar, so he had to try and learn, and so on." So was this multi-instrumentalist worthy of the plaudits? "No, not really," says Charlie Watts. "He's eulogised but he's not John Coltrane. He was not what people thought he was, and he was not a wonderful player." Watts' view is that he is remembered more for being "the first one on a lot of things. And that is special you know." But even this comes with qualifiers: "He wasn't the first one on slide. But he was the first one that people saw on telly. Watts also claims that, despite the way that Brian's slide toughened up their version of I Wanna Be Your Man ("We played it like an Elmore James song instead of like the bloody Beatles"), Jones's ex-associate Geoff Bradford was actually a better slide player.
"Geoff was marvellous," agrees Paul Jones, "but he would not have been right for the Stones. It wouldn't have been the Stones with me in it either. Even Ian Stewart would have spoiled that image. Brian's playing on I Wanna Be Your Man may have been rudimentary - everything about that record was rudimentary. But the thing for me, and always will be with the Stones was Rooster Blues [Little Red Rooster]. Of all the wonderful things they ever did, to get a slow blues to Number One on the UK chart was the most astonishing achievement of all."
Jagger is equally unequivocal in his assessment. "He picked up this Elmore James guitar thing which really knocked me out when I first heard him play it, because I'd never heard anyone play it live before - I'd only heard it on records. And it was really good. He really had that down and he was very exciting. The sound was right. The glissandos were all right. There was a really good gut feeling when he played it in the pub. And that translated all the way up to I Wanna Be Your Man - on this really not very good pop song, suddenly there was this really hit… I mean, you can play that stuff and it can sound like crap. It's all to do with getting the right tone out of the guitar and the amp which in those days was relatively difficult to do - you didn't have all these boxes to make it up for you. No, he was good at that, he definitely was."
"Mick and Keith absolutely idolised Brian at the beginning," says Pat Andrews. "They'd never met anybody like him, but I also think from a teenage point of view there was a lot of animosity because they thought they were streetwise. I think it was to do with Mick and Keith being from Dartford, trying to be London lads, and then there's this hick from Cheltenham, charming, really good looking, talented, well-educated, knowledgeable - I think it put their noses out of joint."
In December 1962 Bill Wyman enlisted in what he referred to in his autobiography Stone Alone as "this itinerant unit of starving, sullen lapsed scholars and amateur music makers", and the classic Stones line-up was complete. By this time Brian, Mick and Keith were sharing a flat together in Edith Grove, Chelsea, and concentrating full time on their music. Charlie Watts was a regular visitor: "It used to be hilarious all day. We used to get up at about three in the afternoon, just play records all day. And Brian used to be really funny in those days. Obsesses with R&B and promoting The Rolling Stones." Brian dipped his hand into cash registers and stole food to pay for band rehearsals and equipment during this crucial period. He would later elicit resentment when the other Stones discovered that he was paying himself an extra £5 as 'leader of the band'.
Kathy Etchingham, later Jimi Hendrix's girlfriend, first met Brian in 1963 in Peter Cook's Establishment Club and hung out with him at all the regular London watering holes: The Cromwellian, The Bag O' Nails, The Speakeasy. "A group of us used to go down to The Scene Club off Windmill Street and watch The Who when they were still The High Numbers - Brian, me, Angie Burdon, Georgie Fame and his girlfriend Carmen. We used to drop Purple Hearts and dance around like nobody's business. Brian never danced, of course - Jimi never did either. Too cool."
"Most of the time Brian was pretty cool," Pat Andrews agrees. "But he was a bloody liar and an opportunist as well." She and Brian had lived on sandwich spread and steak and kidney pies through the dark days. Pat was bringing up their baby in damp flats while Brian worked at, and got sacked from, a series of grotty jobs. "Mick used to come around with Vesta packet meals. That was like eating at the Ritz," she laughs. But by early 1963 their relationship had deteriorated and she returned to Cheltenham. "He got involved with a lot of girls and people seemed to think I didn't know about them," she says stoically, "but nine times out of 10 he would tell me about them. You have to remember that he was practically thrown out of his house when he was 17. He was trying to survive. Wages weren't good. Girls would come round and bring Brian food. He was a bit of a gigolo, really." And his infamous jealousy? "I only witnessed that twice. Once when I went to buy a drink and this guy spoke to me completely innocently. I'm very polite and if someone speaks to me I speak back. Brian didn't say a word until we got outside and then he went absolutely berserk. Another time I was working at the laundry and I got a bonus and bought myself a skirt and a top. He went berserk again and asked me how I got this bonus and what did I do to earn it. I know he had mood swings but I think they were more to do with his insecurity than anything else. You've got to remember where he was coming from. Demonstrative love was not the norm in his family."
"He carries a lot of luggage, we used to say," comments Bill Wyman in Stone Alone, referring both to the bags that always appeared under Brian's eyes at the merest hint of excess, and more metaphorically, to the emotional and psychological burdens that seemingly forever weighed him down. "He was always terribly paranoid," agrees Kathy Etchingham. "It didn't just start. He was paranoid when I first met him. Not as badly as later on but it was always a trait." Charlie Watts also subscribes to the view that Jones's problems were deep-rooted, and that fame merely accelerated their growth. "He got worse. He drank more. He took loads of drugs, when nobody knew in those days what they'd do to you. He was young. He got very big-headed."
At one point Jones borrowed some gold cufflinks from photographer Dezo Hoffman and promptly gave them to Bo Diddley. He also borrowed a bunch of rare blues singles from Long John Baldry. Baldry never saw them again; Brian had given them to photographer Nicky Wright: "He came around and thrust this bag into my hand - 'Here you are, here's a present for you.' Inside were all these wonderful records - Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker. Twenty years later I realised they belonged to Long John Baldry when I read a magazine interview where he mentioned he'd lent a stash of Chess records to Brian, and never got them back! By then someone had stolen them from me too.
"Brian could be sweet - he was intelligent, would listen to your conversation carefully, and was very charming. But," Nicky continues, "he could also seem totally psychotic and schizophrenic. We were coming back from Folkestone one night about nine o'clock, some time in 1963, and had stopped to look for something to eat. We found a fish shop, but it was closed. We banged on the door and this chap came to the door and told us, 'We've switched everything off, the fat's cooled down, we're closed.' No one argued until I shouted This is The Rolling Stones! This little husband and wife were really sweet and said come in and sit down while we see what we can do. So everybody's ordered their fish and chips, steak and chips, and it takes quite a long time while they heat up the fat or whatever. Finally they bring it to the table. Keith's happily eating away, so are the others, the Brian tries a forkful, and starts complaining: 'I don't like this! It's soggy! I can't eat this!' He stands up, takes this bottle, and squirts ketchup over the table and knocks his food onto the floor. It was heartbreaking - there's this couple thinking, Great, it's The Rolling Stones, then this happens."