"..when they were in that period of dandification, dressing up in eighteenth-century clothes. We went to a concert and Brian came into a box above us and I looked at him and thought, my God, he's gone - that isn't somebody dressing up. It's somebody who has disappeared." Bobbie Korner, on seeing Brian in 1967
"..such a nice man, such a lovely man to be around. He was kind, considerate and thoughtful. He was a comforting person. If you don't have children, you have to be a nice person in order to comfort children. Staying at the house was a problem for me because it was haunted. But he had the capacity to make a young child who was feeling frightened feel OK." Damian Korner, on staying at Cotchford Farm
Quotes from the biography 'Alexis Korner' by Harry Shapiro
"Brian should have been put in a straitjacket and treated. I used to know Brian quite well. The Stones have always been a group I really dug. Dug all the dodgy aspects of them as well, and Brian Jones has always been what I've regarded as one of the dodgy aspects. The way he fitted in and the way he didn't was one of the strong dynamics of the group. When he stopped playing with them, I thought that dynamic was going to be missing, but it still seems to be there. Perhaps the fact that he's dead has made that dynamic kind of permanent. A little bit of love might have sorted him out. I don't think his death was necessarily a bad thing for Brian. I think he'll do better next time. I believe in reincarnation." Pete Townshend, on his tribute song 'A Normal Day For Brian'
From the biography 'Behind Blue Eyes' by Geoffrey Giuliano
"He arrived at Abbey Road in his big Afghan coat. He was always nervous, a little insecure, and he was really nervous that night because he's walking in on a Beatles session. He was nervous to the point of shaking, lighting ciggy after ciggy. I used to like Brian a lot. I thought it would be a fun idea to have him, and I naturally thought he'd bring a guitar along to a Beatles session and maybe chung along and do some nice rhythm guitar or a little bit of electric twelve-string or something, but to our surprise he brought his saxophone. He opened up his sax case and started putting a reed in and warming up, playing a little bit. He was a really ropey sax player, so I thought, Ah-hah. We've got just this the tune. Brian plays a funny sax solo. It's not amazingly well played but it happened to be exactly what we wanted. Brian was very good like that. Brian always had a pleasant word. We always got on like a house on fire. He had a good old sense of humour, I remember laughing and giggling a lot with him. And we would play jokes on him. I remember being in Hyde Park, coming back from John's house in his big chauffer-driven Rolls-Royce. John had a microphone he could use with the speakers mounted underneath the car. We were driving through the park, and ahead of us was Brian's Austin Princess. Everyone used to go around in these big Austin Princesses then, it was a sign you were a pop star. You automatically got one of those. We could see his big floppy hat and blond hair and we could see him nervously smoking a ciggy in the back of the car. So John got on the mike and said, 'Pull over now! Brian Jones! You are under arrest! Pull over now!' Brian jumped up. 'Fucking hell!' He really thought he had been busted. He was shitting himself! Then he saw it was us. And we were going, 'Yi, yi, yi. Fuck off!' giving V-signs out of the car window. So it would be that kind of humourmost of the time, really, although you'd sometimes get a chance to quietly talk about music. Brian was a nervous sort of guy, very shy, quite serious, and I think maybe into drugs a little more than he should have been because he used to shake a little bit. He was lovely, though. I remember being in a car with Chris Barber and I was driving and someone else in the car saying, 'Bloody Brian. On bloody heroin,' and we said, 'Yeah, maybe he is on heroin but we're supposed to be his friends and you can't go around slagging him off'. I think a lot of people used to get a bit annoyed with him but he was smashing. I never really knew his particular tastes, because we'd just meet people on one level: the musician and friend level with a bit of soft drugs generally, and we tended to see the nice side of people." Paul McCartney, on the recording of 'You Know My Name, Look Up The Number'
From the biography 'Many Years From Now' by Barry Miles
"He was scruffy, moody and not very well liked - partly because of his annoying habit of borrowing small sums of money and never paying them back, and partly because his friends and acquaintances could see that he was plainly wasting his time and rapidly becoming a layabout with a chip on his shoulder. Girls felt sorry for him because he always looked so lonely and depressed and he played this up to his fullest advantage. Maybe because he was so short or maybe just because no one took him very seriously, but he seemed to use girls to get his own back on a world that he imagined had somehow done him wrong. He loved to show visitors the sad bloody sheets from the unfortunate virgin the night before and enjoyed boasting about how many women he had had. He was a creep." Barry Miles, on early days in Cheltenham
"He radiated sunshine, but you could see that he had all the problems of the world on his shoulders. There was such an ugliness there as well as the beauty." Shirley Arnold, on Brian's increasing insecurities
From the biography 'Jagger' by Carey Schofield
"When Brian was off-stage it did seem to me as if he had difficulty coping with the real world. But it's something I myself had similar problems with later on. Brian also though seemed to have the additional problem of being slightly schizophrenic. But then who wouldn't be in that band. Having said that, Brian was still easily the star of the Rolling Stones." Ray Davies, on Brian's troubles
"I liked Brian and trusted him. You could feel that he had a lot of creativity. He was a poet, an enfant terrible it's true, but he was very much in touch with his time and he was also very much in love with Anita, the only actress in the movie - and its soul. She was bound to inspire him, if he was to write the music for her. Brian was extremely likeable. He really was! Yet he wouldn't often allow you to like him. Strangely at times he'd rather challenge you, provoke you. There was also something definitely devilish about Brian. He'd sense your weakness with incredible intuition and, if the mood took him, he'd exploit it. On the other hand, he could turn around and be incredibly nice to you. I liked Brian, but he was a complicated guy. It must've been hard." Volker Schlondorff, on the recording of 'Mord Und Totschlag' (A Degree Of Murder)
From the biography 'Golden Stone' by Laura Jackson
"At the audition, I played a little barroom ragtime on the pub's piano, and then Brian took his guitar and we jammed together and I could tell right off that Brian was a talent - he knew his rhythm and blues and he could really handle his slide guitar. When I discovered Brian could also play saxophone, harmonica, clarinet, just about every band instrument, I was certainly impressed with his musical abilities." Ian Stewart, on the audition at the Bricklayer's Arms
"Brian was consumed with fear. That was his most prominent trait - fearfulness." Violet and Alex Lawrence(Linda's parents), on their symapthies for Brian
"Brian was very moody, which I like, and he was physically attractive as well - he looked kind of like a girl in a funny kind of way; sexually I like girls as well as men and Brian seemed to combine both sexes for me. At the same time, he was funny as well. He had a great sense of humour - how could I not love a man who could make me laugh? Also, Brian was very outspoken, blunt, said everything on his mind, outrageous things, and he had a wonderful curiosity - curious about new things, new places, wanted to know everything that was going on, wanted to meet new people, new ideas, learn the new dances." Anita Pallenberg, on her attraction to Brian
"He seems never to have been able to find himself, he had a lost quality, not knowing what he wanted to do, or unable to express some part of himself. He was actually quite a nice person who didn't want people to think he was nice. He wanted to be known as an evil character, but he wasn't really, and the end result of it was he just had to be so off to everybody." Ian Stewart, on Brian's character
"It was a really terrible thing they did to Brian. They had a lot of other options than to sack him as cruelly as that. That took away whatever last reserves Brian had. It was Mick being the Godfather." John Dunbar, on the sacking of Brian
"A rather tacky way to commemorate Brian's death." Ian Stewart, on the Hyde Park gig
"At first Brian was the most interesting Stone, but he changed over the years as he disintegrated. He ended up the kind of guy that you dread when he would come on the phone because you knew it was trouble. He was really in a lot of pain. In the early days he was all right because he was young and confident. He was one of them guys that disintegrated in front of you." John Lennon, on Brian's disintegration
From the biography 'Blown Away' by A.E.Hotchner
Read Pete Townshend's Thoughts On Brian