Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Some alterations needed to be done on the house, so Brian took Keith’s recommendation that Frank Thorogood, an old school chum of Tom Keylock’s, do the job for him. Frank moved into the garage flat, hired several workmen, and renovations began. From the beginning, however, Brian complained about Thorogood, telling his friend Tony Sanchez, “Those builders aren’t doing what they’re meant to be doing! They act as if they own the place, as if I wasn’t there! People just arrive saying they have come to fix this or that and they stick around for days.” The builders soon became party guests, and the renovations took second place to revelry. Cotchford was constantly in chaos. Brian, never one for confrontation, actually let Thorogood move into the main house, bitterly resenting the intrusion, distrustful but saying nothing.

  The pool at Pooh Corner where Brian Jones drowned. (PA NEWS)

  When Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards paid a visit to the farm one warm June night, Brian knew he was out of the Stones. Some reports have him begging and weeping, others that he felt relief and excitement about starting up his own band with the likes of John Lennon, Mitch Mitchell, Steve Marriott, and Steve Winwood. To Tony Sanchez, Brian said excitedly, “We’re going to be bigger than anyone would believe,” announcing that he wanted to “go back to real rock and roll, and cut out all the commercial crap the Stones are putting out.” Brian was offered a hundred thousand pounds on top of his share of Stones royalties, and it was reported that he left the band to work on his own solo projects. Then Brian Jones was replaced by John Mayall’s guitarist, twenty-year-old Mick Taylor. An announcement was made soon after that the Stones would play a free concert in Hyde Park. To Anna Brian said bitterly, “I’d probably be the only one they would charge to get in.”

  On Tuesday, July 2, Frank Thorogood went to the Stones’ offices to pick up wages for himself and his workmen and found out a bit of bad news: Brian had requested that all payments to Frank and his builders cease immediately. True to form, Brian had someone else do his dirty work for him. When Frank confronted his boss at Cotchford, Brian made good on his decision to sack the builders, telling Frank that he and his girlfriend, Janet Lawson, were to start packing. Frank demanded that more money was owed him, and an uneasy truce was reached: He and his builders would be paid in full on the condition that they leave the next day.

  That night, just before midnight, Brian Lewis Jones, age twenty-seven, drowned in his swimming pool at Pooh Corner.

  Despite the fact that Brian was deemed to have drowned while swimming under the influence of alcohol and drugs—“death by misadventure”—the conflicting reports given by the three people with him have caused speculation for over twenty-five years. According to Anna, at about 10:15 Brian was keen to swim and went over to Frank and Janet’s to ask them to join him. At about eleven P.M. Brian changed into his trunks and, followed by Anna, got into the pool to swim. Frank swore in his police statement that “Brian was staggering, but I was not concerned because I had seen him in worse condition and he was able to swim safely.” Janet Lawson disagreed: “I saw that Brian had great difficulty in holding his balance on the springboard.” As to what happened next, none of the three statements confirms the exact sequence, except that the women left the pool area and went into the house before Thorogood, leaving him alone with Brian in the pool for more than a half hour. Then Anna claims that the phone rang and, as she answered it, “Frank came in and picked up the phone in the kitchen, then I heard Janet shout, ‘Something has happened to Brian!’ I rushed out about the same time as Frank. Janet was there and I saw Brian lying on the bottom of the pool.” Janet says that when Frank came into the house, he asked her for a towel. “Then I went to the pool and on the bottom I saw Brian. He was facedown in the deep end. He was motionless and I sensed the worst right away.” Thorogood told police, “After we had been in the pool about twenty minutes I got out and went into the house for a cigarette, leaving Brian in the pool. I honestly don’t remember asking Janet for a towel. I know I got a cigarette and lit it, and when I went back to the pool, Anna appeared from the house about the same time. She said to me, ‘He is laying at the bottom,’ or something like that. I saw Brian facedown in the deep end of the pool.” Each of the witnesses had a different version of how Brian was pulled from the pool. “I felt Brian’s hand grip mine,” claimed Anna.

  The Stones found out while in the studio that Brian was dead, and though it’s been said that Charlie Watts couldn’t stop crying, they continued to record and went ahead and taped a spot for “Top of the Pops” that same evening. A few days later the Rolling Stones, featuring Mick Taylor, played the free gig at Hyde Park in front of a gigantic blowup of Brian’s face. Clad in a billowing white dress, Mike Jagger appealed for quiet: “Cool it and listen,” he said. “I want to say something for Brian.” He then read two verses from Shelley’s “Adonais,” after which thousands of white butterflies were released from cardboard boxes. “Peace, Peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! / He hath awakened from the dream of life … .”

  On November 7, 1993, Tom Keylock went to the North Middlesex Hospital to visit his old friend Frank Thorogood. “When I saw Frank, I feared the worst,” Keylock said. “He looked really rough. We started talking and he told me he wanted to put his house in order. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. It will probably shock you, but we’ve been friends for so many years that I feel I can tell you:’” Thorogood asked Tom not to speak about what he was about to tell him while he was still alive. “‘It was me that did Brian,’ he said. ‘I just finally snapped, it just happened, that’s all there is to wit.’” Tom wanted to ask a lot more questions, but Thorogood couldn’t continue. He died that night.

  Someone else says that Thorogood didn’t act alone. One member of the rock group the Walker Brothers said that Brian invited him to a party the night he drowned, and that some of the men at the party were hostile toward Brian, poking fun at him and taunting him. He saw one man holding Brian down in the pool, and another standing on Brian’s head to keep him from getting out of the water. It was dark, he said, and he couldn’t tell whether or not they were just trying to scare Brian. He left the party to avoid involvement. A. E. Hotchner, the author of Blown Away, dug up one of Thorogood’s builders, referred to by the pseudonym “Marty.” “There was two guys in particular really had it in for Brian,” Marty said. “Been on his back for weeks, I mean always making remarks, the rich fag, all that kinda stuff … . Anyway, this night Brian was swimming a lot. He could swim good, bounce off the diving board, lots better than any of us lads, and the girls was watching him, also because he was a celebrity they sort of gave him attention. These two guys got pissed about that—they was drinkin’ pretty good by then—it was kind of like when it started, kind of like teasing. Sort of grabbing Brian by the leg and pulling him down, meanwhile saying bitchy things … . Then it started to get rough and these lads really got worked up at Brian the more he resisted, I mean really bad-mouthing him now and ducking him and then sort of holding him underwater and keeping him under and then letting him up for a coupla seconds and he was gasping and then down again … . They seemed to get more steamed about Brian the more they pushed him down, and I could tell it was turning ugly as hell. Finally one lad wanted to let Brian out, but the other wouldn’t let him and they was kind of tugging on him. It got real crazy and the next thing I heard somebody say was ‘He’s drowned.’ That’s the first we knew what these guys had done and someone said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ and we ran for it.”

  And so the life of Brian Jones was snuffed out. How could it have happened? Even though foul play was suspected by some, on August 7, 1969, Detective Chief Inspector Lawrence Finley said that the police had no further interest in the death of Brian Jones, and the case was officially closed.

  Spacey-eyed Brian staring out to … who knows what. (LONDON FEATURES INTERNATIONAL)

  Brian was buried on July 10, 1969, at the Priory Road Cemetery in Cheltenham, a few yards from the church where he san
g as a choirboy. Canon Hopkins, who conducted the service, read aloud to the mourners Brian’s own epitaph: “Please don’t judge me too harshly.” Only two members of Brian’s band turned up—Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.

  A few days after Brian’s funeral, a beaming Anita Pallenberg announced that she and Keith Richards would soon be parents.

  JANIS JOPLIN

  Buried Alive in the Blues

  When Janis Joplin overdosed on heroin in a tacky Hollywood motel on October 4, 1970, her death was perceived as yet another nail in the free-loving, hedonistic, swinging-sixties coffin. Jimi Hendrix had died a raunchy death two weeks earlier, but somehow Janis’s death was more shocking and unseemly so much more sordid and ignoble, simply because she was a woman. Her high-priestess hippie crown was quickly replaced with a shameful tiara of thorns.

  Janis Joplin made no apologies. With her passion for the frenetic moment and disdain for outmoded, fictitious values, she took a stab at the shaky status quo every step of the way. Proud and uncompromising, Janis was also a severe addict and lived her short life in a state of heightened, frightened hysteria. Her voice was shredded rapture, a howling plea for release. She shared her pain with us like it was a swig from her blessed bottle of Southern Comfort.

  A year before her death Janis told a journalist about her early days in San Francisco: “I just wasn’t serious about anything,” she said. “I was just a young chick. I just wanted to get it on. I wanted to smoke dope, take dope, lick dope, suck dope, fuck dope, anything I could lay my hands on, I wanted to do it, man.”

  Music kept Janis on the planet for twenty-seven years. She was a doomed diva chock-full of soul. “There’s no patent on soul,” Janis said. “You know how that whole myth of black soul came up? Because white people don’t allow themselves to feel things. Housewives in Nebraska have pain and joy; they’ve got soul if they give into it. It’s hard. And it isn’t all a ball when you do.”

  As a young girl Janis Joplin tried to fit all that soul into her stifling middle-class neighborhood in the fading oil-refinery town of Port Arthur, Texas, but instead she felt like an unattractive sore thumb. Her mother dolled Janis up in ruffles and organdy, gave her piano lessons, took her to the First Christian Church every Sunday to instill values. She and her younger siblings, Laura and Michael, went on frequent trips to the library with their father, who encouraged them to read the classics and do something meaningful with their lives. When precocious Janis showed an interest in art, she got lessons with the best art teacher in town, even though it was hard on the Joplin bank account. She was raised right, but in school she asked too many questions, wouldn’t pay attention to the teachers, didn’t show “good sportsmanship.” Highly intelligent and underchallenged, Janis Lyn Joplin was bored.

  Janis onstage—the only place she felt safe:“The one thing that felt honest and right.” (HENRY DILTZ)

  In 1957 Janis volunteered at the library, painting posters and bulletin boards, eventually appearing in the Port Arthur News with the headline LIBRARY JOB BRINGS OUT TEENAGER’S VERSATILITY. Even though she joined the Junior Reading Circle for Culture, was a member of the glee club, and sang a solo in the Christmas pageant, during her first year of junior high Janis was already questioning authority. She ridiculed Top Forty radio, preferring black soul music, and when she announced her adamant belief in integration, students accused her of being a “nigger lover.” By the tenth grade it was obvious that she would never be a feminine Southern belle—she wasn’t graceful and she wasn’t pretty—so Janis started hanging with the local bad boys, getting an undeserved “reputation.” When she and some male friends took her dad’s car to a New Orleans honky-tonk, crossing invisible color lines to hear the right music, they were stopped by the cops. The incident started hushed whispers about illicit liaisons and barroom brawls and Janis became even more of an outcast. She was loud and crude and spoke her mind. She laughed in a screechy cackle, dressed like a slob to hide her weight, and bit her nails down to the quick. Her complexion had started erupting and was giving her horrible grief. Next to the bouffanted, polished Maybelline debs, Janis felt ugly, cursing her “little pig” eyes and horrible pimples. But she had a large ego and was defiant and uncompromising. Seemingly the slings and arrows from her peers did little to alter her hell-bent course, but deep down Janis was confused and hurt.

  Somehow Janis got good grades, even though she didn’t make it to school all the time, and she graduated in May 1960. She worked part-time as a waitress and sold tickets in a local theater. Her Modigliani-inspired oil paintings were on the walls of a beatnik coffeehouse, and she even managed to sell a few. Discovering the alternative, edgy Beat poets Kerouac and Ginsberg helped Janis feel that she might not be alone in the world after all. She started speaking in hipster slang, she found the blues, and when she started to sing, her own voice astounded her.

  Janis also learned about the numbing glory of booze by reading the Beats. In fact, most of her literary icons seemed to have been alcoholics. She somehow equated creativity with liquor and began her lifelong passion for the bottle. It became her constant companion and most trusted ally. She would never put it down.

  Hoping to please her increasingly distraught parents, Janis tried a semester of college in Beaumont, Texas, but she did a lot more partying than studying. When she got back to Port Arthur, the parties were getting crazier and they didn’t stop. There was even a brief stint with a psychiatrist. Frightened for their wild-eyed, skittish daughter, the Joplins shipped her off to Los Angeles to stay with Aunt Mimi and Uncle Harry. After a few weeks with her relatives and a fleeting job as a keypunch operator, Janis met a guy at the bus stop headed for Venice, and she went with him. Excited by Venice’s post-Beat energy and array of hip, racially mixed coffeehouses, Janis rented a funky little apartment near the beach and started singing. She probably dabbled with methedrine and maybe even heroin during this period, but her fascination with the fading glory of Venice didn’t last long. Janis hitchhiked to the hallowed Beat ground of City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, then headed back to Texas.

  She tried going back to college, took a job in a local bowling alley, even went intermittently to church, but having gone from beer to Thunderbird to bourbon, Janis needed more and more excitement to keep herself buzzing. She spent a lot of time across the river at Louisiana blues bars, getting into trouble, pissing off the locals, rubbing her newfound hipster consciousness in their holier-than-thou faces. Once again she took her father’s car on a weekend excursion, this time to Austin, and found that she liked it there. When she told her concerned parents she wanted to study at the University of Texas, they hoped for the best and Janis enrolled at UT in Austin during the summer of ’62.

  School was just a sidebar to Janis’s burgeoning social life. One of the few to make it onto the dean’s list of designated “troublemakers,” she fell in with a cynical, reckless, intellectual crowd, who lived in a funky complex called “The Ghetto.” Like Janis they had come to be proud of their outsider status, prodding and poking sacred Texas traditions, reveling in the havoc it created. She had only short-lived romantic relationships, and even though Janis seemed to have a voracious sexual appetite (which included several flings with women), she was seen by her clique as just “one of the guys.” Despite her loudmouthed bravado, she felt helplessly plain, unfeminine, and insecure. Janis dressed in black, grew her hair long and wild, didn’t wear makeup, and littered conversations with her favorite word, “fuck.” She also sang and played autoharp at a converted gas station called Threadgills, and despite her growing rep for eccentricity, people were starting to pay attention. “Her voice was magnificent,” recalls Clementine Hall, friend and founding member of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, “rich and clear, with a deep burr in it.”

  The campus newspaper, The Summer Texan, ran a story on Janis titled SHE DARES TO BE DIFFERENT! The favorable article revealed that Janis went around barefoot and wore Levi’s to school “because they’re more comfortable,” and that she took
her autoharp everywhere she went “in case she gets the urge to break into song … .” The journalist said that the “squares” would most likely call Janis a “beatnik,” but that she preferred the world “jive” to describe herself. “She leads a life that is enviously unrestrained. She doesn’t bother to have her hair set every week, or to wear the latest feminine fashion fads, and when she feels like singing, she sings in a vibrant alto voice … .”

  The crowds loved Janis—she was really getting a feeling for the blues—but there were painful brush—offs when she auditioned at certain bars, because she wasn’t slim and doe-eyed like Joan Baez. And despite the Summer Texan article, Janis’s fellow students were angered by her freewheeling disdain for the values they held on to so dearly. When one of the frat houses jokingly entered her in a school contest for “The Ugliest Man on Campus,” Janis was mortally wounded when she found that fellow students were actually voting for her. She felt hemmed in, ugly as sin, and deeply misunderstood.