1Birmingham, “The Dakota,” Independent News Alliance, December 13, 1980.
10 The Club
—Kurt Cobain’s mother following her son’s apparent suicide Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.
—The Who, “My Generation” Hope I die before I get old.
—The Byrds, “So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star” So, you want to be a rock and roll star?
—Jim Morrison, “The Soft Parade” All our lives we sweat and save, building for a shallow grave.
—Neil Young, “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” It’s better to burn out ’cause rust never sleeps,
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten.
In ancient Greek history, Alexander the Great often spoke of a compact he had made with Zeus-Ammon, the most powerful of all the Greek gods. In this agreement, Alexander faced two choices. The first choice was to die young and achieve everlasting fame and fortune, while his second choice would be to live to a ripe old age but never tasting glory. According to Alexander, it was the same offer presented to Achilles during the Trojan War. Obviously, the decision took but little consideration. Alexander chose the short life and conquered the known ancient world by the time he was but thirty-three years of age. One legend stated that he sat upon a rock and cried because there were no more worlds for him to conquer. Ironically, Alexander died that same year from a fever. His body was encased in solid gold and carried throughout his conquered provinces so that his subjects could pay homage to the fallen conqueror. He was buried secretly and to this day his tomb has not been discovered. The Egyptians worshiped Alexander as a living god in the same manner as they did the ancient pharaohs. Did he make the right choice? In the words of the modern-day prophets Def Leppard, it is “better to burn out than fade away.” James Dean was said to have once commented that the true purpose in life was to “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”
Sadly, throughout literary history a great number of the most creative writers may well have entered into Alexander’s untimely pact. The English Romantic poets are a prime example: John Keats died at the age of twenty-five, Percy Bysshe Shelley died at the age of twenty-nine, Lord Byron met his death at the age of thirty-six, each poet dying at the height of his poetic powers.
In this chapter we will examine a number of musical giants who accepted Alexander’s challenge and died in the full bloom of youth and have now become legends in pop music. In this manner they are all members of “the club.” The membership requirement is simple. The initiation occurs when the subject reaches the age of twenty-seven and the length of membership is eternity.
The founder of the club was bluesman Robert Johnson (see Chapter 1). Johnson became the catalyst in the musical melting pot of spirituals, country, and blues. He was the master alchemist who used a black cat’s bone and the wailing sounds of his slide guitar to serve as his philosopher’s stone. Throw in a little mojo, and rock and roll was born at this crossroads situated between deep-rooted faith and backwoods superstition. Johnson’s premature death at the age of twenty-seven seems to have developed a bizarre pattern that would later claim many of rock’s legendary performers, and like Johnson, some of those deaths hint at “murder most foul.”
In a two-year period beginning with July 3, 1969, and ending exactly upon July 3, 1971, a total of five major rock icons would die tragically and all at the age of twenty-seven. The first rock victim to follow in Robert Johnson’s fatal footsteps was British blues disciple and founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones. Jones had been replaced by the Stones shortly after the Beggars Banquet album. In the days that were to precede his death, Brian’s friends reported that he was never happier, and that he was putting his own band together to play his own music. He suggested that both John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix were eager to join his band. Jones had always felt that his musical numbers had been completely ignored by Jagger and Richards and that this would serve as his chance to again take control of his musical destiny. Brian Jones had recently purchased Cotchford Farm in Sussex. This had once served as the residence of A. A. Milne during his writing of Winnie-the-Pooh. The ex-Stones guitarist had hoped to build his own studio and start production with his new group as soon as possible. Sadly, this was not to be. The very farmhouse that created the innocent Pooh series would soon serve as the stage for violent death.
Once in late 1966 while discussing the tragic death of Tara Browne, the Guinness heir and friend of both the Stones and the Beatles, Keith Richards looked at Brian Jones and said, “You’ll never make thirty, man.” Jones answered, “I know.”1 The whole discussion had concerned the role of fate in choosing young victims. Of course, these victims usually cooperated by living their lives in the pursuit of excess. Brian Jones more than fit this pattern of self-destruction. Marianne Faithfull, a longtime friend of Jones, recalled a strange story surrounding an event she remembered happening in June of 1969. Faithfull stated, “As 1969 plunged on, I was becoming increasingly worried about Brian. I could feel something very nasty coming. So I suggested to Mick that we throw the I Ching about Brian and see what we should do.
“It was just dusk when I threw the coins. The reading I got was: Death by water. I turned to Mick and said, ‘It’s very odd, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘My God, do it again.’ I did it again, and I got the same thing. We just looked at one another. Finally, I said, ‘Look, this isn’t good at all. We’ve got to do something.’ And he said, ‘We ought to phone, see if he’s all right.’ And he actually did. Guilt, maybe.”2 Two weeks later, Brian Jones was dead.
During the night of Wednesday July 2, 1969, Brian had been entertaining a small number of guests at his residence, including Anna Wohlin, Jones’s girlfriend; Frank Thorogood, a builder who was overseeing some restoration of Jones’s property; and Janet Lawson, Thorogood’s guest, who also happened to be a nurse. Sometime approaching 10:30 P.M., Brian Jones announced that he was going for a swim and put on his swimming trunks. Janet Lawson warned him that after he’d been drinking vodka and taking downers it would be extremely dangerous for him to get into the pool. Tragically, Jones did not listen. Anna Wohlin, Janet Lawson, and Frank Thorogood went with him to the pool but they all noticed that Jones appeared a little sluggish. Jones then adjusted the water temperature to a steamy 80° Fahrenheit. Janet Lawson stayed for a short time but then returned to the house. Shortly after they began swimming, Anna left the pool to answer the telephone. Approximately ten minutes later, Thorogood came to the house looking for a towel and a cigarette. It was then that Lawson came back and found the submerged, still body of Brian Jones face down in the deep end of the pool. Frantically, the guests pulled his body from the water. Janet and Anna started artificial respiration but it was too late. An ambulance was called and Jones was pronounced dead shortly after midnight. Brian Jones was dead at the tender age of twenty-seven.
The coroner’s inquest ruled that Jones’s death was the result of “immersion in fresh water under the influence of drugs and alcohol” and recorded the tragedy as death by misadventure. It was suggested that the extremely warm water temperature combined with the large amounts of alcohol and barbiturates could result in coma and death. But could all this occur in less than ten minutes? It was also believed that Jones could have had an asthma attack or a seizure that may have led to his untimely death. An inhaler was found by the poolside, but during the autopsy the pathologist stated that there was no sign that asthma had played a role in his death. One of the most puzzling questions was how Brian Jones’s lungs could completely fill with water and his body sink completely to the bottom of the pool in such a short time. Then the rumors started.
One rumor suggested suicide. Some of Jones’s friends knew of the heartbreak that Brian had gone through when he lost the beautiful Anita Pallenberg to Keith Richards. Some insiders claimed Mick Jagger had taken yet another of Brian’s lovers, forcing Jones to take his own life to escape yet another heartbreak. This theory was disputed by Jones
’s closest friends, who claimed that they had never seen him happier. He was in love with Anna Wohlin and was in the process of putting a new band together. Surely, these would not be the actions of a man considering suicide.
Another rumor stated that Brian Jones’s death was but a Satanic sacrifice, a terrible payment for the Stones’ continued success. During his recording of the native drum ceremony in Jou-jouka, Jones was convinced that during the service a voodoo curse had been placed upon him. The day of his funeral it was estimated that over a half a million people gathered along the roadway to catch a glimpse of the hearse carrying his body. A large crowd also gathered outside the church at Cheltenham where the funeral service was held. Ironically, it was in this same church that a young Brian Jones had earlier served as a choirboy. At the funeral service Canon Hugh Evans Hopkins used his pulpit to condemn the lifestyle of Jones and the Rolling Stones in particular: “He [ Jones] was a rebel. He had little patience with authority, convention, and tradition. In this he was typical of many of his generation who have come to see in the Rolling Stones an expression of their whole attitude to life. Much that this ancient church has stood for nine hundred years seems totally irrelevant to them and yet it is not humbug to come today to offer our prayers on this tragic occasion.”3 The Reverend Hopkins also mentioned a suicide attempt by Marianne Faithfull, who had been in a drug-induced coma for two days, and asked for everyone’s prayers. Brian Jones’s tragic death had driven the beautiful Marianne Faithfull to total despair. Faithfull had claimed that when she looked into a mirror she saw Brian looking back. She cut her hair to resemble his. Her mental state suffered due to her heroin addiction but she was trying to kick her habit by going cold turkey. Marianne’s physician had prescribed sodium amytal to help her sleep, but before she went to sleep that night she swallowed 150 tablets. Now she was ready to face death and be with Brian for eternity. In her deathlike coma she claimed that Brian had appeared to her and taken her by the hand. Shortly afterwards, he dropped her hand and told her that she would have to return. She could not go with him. Following this, she soon awoke in the hospital, though the memory still haunts her.
There was a final indignity when Jones’s family had to ask permission for Christian burial for their son in the parish churchyard: “Father John Heidt, the present rector of Cheltenham’s St. Philip and St. James’s, explains, ‘You see, Brian ought to have been buried with us, but my precedessor [Hopkins] would not allow it because of the rumor going about at the time of possible suicide.’”4 Brian Jones had become a modern-day Ophelia. Jones and Shakespeare’s tragic heroine did have much in common: Both suffered a lover’s rejection, both were alienated from their respective families, and finally both had limited burial rights because their “deaths were doubtful.” Brian Jones was buried at Priors Road Cemetery one mile from the churchyard.
Many fans and journalists were quick to accept the explanation of Jones’s death being either suicide or accidental death. Still, there were some insiders who believed that there could be one other logical answer—murder. As Keith Richards stated in a Rolling Stone interview, “Some very weird things happened that night Brian died … there were people there that suddenly disappeared … Some of them had a weird hold over Brian … It’s the same feeling with who killed Kennedy. You can’t get to the bottom of it.”5 One of the “weird things” that Richards mentioned was the disappearance of a number of Jones’s personal items a few days following his death. Whoever stole these items and planned to resell them at a later date had a key to Brian’s house. The items stolen included his guitar collection and a large number of antiques and house furnishings. Another stolen item included Brian Jones’s first retirement check from the Rolling Stones made out in the sum of £100,000. The money and furnishings were never recovered. Another strange happening the night of the murder concerned the official statement made by the three witnesses; it appeared that they were each telling different stories concerning the night of the horrible drowning. It was as if they had different recollections of what had actually happened there.
A. E. Hotchner, in his Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties, presented a series of interviews collected twenty years after the death of Brian Jones that tell a very different story of what happened that tragic night at Cotchford Farm. One man who claimed to have been present that night was one of the workers hired by Jones to help with his renovations. His story mentions a party in which he and his fellow workmen returned to Jones’s estate later that night. The workers were drinking and a number of them were very jealous of Jones and his wealthy lifestyle. A few of their girlfriends seemed to be quite attracted to Brian and watched him as he swam in his pool. It was then that two of the workmen attacked Jones in the pool, holding his head under the water. They continuously kept his head bobbing up and down in the water, paying little or no attention to his gasping and his violent struggle to breathe. When his body became still, the other partygoers left hurriedly. Threats were reportedly made to other witnesses to ensure their silence. This incredible story has been corroborated by at least three others who have now claimed to have been present that night. One of the spectators was said to be a former member of the Walker Brothers (rock group), while another was Nicholas Fitzgerald, a longtime friend of Jones and a member of the Guinness family. Fitzgerald, along with his friend Richard Cadbury, made his way to Jones’s home the night of July 2, 1969, to attend a party. Fitzgerald had met with Jones earlier that afternoon and noticed that Brian appeared very upset. Jones had mentioned that there were a number of men hanging about his home and he was convinced that they were up to no good. Brian was upbeat about his future band plans and had been in recent contact with both John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. He appeared to be excited that both musicians were seriously considering being a part of his new group. Jones had then invited his friend to attend his party later that night. As Fitzgeald approached the house from a wooded area he noticed three men who were standing on the right side of the swimming pool. The middle man fell to his knees and pushed down on a struggling swimmer’s head. The head appeared to be very white (Jones had light blond hair). At the opposite end of the pool, a man and woman were standing just staring into the pool. Shortly afterward a third man jumped into the pool, landing on the back of the helpless swimmer. It was then that Fitzgerald and Cadbury were approached by a “burly man wearing glasses. He pushed Richard out of the way. He grabbed my [Fitzgerald’s] shoulder. His other hand made a fist, which he put in my face menacingly. ‘Get the hell out of here, Fitzgerald, or you’ll be the next.’”6 As the two men hurriedly returned home, a series of strange events were put into motion. When Fitzgerald had tried to contact Cadbury after the strange events of the following night, he was informed that Cadbury had moved and left no forwarding address. Stranger still, another of Brian’s friends stated that Anna Wohlin and her best friend Linda Lawrence were told that they were to leave England immediately. Wohlin also stated that Jones had not been using drugs and was in fact an excellent swimmer. Ronni Money, another of Brian’s friends, exclaimed, “I believe in ultimate evil now. I do, I’ve seen it, and I believe in it. And I don’t think it’s got anything to do with horned people, it’s to do with people who can actually loathe you to death.”7
To make things even more interesting, it has now been reported that in 1993, Frank Thorogood made a deathbed confession in which he admitted to the murder of Brian Jones.8 (Today, the Thorogood family denies the allegation and claims it was an attempt to sell a new book on the death of Brian Jones.) A few days before his death, Jones had confided in several friends his intention to fire Thorogood. Perhaps Brian had chosen that warm night in July when his drinking had given him just a little more courage to confront Thorogood. In any case this situation could have very well provided a motive for murder. Supposedly, the Sussex police have now reopened the case and are searching for new clues that hopefully will solve one more of the greatest hidden mysteries of rock and roll.
On September 3, 1
970, Canned Heat guitarist Al “Blind Owl” Wilson joined the club. Wilson received his peculiar nickname due to his nearsightedness. Wilson graduated with a degree in music from Boston University and, along with singer Bob “Bear” Hite, formed Canned Heat in 1966. Both Wilson and Hite were singers devoted to the blues, but it was Wilson’s distinctive high quivering falsetto that was featured on the band’s most successful hits, “On the Road Again” and “Going Up the Country.” Wilson was said to have suffered from severe bouts with depression, and on the night of his death he was camping out behind Bob Hite’s home. The band was to leave on a European tour the next day. His body was found the next morning still wrapped in his sleeping bag. Though the official version of his death was given as a drug overdose, many of his closest friends believe that his premature death was suicide. (Tragedy struck Canned Heat once again in 1981 when Bob “Bear” Hite died of a heart attack following one of the band’s performances. He was thirty-six years old.)
Later in that same September, the rock world was stunned once again when word came from London that Jimi Hendrix had died in his girlfriend’s apartment. The American guitarist had conquered the musical world through the introduction of his cosmic blues. No one has ever played the guitar like Jimi Hendrix. He played the fretted instrument behind his back and with his teeth. He defined musical showmanship and with his incredible virtuosity laid down the musical challenge for other up and coming guitarists who wanted to claim his throne. After watching Hendrix perform, none chose to challenge him. Though Hendrix crafted an ingenious tonal rainbow of new musical sounds and directions, he always remained true to his first love, the blues. Some of Jimi Hendrix’s friends felt that the rock superstar may have sensed his own premature death. That July, before his death, Jimi was said to have told some reporters during his last tour that, “The next time I go back to Seattle it will be in a pine box.” He also remarked to one reporter, Anne BjØrnal, that “I’ve been dead for a long time. I don’t think I will live to see twenty-eight.”9 Little did he know that day just how prophetic that last remark would truly become. Following his much too early death, listeners and fans couldn’t help but notice some eerie foreshadowing in Hendrix’s lyrics. In “I Don’t Live Today,” Hendrix’s song dedicated to the many Native American tribes who lost their freedom as well as their lands, the title becomes self-explanatory. When listening to the song a listener can’t help but notice the phrase “No sun coming through my windows, feel like I’m living at the bottom of a grave.” In this case the lyric becomes self-prophetic.
Take a Walk on the Dark Side Page 22
