Quinn is fourteen years old in 1971, living in Laurel Canyon, California. Rock music is just hitting its stride, and Quinn is obsessed. He writes a column, “For What It’s Worth,” that’s filled with rock ‘n roll minutiae. But rock never did exist in a vacuum. Like the blues, it was born of creative and political need, as Quinn begins to realize when a draft dodger shows up at his house.
The book is loaded with music. It would be far simpler to make a playlist than to select one song, one musician. But Quinn makes reference to “Club 27,” which has been a theme for Jukebooks lately. It’s a bit prescient for Quinn to speak of Club 27, since it wasn’t really a thing in 1971. (I would know; I was fourteen in 1971.) But it presents an opportunity to write about Brian Jones.
Jones is the Rolling Stone you never hear about. He’s the one who recruited the band members and chose the band’s name. He introduced the Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Monterey Pop Festival. Through it all, he took drugs. The descent is sadly familiar: erratic behavior, arrests, fighting with the other band members. In 1969, Jones was asked to leave the band, eventually replaced by Mick Taylor.
Below is a montage of Brian Jones images, accompanied by the Rolling Stones’s “Last Time.” Jones played the guitar riff heard in the recording.
Diane Colson, currently reading Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann.