Stoned

In retrospect a musician who did not compose the songs for which he/she is famous would not ordinarily be remembered 40 years after. However, if the musician started the greatest rock n roll band in the world, lived the life of their best songs and contributed immensely to the music of the sixties, mastering many musical instruments and styles as well as promoting them, they are not just an ordinary musician. Although the film documents Brian's fascination with the Blues in his early years and living a decadent jaded life in his later years it fails to impress on the uninitiated the sparkle of sitars, early synth work, recorders, etc, etc that Brian enhanced the pop charts with on his journey through the sixties. None of the original Rolling Stones songs are present and although the covers, etc, represent the decade they do not adequately represent Brian's gift to music. I believe this is copyright related but actually sums up the frustrations of his life that he was not allowed to share composing credits, etc and was basically conned out of ownership of the band in the process. Brian Jones's death was a tragedy but his life was marred by controversy balanced against fine work as a musician which should be remembered most and probably is a bit by the end of the film, though not as much as I would have liked to see.

Anyway another topic about films...saw 'Stoned' last night. A film about the life and death of the Rolling Stones member Brian Jones...The death of whom was quite a shocking event at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed it..

Directed by Stephen Woolley, with Leo Gregory as Jones and Paddy Considine as the man who lived closely with him, Frank Thorogood..

It was a very good surprise..

I had no expectations and was hooked from the start..The actors playing the young Stones were very good at creating the look, feel and attitude of the band and the design of the film, especially the make up of the women cast members, was just evocative of the time in the 60's..The music was excellent and the editing to the music was superb..Hooked me in from the word go...

How does one cast a movie portraying at least three of most worshiped, admired, envied, charismatic people in the business? Add to that, two of them are still alive and performing, maintaining their persona quite effectively into their sixties. Perhaps if this all had occurred before high-quality film, video, and sound-recording was so easily available. As it is, any one from any generation can get a first-hand idea of how fascinating the Rolling Stones' entrance into the pop-music scene was. If you want to know all about the aspects of Brian Jones that really matter, listen to the music; his total immersion into whatever style he was interested in gave him almost instant ability on whatever instrument he wished to play; his knowledge of and ability at Chicago Blues guitar styles,(not the hot solos, but the foundational group styles), was unparalleled. If you want to understand why he was so adored; look at his pictures. You're not going to get the idea from this film, but it's almost not fair.

No, one should not expect a fictionalization of the Stones' story, but one does expect a reasonable attempt at a depiction of Brian Jones' time with them. As it is, the Stones are peripheral characters in the screenplay. Apart from a few bluesy jams, their own music is absent entirely. The story focuses on the relationships between Jones and his foreman/com-padre Frank Thorogood, out at the rock star's country estate. The large house is conspicuously the movie's prime set. Fine, 'Stoned' had a low budget. Then again, it's from a real-life story which was basically made up of people talking, fighting and falling over. Not so fine is that 'Stoned' had to be so bad. One of the hardest things to swallow about 'Stoned' was the casting of Leo Gregory as Jones. He does little characterization beyond a 'fatalistic' smile, and although 27 years old himself (Jones' age at the time of his death), on screen he looks ten years older and wears a risible array of mail-order hairpieces to represent the varying Jones eras. At times he looks like a young Jon Pertwee in a fright wig. The direction by Stephen Wooley is wildly erratic and at times laughable. Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' underscoring an acid trip scene is the hack cinematic equivalent of the 'city/pretty' hack songwriting rhyme. It took Wooley ten years to put this botch-up together? Looks more like it was desperately cobbled together late Sunday night and breathlessly handed in by the Monday 9AM deadline. Another Bad Movie Night contender.

Stoned tells us about the life and early death at 27 of Brian Jones who founded and actually named the group. I do remember it back in 1969, that there was such controversy around it I did not know. It seems as though the Stones went on without any pause or at least that's how it appeared in America.

Part of the problem with this film is that Brian Jones is not presented as an especially likable figure. It seemed to me that his love of all kinds of hedonistic pleasure took over and ruled him. What started as creative differences between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Jones just eventually came down to the fact that Jones would rather party than work. Not that those two guys ever lived like monks, but you do have to please the public with your music and that requires working on it and on a product to please said public. It's why the Rolling Stones are still a hot act in almost 50 years of performing and not on the nostalgia circuit either.

Leo Gregory plays Jones and some really good casting was done with him and those who played the rest of the Stones. Paddy Considine is Frank Thorogood, Jones's estate builder and general factotum who was fired the day Jones was found in his pool. Whether he had help from Thorogood or anyone else is still fodder for speculation.

I agree with another reviewer who said the sound was of bad quality. That that reviewer was from the UK says something because I would be tempted to blame it on their accents. I well remember when the Beatles first came to America they were unintelligible with their Liverpudlian speech pattern which was not something American ears heard that often. But here it's just bad sound recording.

Maybe it was his hedonism over all way of life, but I could not develop a rooting interest in Jones as I could with say Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin and I'm not really into that music.