Customer Reviews

Murder of Brian Jones

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

No one more than I would like to believe that in the months prior to his death Brian Jones was a milk drinking, vegetable planting, happy, healthy man. I remember the morning I was told of Brian Jones death. I wept like a child...just as I had wept with joy at the sight of him onstage at the age of 16. Sadly, I believe this book was not written to validate Brian Jones life or his death, but to make Anna Wohlin feel better. No one ever speaks of her...she is merely a footnote in Brian Jones' life. No match for the powerful aura of Anita Pallenberg or Marianne Faithful, she is, in the history books, merely the woman who was there the day he died. There are no photos of Brian and Anna together in this book. There are no photos of Brian at all. So one can't help but speculate on the motives for the writing and printing of this book. Was he clean? Was he happy? Was he in love? Anna says yes. Brian's father in an interview after Brian's death only speaks of unhappiness and drugs. Anna claims that Brian's father knew of their happiness and condoned it. Real or memorex? Fact or fiction? Truth or lies? Truth: Brian Jones died in a questionable manner in the summer of 1969. Truth: he was a beautiful, talented, troubled man. No speculation will bring him back. These kind thoughts help. Rest in peace.

This is a fascinating book which is very easy to read.I think its always better to hear a story from a protagonist for although there is undoutably some deviation from the truth,there is a sense of genuine involvment and that is very apparent here.

The book describes the authers romantic relationship with Jones during the last few months of his life,although interesting Wohlin does have a habbit of repeating her self and painting too much of a rosy picture of their life together.The book finds a better pace as it approaches the events surrounding the "murder",which she attributes to Frank Throgood a builder who was hired by the Stones management to renovate Jones recently aquired farm house.Another reviewer intelligently says that you have to read between the lines to see the real truth and I would agree,and equally when it comes to Wohlins involvment.She expresses how she felt scared and intimidated,fearing that if she told anyone that she believed Jones was murdered she too would meet the same fate .She very effectivly dipicts the isolated lonely position she was in being "alone in a foreign country"grief stricken and intimidated and this combined with what she perceived as genuine threats from Throgood is why she has presumably not spoken sooner.We are left with the suggestion of a huge conspiracy surrounding the death involving the Rolling Stones Inc who go to great lengths to stop Wohlin from talking,even offering her £100,000 to keep quiet,begging the question "why?"after all the stones had nothing to gain from Jones death "did they?"

Eventually some time after the inquest Wohlin finds the courage to tell the police that she is convinced Brian Jones was murdered, they agree something is amiss but advise her for her own wellbeing to leave things as they stand.

Taken to its logical conclusion this is a harrowing story of deceit, foulplay corruption and murder .Well done Anna for finding the courage to write it, perhaps your next book could fill in the blanks.

it's been a while. i've thought over the years that i should say something, but i never knew what. and even now speculation, and psychological biographies continue to haunt, delivering immediate answers. the funny thing, the most unusual thing, the most mundane thing is lewis brian hopkin-jones never thought of himself as anything other. difficult, yes. problematical, yes. but not a whole lot more than that. just another kid who loved the blues. i should know. we corresponded for years. we hung out together in europe, early on and did music. it wasn't anything other than music and conversation. there was certainly absolutly nothing golden about it. there was nothing special about brian, unless you counted an abiding love of music and a definate proclivity with any stringed instrument. but a lot of us in the late 50s and early 60s were there and doing the same thing (robert elliot hardin, jack hardy, charlie irwin, ed krayer in america) with our poetry, music, theatre, dance, thoughts and late night walks. bri was simply another kid who really loved the blues. i'd like to say i have something to offer to the industry of his death. i don't. michael phillip and keith have had their say. bill has offered revisionism. i remember that none of us were easy or pleasant. i remember that neither bri or i thought we'd live past 25. once we did, we didn't know what to do. and so, now, i keep going back to the first 3 albums, and enjoy his vision, and a music that a white kid in england was able to make especially his own. i do miss him. i do not know what would have happened. we never talked about that.

This is an excellent book which gives an insight into the last few months of the troubled but charismatic founder member of the Rolling Stones. It shows that Brian Jones had cleaned up his act and was happier than he had been in years until his untimely death at the hands of employees associated with the Stones organisation. A must for all Brian Jones fans.

I love this book. It shows that Brian really had his act together at the end. Frank killed him, end of story. Brian was a genuis who got his sanity back. He also was a nice man, with problems, who seemed to have mtured greatly. His death was a loss to music.

As a long time Stones archivist and fan, I have read every book written about the band and the late Brian Jones, and this is probably the worst. One can only conclude that Ms. Wohlin is living in a fantasy world because much of what she writes is nonsense, contradicted by virtually everyone and everything I've ever read. The entire book reads like a badly written romance novel. This poor woman rates only brief mentions in the numerous biographies about Brian because she really only knew him for a couple of months before he died, and unbelievably, there are no pictures of her with "the man she will love forever" in her own book! And finally, she is unable to provide proof of her allegations that Brian was murdered, her testimony remaining unchanged since that terrible night. Avoid this like the plague.

Anna Wohlin's account of her brief period with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones is an interesting yet sad one. Even as young as she was during the time she was with him, her memory is quite exquisite and frankly, I don't understand how she could remember all of those little incidences without having kept a diary of some kind (which she never confesses to). I had someone close to me die in 1972 that I could never have remember such minute details on a minute-by-minute basis, especially this many years later.

Anna chooses to recall Brian very fondly, glossing over his paranoia and insecurities, alcohol abuse, affairs, his physical abuse of her, and concentrating on their love affair which had undeniable overtones of being steeped in his longing for the now-absent Anita Pallenberg. It never seems to faze nor occur to Anna (that she relates) that she might just be a stand-in for Anita - the other blonde with an accent. Still, she apparently enjoyed the relationship enough to stick around and get to know Brian as only she could.

To me, this book seems to be Anna's cry for validation - that she was important in Brian's life at some point. I feel she could have made more of a mark and been more important to Brian by standing up for the truth about his death at the time, instead of succumbing to the lies that Frank Thorogood and Tom Keylock "forced" her to relate.

Whatever their relationship, Anna Wohlin remains in very deep pain over her relationship Brian Jones, and his subsequent death. That is the only true fact I can attest to after reading this.

Ms Wohlin has apparently had battles with lawyers over the publication of this book and I think one has to read between the lines to find the truth. She has told as much as she was allowed to with regard to Brian Jones death and it is all there if you can but see it. I found it a fascinating insight into the last few months of Brian Jones life. Not the wasted, washed up, lost soul that the Rolling Stones would have liked you to think but a newly regenerated force to be reckoned with, had he lived long enough to start a new band. Great book, well done Anna for having the guts to write it.

I thought this book was wonderful. I don't know if it proves how Brian died, but it does tell me how he really was in the end. The way Anna described him, was so interesting. He really was down to earth and loved his home. He loved to plant carrots and watch them grow, it gave him such fulfillment that he was lacking in his life. How he enjoyed his music room, and how he loved to eat breakfast with a glass of full fat milk. The way Anna wrote, I felt like I actually was there in the room watching him and I felt like I was in the garden watching him pull his carrots out of the ground to see how much they grew. It was amazing I felt like I was watching Brian thru his window. For me, Anna made Brian happy in his last days and that is what counts. I keep the book by my bedside, and browse thru it constantly, I have read it 3 times already! I love it!

Well written testimonial.

The lovely Swedish girlfriend of Brian Jone's recalls the evening he was murdered.

She confesses her suspicions on the murderer of her boyfriend.

Ms. Wohlin recounts that Keith Richards had dumped Mr. Thorogood on Brian Jones and Brian felt very ill at ease with Mr Thorogood.

Brian was going to fire him after mr. Thorogood suspended a loose beam on the ceiling which could have killed both Brian and Anna !

Shortly thereafter a get-together with mr Thorogood and Brian and Anna, Brian is found at the bottom of the pool!

Anna tried to resuscitate Brian, trying to breAthe life back into him.

The Rolling Stone members(except Bill Wyman) kept her away and she was threatened to leave.

She did return many years later,The Stones never commented on this and they did ditch him just before Brian's death , she writes.

It's a very sad story.

Poor Brian,poor Anna.