George Harrison Said He Always Helped The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones When He Got Too High
George Harrison got to know The Rolling Stones well, and he felt the deepest kinship with Brian Jones. Jones was with the band until 1969 and was always, like Harrison, overshadowed by his more famous bandmates. Harrison said that because of this, he was willing to help Jones when others might not have been.
George Harrison empathized with Brian Jones
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were two of the biggest bands of the 1960s, and they ran into each other often. The members of both bands got to know each other well. Harrison said he grew particularly close with Jones and would help him whenever he needed it.
“I always used to see Brian in the clubs and hang out with him,” Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “In the mid-Sixties he used to come out to my house — particularly when he’d got ‘the fear,’ when he’d mixed too many weird things together. I’d hear his voice shouting to me from out in the garden: ‘George, George…’ I’d let him in — he was a good mate.”
Harrison said he felt drawn to Jones because they were in similar positions in their bands. In The Beatles, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were at the forefront. In The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were the stars. Both Harrison and Jones were left feeling overshadowed.
“We had a lot in common, when I think about it. We shared the same date of birth, or nearly, so he must have been a Pisces as well. We also shared the same positions in the most prominent bands in the universe: him with Mick and Keith, and me with Paul and John. I think he related to me a lot, and I liked him. Some people didn’t have time for him, but I thought he was one of the most interesting ones.”
Brian Jones and George Harrison handled their positions in the band differently
While Harrison and Jones had similar positions in their respective bands, they handled it differently. Harrison’s resentment of his bandmates simmered for years. It led him to quit The Beatles temporarily, but, for the most part, it just made him grow disenchanted and disconnected from the band. He sat on a growing pile of original songs and awaited a solo career. Still, he was a present member of the group.
Jones, on the other hand, grew increasingly estranged from his bandmates.
“What probably really stuck in Brian’s craw was when Mick and I started writing the songs,” Richards wrote in his book, Life. “He lost his status and then lost interest. Having to come to the studio and learn to play a song Mick and I had written would bring him down. It was like Brian’s open wound.”
Jones became absent in recording sessions and band events, intensifying his feelings of isolation. He left the band in 1969.
Brian Jones once played saxophone on a Beatles record
Before Jones and The Rolling Stones went their separate ways, he contributed to a Beatles song. McCartney said he surprised them by giving them the exact performance they wanted.
“When we asked Brian Jones to one of our sessions, to our surprise he brought along a sax,” McCartney said. “He turned up in a big Afghan coat at Abbey Road. He played sax on a crazy record, ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number).’ It’s a funny sax solo — it isn’t amazingly well played but it happened to be exactly what we wanted: a ropey, shaky sax. Brian was very good like that.”
