News Brian Jones on his favourite guitarists
After forming in 1963, The Rolling Stones established themselves in London’s emerging rhythm and blues scene with an insatiable thirst to popularise American blues icons like Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Howlin’ Wolf. Initially, the group was led by multi-instrumentalist and bonafide blues fanatic Brian Jones, who named the group after Muddy Waters’ 1950 song ‘Rollin’ Stone’. His vision for the band was to take blues music to the top of the UK charts. Their success exceeded Jones’ expectations and ultimately alienated him.
As a fan of the electric blues, Jones’ weapon of choice was the guitar, but his musical education began with the piano. “My parents instigated lessons on piano and clarinet, and later I moved on to saxophone,” Jones said in an early interview. “It was great for giving me a solid grounding, but I didn’t know in those ‘square’ days where my musical interests were going to lead me…”
At age 17, Jones took up the guitar. Although the Cheltenham-born musician couldn’t remember the brand of his first guitar, he recalled that it was a classical Spanish-style acoustic guitar that he bought from a friend who was “selling everything he had to raise funds”.
Through his late teens, Jones taught himself to play from a “good” lesson book. He noted that it was “important to get a good one” since “some of them are rubbish”. With the basics under his belt, Jones traded the classical in for his beloved vintage Gibson Cromwell, owing to his concurrent fascination with jazz rhythm playing.
In a move that he would come to regret, Jones then part exchanged the Cromwell for a Hofner Committee, which he didn’t enjoy playing so much. Swiftly, he traded this one in for a Harmony Jumbo, his first blues-primed axe. “[It] was just great when I became interested in blues music,” he said of the guitar.
Perhaps inspired by his Beatles counterpart George Harrison, Jones later landed on a versatile Gretsch with “a lovely sound, electrically,” he said, before adding: “Though Keith Richards takes the Chuck Berry-style leads with the Rolling Stones, I like getting unusual sounds from my guitar. It’s much more important to me than just knowing a sequence of different chords. I use steel guitar a lot, and people seem surprised that I use the conventional tuning for it.”
Later in the guitar-orientated conversation, Jones was challenged to pick out some of his favourite musicians. “Well, [jazz legend] Django Reinhardt for sure, not that I’d ever try to model myself on him. Then there’s Elmore James, who’s a beautiful player. I like Robert Johnson, too. But there are two players with Muddy Waters who I dig a lot – Pat Hare and someone called Jimmy Rodgers, who is NOT to be confused with the folk singers of the same name.”
Jones was most commonly seen with a guitar on stage, but he could often be seen trying his hand at something new. For example, he famously played the sitar on ‘Paint it Black’ and performed the rhythmic piano on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ during early live performances of the song shortly before his departure in 1969. Jones was also a dab hand on the blues harp. “To be honest, I prefer playing harmonica to guitar,” he revealed. “It’s that sound business all over again – I just like getting soulful sounds without worrying about simple sequences of notes. And harmonica is great, from my point of view. But I don’t think you get the real soul stuff from a chromatic harmonica. Which is why I stick to Echo Vampers, which come in a host of different keys and cost just ten shillings and nine pence.”
See the list of Brian Jones’ favourite guitarists and watch the late legend perform live with The Rolling Stones below.
Brian Jones on his favourite guitarists:
1.Django Reinhardt
2.Elmore James
3.Robert Johnson
4.Muddy Waters
5.Pat Hare
6.Jimmy Rodgers
