SPANISH TONY: “For a moment there was a togetherness of the Stones, the Who and all the other superstars that made all the myths about the beautiful, brilliant people seem true. For that one night all the backstabbing machinations of big-money rock’n’roll seemed a million miles away. Mick and Marianne were playing leapfrog before the cameras started to roll, while Keith swaggered around dressed as a decadent reprobate in top hat and black eyepatch.”
LAURA JACKSON: “Rumors talk of a conversation which John Lennon allegedly had with Brian at the Rock’n’Roll Circus during which Lennon, seeing his friend’s plight, had advised him to jump ship and strike out on his own. If true, this must have created an even more intense whirlpool in Brian’s already overloaded mind.”
LAURA JACKSON: “Brian took part in what turned out to be his very last recording with the Stones when they shot the ‘Rock’n’Roll Circus’ over two days at Wembley Studios for Independent Television. Mick, in a ringmaster’s outfit, looks decidedly ill at ease with the tiger held at the end of a chain. The audience in fluorescent lime, yellow and orange capes looks lethargically bewildered, obviously exhausted by the 48-hour shoot – while Brian, in a purple velvet jacket and gold trousers with a lame sash about his waist, is simply flat bored as he glances idly around him during the limp rendition of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Thoughtful and detached, above all, he cannot camouflage the overriding strain etched on his face. He must have been wondering why he was hanging in there at all; close-up shots of him reveal an unnamed, unvoiced, but unmistakably deep hurt.”
IAN ANDERSON: “Brian appeared to me, as an onlooker, somewhat ostracized, both musically and socially, from the rest of the Stones. Doubtless the Stones view that particular period with a mixture of sadness and perhaps guilt.”
ALEXIS KORNER: “Brian had lost all contact basically with the band. I can understand both sides of that very well. I think the band tolerated Brian for a long time. And I think Brian tolerated them for a long time. Because he loved all the success and everything. He really loved that, over enjoyed, over indulged it perhaps. But at the same time he thought he should be playing the blues with a capital T and capital B. And it was a form of treachery to him to be so successful doing this.”
HELEN SPITTAL: “Later, Brian would tell me about the Rock’n’Roll Circus and how he’d never seen Keith as high on drugs before as he had been that day. And he was worried about it. He was really genuinely concerned about it. From experience I guess, seeing the way Keith could go if he wasn’t careful.”
IAN STEWART: “Brian had a phenomenal musical talent… but he was so wrecked all the time that he could never play properly. He seems never to have been able to find himself, he had a lost quality, not knowing what he wanted to do, or unable to express some part of himself. He was actually quite a nice person who didn’t want people to think he was nice. He wanted to be known as an evil character, but he wasn’t really, and the end result of it was he just had to be so off to everybody. And the other thing was, as soon as he actually got the money to do it, he felt he had to get drunk all the time and take any pill that anybody offered him. He was so zonked most of the time, he just couldn’t play. He was certainly intelligent enough to realize all this would lead to his own destruction. He must’ve known that. Maybe in the back of his head he conceived of himself as being the young rock and roll martyr.”
ANITA PALLENBERG: “It’s always built up that Brian was kicked out of the band, but I’ve always thought that it was the other way around. Brian really was always a rhythm and blues man, and that’s it. He’d take me to so many places where blues players’d hang out. One time, for instance, it’d be the second floor of some building in Oxford Street and he’d introduce me to Eric Clapton and all of those guys, and they’d just play this great music so beautifully, so powerfully… But, yeah, obviously the acid didn’t help at all, not at all, and he wasn’t aware of it, that it was making it worse, not for quite a while. When you’re in it you don’t realize… you just haven’t got a choice, really. His whole lifestyle deteriorated. There were a lot of people around him who just weren’t of his level. They were around him just to use him. He was bloated, always apologizing. Basically, he was surrounded by these Neanderthal types, and that certainly didn’t help his paranoia. I mean, they really resented him. But then later, he was very creative again. Alexis Korner had got in touch with him, and they were going to form another band, a blues band. He had regained his vision, but physically he was still recovering. And John Lennon also then was talking to him about forming a band. Apart from anything else they both had this same kind of ‘up-front thing.’ So basically, I think he was in a lot better shape by then – just having the odd glass of wine.”
PETER SWALES: “Marianne was nervous, really tense. At one point, she was sitting near the entrance when six London cops trotted in. The dressing room area was fragrant with hash smoke; Marianne thought it was a bust and flipped! She went bananas, totally hysteric, until it became clear they only wanted to have their tea in the studio canteen.”
SPANISH TONY: “After Jethro Tull had played and the fire-eaters had finished singeing our eyebrows, Marianne stepped alone into the ring, looking fey, vulnerable and exquisitely beautiful. She sang a mysterious, slow song called ‘Something Better,’ about her need to live a different kind of life. But that night even she and Mick seemed to be in love, and he squeezed her and made her laugh between takes.”
PETE TOWNSHEND: “We’d done some shows with Marianne as a pop star and sat backstage… taking the piss, really, because she was beautiful and gorgeous but seemed to be some kind of blonde airhead. Suddenly there she was, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, and we all suddenly realized she had teeth and presence and power. When she sat in the middle of the floor to do her song, I turned to Keith and went, ‘FUCKING HELL, look at that.” She was just so transcendentally beautiful, and self-possessed… and she was very sweet to me all day so it was probably good that my girlfriend wasn’t there.”
MARIANNE FAITHFULL: “Mick hated the Stones’ performance in ‘The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.’ He just wanted the whole thing to go away. It was like the scene from ‘Snow White’ where the Wicked Queen says to the huntsman: ‘Go! Take her into the forest and destroy her!’ with Mick as the Wicked Queen and Ian Stewart as the huntsman. He wanted those tapes destroyed. Burned. Thrown into the Thames. For ever eliminated. And Stu said,’ Yeah, okay, Mick, will do.’ But he couldn’t do it! ‘Where can I put these cans of film,’ Stu thought to himself, ‘where Mick will never think to ever look?’ And so he took them to Eel Pie Island and said, ‘I say, Pete [Townshend, this was], I’ve got these old cans of film. Do you mind if I leave them in your garage?’ And Pete said, ‘No, Stu, go on. That’s fine, you know, I don’t mind, don’t use it, there’s nothing really in there.’ And there they lay, mouldering away, for twenty-five years, until one day, God knows, Pete, clearing out the garage, found the film and it said ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ on it! And he goes, ‘Oh, hey, what’s this?’ And being incredibly smart, he put it on his home projection and watched it, and every single shot was of me for the ‘Rock and Roll Circus.’ There it all was, except for one really beautiful crane shot. I don’t know what happened to that. Maybe Mick was so angry that he just had one roll of film out of a can, tore it into a million pieces and burned it in the back garden as he and Bianca danced around it hooting like owls.”
