Brian Jones is to the Rolling Stones what Leon Trotsky was to the Russian Revolution: organizer, ideologist and victim of a power struggle. Jones founded the group, gave it its name and recruited the schoolboys Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who then marginalized him, eventually expelling him from the band. Since his death in 1969, a month after he was forced out, Jones has largely been airbrushed from the group’s history.
布莱恩·琼斯之于滚石乐队就像列夫·托洛茨基(Leon Trotsky)之于俄国革命：组织者、思想家和权力斗争的牺牲品。琼斯组建了这支乐队，为它起了名字，招募了还在上学的米克·贾格尔(Mick Jagger)和基思·理查兹(Keith Richards)，两人后来却排斥他，最终将他逐出乐队。他于1969年去世，距离被逐出乐队只有一个月，自那以后，琼斯在很大程度上便从乐队的历史上被抹去了。
Paul Trynka’s biography “Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones” challenges the standard version of events, focused on Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, in favor of something far more nuanced. Though Mr. Trynka sometimes overstates Jones’s long-term cultural impact, his is revisionist history of the best kind — scrupulously researched and cogently argued — and should be unfailingly interesting to any Stones fan.
保罗·特伦卡(Paul Trynka)的传记《布莱恩·琼斯：滚石乐队的缔造》(Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones)挑战了对于乐队事件中通常以贾格尔和理查兹为中心出发的看法，关注更微小的事件。尽管特伦卡有时夸大了琼斯的长期文化影响力，但他的传记是一部经过修订的历史，有着一丝不苟的研究和中肯的探讨，任何“滚石”的乐迷都会感兴趣。Specifically, “Brian Jones” seems designed as a corrective to “Life,” Keith Richards’s 2010 memoir. Mr. Trynka, the author of biographies of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and a former editor of the British music magazines Mojo and Guitar, has interviewed Mr. Richards several times over the years and obviously likes him, but also considers his memory of events highly unreliable.
更何况《布莱恩·琼斯》还刻意对基思·理查兹2010年的回忆录《滚吧·生活》(Life)做了订正。特伦卡是大卫·鲍伊(David Bowie)和伊基·波普(Iggy Pop)的传记作者，还曾在英国音乐杂志《莫约》(Mojo)和《吉他》(Guitar)担任编辑，多年来，他曾数次访问理查兹，显然也很喜欢理查兹，但他觉得理查兹对各种事件的回忆很靠不住。
“History is written by the victors, and in recent years we’ve seen the proprietors of the modern Rolling Stones describe their genesis, their discovery of the blues, without even mentioning their founder,” Mr. Trynka remarks in the introduction. Without naming Mr. Richards, he also expresses his distaste for an assessment that appears in “Life,” that Brian Jones was “a kind of rotting attachment.”
“历史是由胜利者所书写，近年来，我们看到现代‘滚石’的各位所有者们描述他们的起源，他们如何发现了布鲁斯，却没有人提起乐队的创始人，”特伦卡在前言中写道。他没有对理查兹指名道姓，但对《滚吧，生活》中评论布莱恩·琼斯是“腐烂的附属品”这个说法表示厌恶。The portrait of Jones that Mr. Trynka offers here is bifurcated. Though he is impressed with Jones’s “disciplined, honed sense of musical direction” and his dexterity on guitar and many other instruments, he does not hesitate to point out his subject’s more unpleasant personality traits: He was narcissistic, manipulative, misogynistic, conniving and dishonest about money. It’s not accidental that this book is called “Sympathy for the Devil” in Britain.
特伦卡在书中为布莱恩描绘的肖像具有两面性。尽管他喜欢琼斯“在音乐方面节制而精微的方向感”，以及他演奏吉他与多种乐器的才华；但特伦卡也毫不犹豫地指出，自己笔下的主人公有着令人不快的个性特征：他自恋、爱操纵他人、厌女、在金钱方面狡诈，不诚实。这本书被称为献给布莱恩的《对魔鬼的同情》(Sympathy for the Devil)实非偶然。Mr. Trynka attributes Jones’s downfall to a conjunction of factors, some related to those character flaws but others external to him. Much has been written about the drug busts that swept up Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards in the mid-1960s and their court battles, though Jones seems to have been even more of a target, because he was such a dandy and so successful with women.
特伦卡认为琼斯的覆灭是由多种因素导致，有些是由于他的个性缺陷，但也有外部因素。书中写了很多20世纪60年代中期对贾格尔和理查兹的突击毒品搜查行动，还有法庭上的斗争，不过琼斯似乎更是众矢之的，因为他是个花花公子，而且在女人方面很有一套。But as Mr. Trynka tells it, Jones did not receive strong legal advice or fight charges as hard or as successfully as the Jagger-Richards team. After his first arrest, he pleaded guilty, which drove a wedge between him and other band members, who feared it would mean they could no longer tour abroad, all of which left him feeling crushed, isolated and vulnerable. That, in turn, increased his consumption of drugs and alcohol and made him less productive as a musician.
但是，正如特伦卡所说，琼斯并没有得到有力的法律建议，也不像贾格尔-理查兹团队那样，有着强大的战斗力，最后还获得了成功。第一次被捕后，琼斯就认罪了，但其他人担心认罪后就不能出国巡演，这为他和乐队其他成员带来了隔阂， 其他人任凭他一人承受崩溃、孤独和脆弱。反过来，这也导致他变本加厉地使用毒品和酒精，削弱了他在音乐上的创造力。Nevertheless, Mr. Trynka demonstrates convincingly that the original Rolling Stones were Jones’s band and reflected his look, tastes and interests, not just the blues but also renaissance music and what today would be called world music. (He recorded the master musicians of Joujouka in the mountains of Morocco.) In “Life,” Mr. Richards describes his discovery of the blues-tinged open G guitar tuning, familiar from hits like “Honky Tonk Women” and “Start Me Up,” as life changing, and says it came to him via Ry Cooder in the late 1960s. But Mr. Trynka notes that Jones often played in that tuning from the band’s earliest days and quotes Dick Taylor, an original member of the Stones, as saying, “Keith watched Brian play that tuning, and certainly knew all about it.”
不管怎样，特伦卡令人信服地展现出最初的“滚石”其实是琼斯的乐队，反映了他的样子、品味和兴趣，不仅仅是布鲁斯，也有复兴音乐，也就是如今被称为世界音乐的东西（布莱恩曾在摩洛哥山中为土著Joujouka音乐大师录音）。在《滚吧，生活》一书中，理查兹说自己发现了受布鲁斯影响的开放G和弦吉他调音法，以其在《小酒馆女人》(Honky Tonk Women)和《让我开始》(Start Me Up)等金曲中的使用而为人们熟知，他还说这是60年代末从莱·库德尔(Ry Cooder)那里得到的启发。但特伦卡指出，琼斯在乐队最早期的时候也经常使用这种调音法，还引述“滚石”原始成员迪克·泰勒(Dick Taylor)的话：“基思看着布莱恩用那种调音法弹琴，肯定什么都学到了。”Some of Mr. Trynka’s account is not new, having appeared in “Stone Alone,” the often overlooked 1990 memoir of the Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, or other books written by band outsiders. What makes Mr. Trynka’s book fresh and interesting, and gives it credibility, is the length he has gone to find witnesses to corroborate and elaborate on those stories.
特伦卡的若干说法不算新鲜，有些可以在“滚石”的贝斯手，比尔·怀曼(Bill Wyman)1990年的回忆录《孤独的石头》(Stone Alone)中读到，这本传记常常受到忽视；还有若干乐队圈外人的书中可以找到的内容。但特伦卡的书新鲜有趣、而且非常可信，这是因为他努力寻找证据去证实和详细描述这些故事。It’s not just that Mr. Trynka has sought out those who worked with the band on the creative side, such as the singer Marianne Faithfull, the arranger Jack Nitzsche and the recording engineers Eddie Kramer, Glyn Johns and George Chkiantz. He has also interviewed those with more of a worm’s-eye view: drivers, roadies, office staff, old girlfriends and former roommates like James Phelge, whose surname the band would appropriate to designate songs that were group compositions rather than Jagger-Richard numbers.
特伦卡不仅走访了那些在创作方面与乐队合作的人，比如歌手玛丽安娜·费斯弗(Marianne Faithfull)、编曲者杰克·尼采(Jack Nitzsche)，以及录音工程师艾迪·克拉默(Eddie Kramer)、格林·约翰斯(Glyn Johns)和乔治·奇科安兹(George Chkiantz)等，他也关注那些小人物的视角：司机、巡演工作人员、办公室人员、旧日女友和前室友，比如詹姆斯·菲尔格(James Phelge)，“滚石”曾经给由全乐队创作（而不是由贾格尔-理查兹创作）的歌曲署上“菲尔格”这个名字。“Brian Jones was the main man in the Stones; Jagger got everything from him,” the drummer Ginger Baker, who played in the band at some of its earliest shows and went on to become famous as a member of Cream, says in the book. “Brian was much more of a musician than Jagger will ever be — although Jagger’s a great economist.”
“布莱恩·琼斯才是‘滚石’的主脑，贾格尔的一切都是从他那儿得到的，”鼓手金格·贝克尔(Ginger Baker)在一本书中说，在“滚石”的最早几场演出中，他曾为他们打鼓，后来因为加入“奶油”(Cream)而成名。“布莱恩从来都比贾格尔更像音乐家——虽说贾格尔是个了不起的经济学家。”Citing those present at the creation, Mr. Trynka contends that Jones had a hand in composing some well-known Stones tracks, including “Paint It, Black” and “Under My Thumb.” He also claims that “Ruby Tuesday,” a No. 1 hit early in 1967, is actually a Jones-Richards collaboration — written not by Mr. Richards in a burst of inspiration and heartbreak in a Los Angeles hotel room, which is how the story is told in “Life” and elsewhere, but, according to Ms. Faithfull and Mr. Kramer, “labored over” by the pair in London for weeks.
特伦卡引用很多出现在创作现场的人的话，声称琼斯参与了“滚石”许多名曲的创作过程，包括《涂成黑色》(Paint It Black)和《在我的拇指下面》(Under My Thumb)。他还说，1967年初的金曲《露比星期二》(Ruby Tuesday)其实是琼斯和理查兹合写的——理查兹在《滚吧，生活》和其他地方说，这首歌是他在洛杉矶的酒店房间里，出于一时的灵感迸发，在失恋情绪下写成的。但费斯弗和克拉默说，这首歌是两人在伦敦“艰苦劳作”了几星期的产物。“I used to say to Brain, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ ” Stan Blackbourne, the accountant for the Rolling Stones at their mid-1960s peak, recalls in the book. “ ‘You write some of these songs, and you give the name over as if Mick Jagger has done it. Do you understand, you’re giving ’em thousands of pounds!’ All the time I used to tell him, ‘You’re writing a blank check.’ ”
“我曾经对布莱恩说，‘你到底是在干嘛啊，’”“滚石”60年代中旬鼎盛时期的会计斯坦·布莱克伯恩(Stan Blackbourne)在这本书中回忆，“‘这些歌有的是你写的，你却放弃了署名，好像它们是米克·贾格尔写的一样。你不明白吗，你这是白送了他们数以千计的英镑！’我总是告诉他，‘你这是在签空白支票呢。’”Mr. Trynka also looks into the circumstances of Jones’s death, on July 3, 1969, in the swimming pool at his home in East Sussex, once owned by A. A. Milne, but after all the Sturm und Drang that has come before, the subject is somewhat anticlimactic. In numerous books and in films like “Stoned,” it has been suggested that Jones was murdered, but Mr. Trynka painstakingly examines the flaws in each of the theories, and ends up close to the official verdict, “death by misadventure,” because of drug and alcohol consumption.
特伦卡还研究了琼斯去世时的情景，琼斯于1969年7月3日死在东苏塞克斯家中的泳池里，这栋房子曾经属于A·A·米尔恩(A. A. Milne)。尽管之前有着狂飙突进的时期，琼斯已经开始过气了。《迷幻》(Stoned)等无数书籍和电影都认为琼斯是被谋杀的，但特伦卡艰苦地研究了每个论点中的缺陷，最后的结论和官方意见很相近“他死于不幸的意外”——由毒品和酒精所导致。“The official coroner’s verdict on Brian’s death was perfunctory and lazy,” Mr. Trynka concludes. Nonetheless, “I’ve come to share their belief that Brian’s death was most likely a tragic accident” and to believe that “many of the existing theories that his death was in fact murder rely on unreliable witnesses.”
特伦卡说，“关于布莱恩的死，官方验尸官的结论敷衍而懒惰”。不过，“我开始和他们一样，相信布莱恩的死主要是一桩悲剧性的意外，”他也相信“很多关于他死于谋杀的论点都建立在不可靠的证据之上”。In the end, with the advantage of 45 years’ perspective, Mr. Trynka maintains, it is Jones’s music that matters. “It’s understandable why the survivors resent Brian Jones beyond the grave,” given his founder’s role, he argues, and also writes: “Brian Jones got many things wrong in his life, but the most important thing he got right.”
最后，特伦卡站在45年后的有利角度，坚持认为琼斯的音乐才是最重要的。“活下来的人怨恨冥府中的布莱恩，这是可以理解的，”特伦卡说，这是由于布莱恩的创始人身份。他还写道，“布莱恩·琼斯的人生中搞砸了很多事，但在最重要的事情上，他做对了。”