(Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej)
Mon 23 February 2026 14:00, UK
At various points during the height of their hedonistic jaunt to the summit of the rock and roll pyramid, The Rolling Stones must have felt as though they could do anything they wanted – indeed, for a time, they would probably be correct. Yet, there was one avenue of musical expression that original band leader Brian Jones never dared to tread.
In the pages of rock history, Brian Jones is often – rather unfairly – reduced to little more than yet another drug-addled guitarist spending the vast majority of his existence on a perpetual comedown that eventually led to his untimely death in 1969, at the age of just 27. While that version of events might make for a romantic plot in a rose-tinted rock biopic, it barely scratches the surface of Jones’ expansive talents.
It was, after all, Jones who first established The Rolling Stones, during the days when they were London’s premier teenage blues-rock outfit without any original compositions. Even when the Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership established itself, sidelining Jones in the process, the musical mastery of the multi-instrumentalist still shone through on tracks like ‘Paint It Black’, which simply wouldn’t have been the same without his improvisational sitar stylings.
At his core, Brian Jones was perhaps the most gifted musician in The Rolling Stones, although those talents were often lost in a haze of drink and drugs. He had, after all, been glued to his guitar since his teenage years, and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to mastering the instrument, following in the footsteps of his extensive range of six-stringed influences.
Like his bandmates, Jones was of course indebted to the pioneering rock and roll sounds of guitarists like Chuck Berry, or the blues stylings of Muddy Waters, but his record collection tended to be a little more diverse than that. Namely, Jones had a deep-rooted appreciation for the jazz sounds of years past; the kind of records that might have been viewed as archaic and old-fashioned by The Stones and their audience alike back in the Sixties.
During one early interview, in which a fresh-faced Brian Jones was named ‘Player of the Month’, the musician delved into some of those influences, citing blues pioneers like Elmore James and Robert Johnson, as well as one figure from the jazz realm. “Well, Django Reinhardt for sure,” he declared, before adding: “Not that I’d ever try to model myself on him.”
Reinhardt was among the greatest jazz guitarists of all time, and one of the very first to emerge from mainland Europe, alerting audiences to his unique style of Romani-infused jazz guitar from his base in France. Having burst onto the scene during the late 1920s, Reinhardt was long dead by the time that Brian Jones formed The Rolling Stones, having passed away in 1953, when Jones was only 11 years old.
Nevertheless, the Belgian’s innovative output formed a colossal and enduring impact on the young Brian Jones, who was probably alerted to his output by countless posthumous compilations that arrived during the late 1950s.
In fact, it is not overly egregious to link Reinhardt’s expansive improvisations with the kind of spontaneous mastery Brian Jones delivered on tracks like ‘Paint It Black’, even if The Rolling Stones were sonically worlds apart from Reinhardt.