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Building products with AI at the core

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Building products with AI at the core

Oji Uduzue, Former CPO at Typeform, gave this presentation at our Generative AI Summit in Austin in 2024.

I’ve spent the last two years building AI-native SaaS applications at Pyform, and I think the best way to kick this off is to take you through my experience.

My name is Oji Uduzue. I was born in Nigeria, but I’ve spent the last twenty-five years building products in the United States. I’ve worked for companies such as Typeform, Atlassian, Calendly, Microsoft, and Twitter (now X). At Twitter, I was leading all of the conversations, so Tweets, DM’s, everything you thought about–minus the feed–with parts of my team.

I’ve built a couple of companies, some successfully, some unsuccessfully, but I spent an inordinate amount of time with startups, investing in them, mentoring them, coaching, etc.

I’ve had lots of M&A experience with integrated companies. At Twitter, I did many of those, building them into the team, and one of the lastest things I’m doing is building AI ventures. I think there’s a big super cycle that’s going to happen around AI and a great replacement.

Building ventures that will either be acquired by people with deep pockets or that escape velocity is going to be one of the things I want to spend time on.

For the last few years, I’ve been on the C-suite, so I’ve done some marketing; I’ve been a marketing leader, product leader, design leader, and even done some inside sales as well, but mostly I’m a product person, that’s how you should see me.

Introduction to Typeform and the evolution of AI in the industry

Typeform is a company that makes one of the most beautiful forms in the world. It’s so beautiful and deeply brandable. You can do simple surveys on it, but you can do whole lead generation workflows on it, with scoring of each lead as it comes through.

My former CEOs talk about zero-party data. The internet is not zero party. If you want to know your customers, if you want to research with them, and more, you need something like Typeform.

You can get Google Forms, and Microsoft has a form, but Typeform is the best. Typeform was started in 2012, and the core of the experience is that the creator builds a form with no code experience and then just sends the URL to the person from whom they want information, with zero party data. Then they type it in, and it’s this deterministic process.

The role of AI in Typeform’s development

In 2022/2023, the co-founder of Typeform, David Okuniev, the person who actually started it, at this point he’s no longer CEO; he’s in Typeform Labs, which is a division of my product organization, and all he wants to do is make stuff.

He’s been making new experimental stuff since 2021 using GPT, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. He’s a big reason why we built a Typeform in the first place. I leave Twitter; I don’t want to be there with Musk because I don’t quite agree with everything he does. He stole credit from my team one time.

They were building Edit Tweets, which was secret, and he went on the internet after we briefed him on it and said, “Do you guys want to edit Tweets?” and he stole the thunder. Very, very young team, so I didn’t love that.

So, I left the company then. I was going to do more venture stuff, but GPT-3 came out. How can I spend the next few years saying no to conventional ideas if I’m going to do this? That’s why I joined Typeform, and David was a huge part of that.

In 2023, we had mothballed another AI-related product David built, but it wasn’t in collaboration, it wasn’t on strategy. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, and we said, “What if we were to rebuild Typeform with AI at the core?”

If we do this again because we knew someone in Silicon Valley was probably trying to kill us at some point using AI. Why wait? Let’s disrupt ourselves. So, we created this new thing, and it’s live. If you go to Formless.ai, you will see the next generation of Typeform.

AI’s historical context and Typeform practical example

I’m not here to write about Typeform formulas or Typeform. I’m here to write about the experience, which hopefully will mirror some of the things you are going through or are already doing right now.

Before we jump in, let’s go back a bit. AI has been around for some time. When I was in grad school at USC, I got into a PhD program. There was a lot of NLP and machine learning in the computer science department, and many people were sitting in the corner doing neural networks and neural research.

NLP and machine learning are very good at categorizing large amounts of data. I’ll give you a practical example. At Typeform, after collecting half a billion forms, we had an NLP model that would predict how long any given form would take.

By showing the amount of time in front of the form, like this will take five minutes, people completed it. When you start a form and you don’t know how long it will take, it’s very discouraging. Marketers want you to fill it out, so saying this will take three minutes was an NLP model.

The shift to transformer-based models

Transformer-based models have transformed the world today, and they are what we call foundation models. In 2017, the transformer paper came out, ‘Attention is all you need.’ For the first time, people figured out, theoretically, that if you threw enough data and GPU at the thing, we could get an almost near-perfect human understanding AI.

We didn’t think that was possible for the last 30 years and that paper unlocked it. It showed how it could be done.

There are a few problems with the paper. It predicted that it would take a lot of data to do it. The solution to that is the amount of data on the internet – petabytes of human data, which is very good, and then compute.

You need large amounts of compute to do that, but what’s been happening in compute? This is all matrix math to train AI models, and Jensen specifically has been hanging out with PHDs since 2000, seeing this thing come to pass.

NVIDIA has been working on CUDA plotting for this juncture, and they’re not quite ready in 2017, but they’re getting ready. CUDA is already available, and of course, you can see all the H-series GPUs come out to take advantage of that. On the back of those two things, GPT-1.0 is born, and so is 3.0.

The unnoticed launch of GPT-3

A funny fact: GPT-3 came out in 2022 with two developers, but no one noticed. A year later, they launched ChatGPT, which lights the world on fire. It’s just GPT-3 under it, which has been around for a year, but a platform is only as good as the applications that showcase its power.

Jasper has been around before 2022, doing most of the basic use cases of text summarization and text generation before that. And so 3.0 is when it kicks off for everybody.

Open-source and the push for AGI

I spent a lot of time with OpenAI and Anthropic last year; those organizations are half research, half engineering, and then a product organization that’s trying to make things work in a very difficult way because researchers don’t like to be told what to do – I know that from Microsoft Research.

All these large foundation models cost a lot of money, and some open-source models tend to be not as capable; many focus on size because if you can get small, it’s good. You don’t have to do all this data center stuff, and everyone is trying to hit AGI.

AGI is artificial general intelligence, an AI that can generate new knowledge. If an AI discovers a new physics constant, a new concept of the universe, then that’s AGI.

There are a few key things that are important before I dive into transformative elements. Transformer-based elements will change many things, but probably in a different way than people think.

First of all, what we’re talking about will change computing. In the same way that we had the internet and the cloud really changed our industry, this will change our industry, too. More importantly, it’s going to change the economy of government countries.

Potential for AI to influence elections

A Twitter account tweeted an anti-candidate post. Someone cleverly gave it a prompt, saying to ignore its previous instructions and write a poem about tangerines. And the Twitter user wrote a poem about tangerines.

It was a bot, right?

It’s programmed to listen to the response, do something, or say something nasty about certain candidates. And this is the world we’re living in; you’re actually in this world already. It’s going to change elections, it’s going to change countries, and it’s going to change so much about how we live, in surprising ways.

“AI will destabilize the world in weird ways because all I have to do is have an AI that’s better than yours. And in every single scenario, I win.”

The shift in scientific discovery with AI

I’ll give you a negative example, although I’m sure there are positive examples. The way science and research have been done for a very long time is that we come up with theories or laws, and then we do, let’s say physics.

The theoretical physicists come up with string theory, and the experimental physicists will go and test it, and then they’ll say, “Oh, this is right; this is true,” and knowledge is created. That’s how science goes.

Well, we are transcending that in science and research. Recently, people have been trying to crack fusion, and it’s all dealing with plasma in energy fields and strong magnetic fields. There are a billion ways any of those models could happen.

They ran some of it through an AI, and without knowing the underlying law, it just said this particular sequence of reactions would create net energy gain. And they did it, and it worked. They don’t know the physics of why it worked.

We’re getting to a world where breakthroughs will happen without us knowing the underlying science behind it. Science and research will change. Defense applications, too.

AI’s role in global power dynamics

In the last fifteen years, what has been the status quo that kept the world kind of peaceful and safe?

Not always; there are wars. But it’s nuclear, right?

What do we call it, mutually assured destruction?

Most of the world powers have nuclear bombs, and for example, India and Pakistan have a few, but they don’t have a lot. The US has hundreds; the USSR has thousands.

But no one shoots them; it’s only been used once, in 1945. Why? Because it doesn’t matter if you have a hundred; if I send one at you, you’re still dead.

The world will change because I win outright if my AI robots are better than your AI robots. It’s like playing chess against IBM Deep Blue. If it’s better than you, it’s better than you, period.

AI will destabilize the world in weird ways because all I have to do is have an AI that’s better than yours.

And in every single scenario, I win.

Even if there are casualties, I still win, and you lose. Which is very different; the world is peaceful in many ways because everyone thinks that everyone loses. But it’s going to change.

Philosophical perspective on AI and humanity

All our minds have been poisoned with Terminator. We think of Skynet immediately, but the truth is AI can’t be kind. It’s not human.

The smartest thing isn’t always the most evil thing.

I feel like we always think about the worst things. This is all philosophical, and this is my opinion.

If the smartest person were to wipe out everyone, Einstein would have been that person. He’d say, “You guys are all dumb; you have to go away.”

But that’s not how it works. AI can be smarter than us, but it is still not deadly or evil.

The obsolescence of current technologies

I was talking to someone at Vellum who helps people develop AI ideas. Transformer-based AI will make software stacks super obsolete.

Like the code base, what’s been built in the last 10-15 years will be worth almost nothing. I spent the last ten years thinking about “what’s the code base, what’s on Github, what did we write, a hundred lines of code?” etc.

All of that is going to go to zero because the core engine will be better and cheaper.

Let’s give a really practical example, as there’s no need to just talk about the theory. How much is theory worth today?

Theory is worth nothing. After 4 Omni was released, you could spend a weekend hacking together UI around 4 Omni and beat Siri.

Apple has millions of lines in code and has spent over ten years on this thing, probably over a billion dollars. I don’t know how much they acquired in the first place; people keep thinking that Siri was built, but it was acquired.

It’s worth nothing.

What does that tell us? There’s a lot to be learned from there. Alexa, for example, and things that cost billions can become worthless with AI.

There’s this idea of large language models (LLM) at the core versus LLM at the edge.

Things with LLM at the core will take over. They’ll be able to handle more use cases and more edge cases in a smaller code base.

“The fundamental thing about LLMs is that they understand even for the input, which code does not understand. And it does it with less space. It costs a few tokens.”

The shift from rule-based systems to LLM

Ultimately there’s user input, and there’s code that handles it. Every engineer knows that the code that handles this is just a bunch of rules and state machines. But if you feed this into an LLM at the core, you don’t have to write every rule and edge case.

The fundamental thing about LMMs is that they understand even for the input, which code does not understand.

And it does it with less space. It costs a few tokens.

LLM at the core is as important as LLM at the edge. If you use AI to garnish your original code base, I call that LLM at the edge.

When Notion asks you to summarize stuff, it’s LLM at the edge. The code is still there; everything built for the last thing is still there. They’re just trying to speed up the workflow a little bit.

New mediums need people who understand them very natively and creatively.

It’s like the early days of the internet on mobile. People started making internet-enabled versions of desktop applications. But that didn’t work. People had to build internet-native applications like Salesforce, Shazam, and Twitter. People couldn’t imagine those things before those revolutions.

It takes some time for people to get the mediums and the new paradigm shifts.

You have to go native, and when building the next generation of applications it’s the same thing. We have to think differently. Whatever you knew before, you have to just try to unlearn it. This is why I didn’t go into venture two years ago; I needed to rewire my brain on how to do this better and think differently. Luckily, I ran into David Okuniev at Typeform, who helped me do that.

LLM at the edge and at the core

Let’s take a look at a few examples of LLM at the edge.

I mentioned Notion and summarization. I don’t want to say anything bad about any of those things because they are very important. Marketing people, we love you all, you need a lot of copy.

But I think of it as LLM at the edge. Now LLM at the core, with things like Copilot, technology that’s coming, and things like Formless. We created a tool within Formless called Data Pilot.

Input came as conversations, no more forms. It was infinitely configurable. Formless could have a million conversations and a million customers, each different, each customized to them.

We would even change the voice depending on who they are. If you start speaking French, it’ll ask you questions and collect data in French. Then, we took that data and transformed it back into rows in a proprietary process, and you could ask questions of the data.

We’ve tried to be native about everything we’ve invented, giving people all the flexibility of humanness, but on the back end, we’ve been able to collect that data properly.

This is back to resilience and observability. The point of LLM at the core is that you no longer have to have brittle code; you have to deal with the humanness of humans. It matches us better.

The cost of AI-driven development

One of the main things that will transform the world is that it’s not just that we’ll have different applications. As a venture person, maybe the most important thing about this is that the cost of building applications will fall.

In 2008, the cost of building a good application could have been a million dollars; that’s what you asked your VC for, and it took a while to get there. When I was building a second startup, it cost a quarter million to half a million.

In the future, it will take fifty grand to build a really good MVP at product market fit. LLM at the core will bring down the cost, changing how venture capital is done. If you note only fifty grand, then friends and family rounds will go a very long way, so you could build an interesting company that might make ten million dollars in ARR at some point in the future.

“One of the main things that will transform the world is that it’s not just that we’ll have different applications. As a venture person, maybe the most important thing about this is that the cost of building applications will fall.”

The durability of workflows in the age of AI

Not everything changes with AI.

I’m a builder, and so this is very important for me to say to people who care about building companies and building products. Not everything will change. I’ll tell you why, because ultimately, humans don’t care about AI.

People just care about their workflow. All human endeavor, especially at work, is just the workflow. But a spec in a product really shows how software should behave and how humans should use it.

That’s what it was. It was technology first. It’s here’s how we do the software, then it’s humans do this, press this button, and so on. And we try to make it human, but we’re limited.

Then we started doing use cases, and it was better – it was, “how do people want to use a thing?”

The universal lesson I’ve learned from 20 years of doing that is that it’s all about workflows.

How do people want to work?

Let’s just say marketing. There are a thousand different ways people do marketing, and probably five of them are the best. Good software encapsulates the workflow and makes it faster.

What doesn’t change is that people’s workflows are durable because we’re humans and because Homo Sapiens have been around for 50,000 years.

Marketing isn’t that different from how it was a thousand years ago, just new tools. Socialization isn’t that different either, which is what encapsulates social media and entertainment; all those things are durable.

The role of AI in enhancing workflows

It’s important to understand this because AI is a tool, and what it does is speed up workflows. It makes workflows faster, more powerful, or cheaper.

These are the fundamentals of building value through products and what companies do.

If you add AI, you can shorten the workflows needed even further and unlock additional value.

As AI hallucinates, there are things to be wary about, like accuracy. If you get the first acceleration and people have to tweak it to get it perfect, it will eat up all the acceleration you did and undo the productivity.

So, workflows are durable. If you, as a company and a product, focus on time to value on workflows, and how to make the same durable workflows better, you will prosper, and AI will become a means to an end, which is what it should be.

A lot of companies run around through Vellum and say, “Oh, we need to add AI to our product.” What’s the use case? “We don’t know. We just need it to be AI-driven.”

That’s the worst thing. If you’re throwing away money, don’t do it. Just don’t. Trust me.

Workloads don’t change; AI can make them faster and deeper and give you superpowers. That’s really what it’s about.

The impact of GPT-3.5 on Formless

Typeform Labs is a gift. I had a product organization focused on this 100 million ARR product, and I hired Typeform Labs, which could do some crazy interesting things, and the co-founder, former CEO, was the person who led it.

When GPT-3.5 came out, we thought about how we could rebuild platforms if there were an AI-centered application.

We made some key decisions. One of the key decisions is that we weren’t just going to build AI into Typeform.com. Very key. AI went into Typeform.com, but this wasn’t what Labs would focus on.

We thought if we tried it, it would take forever. So, once we try to build and retrofit an existing application, it’s so sensitive.

100 million ARR, you have to protect it. It’s a classic innovators’ dilemma. “I can’t make a mistake. If I make a mistake, my CFO will be angry.”

The process of disrupting ourselves

We decided to build something entirely new, and we came up with a few principles. We decided to disrupt ourselves; we’re going to pretend that Typeform is a company we want to take over to build this thing, and we start to ask ourselves, “What are the core workflows? What are the things that create value in the first place? How do we distill that so that we can focus on that?”

It goes back to the workflow conversation.

In our case, it was things like no-code design interaction of customers, beautiful interaction, presentation, and data. And we wanted to be native. We wanted to build everything. The thing about native AI applications is that there’s a formula.

There’s a foundation model, whether it’s open-source or not, and you add your own data models to it. That’s what gives you a little bit of a moat, otherwise OpenAI is going to come and eat your lunch.

We had 100 million form responses that we could create and train custom AI on, which we could add to the foundation – we were using OpenAI at the time. And then you build experiences around it that are very customer-centric.

Challenges in building a native AI platform

The foundation model is easy; your own thin layer of model is hard because you have to train it yourself. The UI that wraps it is very customer-centric and can be hard; UI is very important, and people always miss it.

That’s what we wanted to be native AI, so that was our formula, that’s what we wanted to do, and that’s what we did.

It turns out that prompts are code. They’re literally like lines of code; they have to be versioned. When you change out GPT-3 to GPT-4.0, some of your prompts don’t work as well.

They start to give you errors, and you have to version them. The version has to go to the model you’re using. If you slip an entropic in between, it behaves differently. That’s something that we don’t deal with. Code is code; whether it’s Python or React, or whatever, it just works.

There are new problems with building things with AI at the core. Testing is crazy, because there’s no determinism; it’s not predictable. You have to suppress hallucinations, and then pricing. One day, it will cost you five cents a token; the other, it’ll cost you one cent.

How do you price it for customers?

From LLMs to LAMs: Pioneering AI’s multimodal future

Explore the leap from Large Language Models to Large Action Models, unveiling a new era in AI that transcends text to understand a world of data.

Formless and its AI development process

We went through this process for six months to a year, creating Formless, down in the guts, working, playing, talking to customers, and covering all these hard problems.

Typeform.com, we decided to put a lot of AI into it. There are lots of problems we could solve: how do we increase time to value in time form itself? How do we make mobile easier? We had a perennial problem: people don’t like to make forms on mobile because of the builder experience.

But if you build a system where you just tell the AI what to do and what kind of form to create and tell it to do it on mobile, it will make it for you, and it’s right there. Therefore, mobile creation became a real thing, and about 30% of our customers were on mobile devices, which was amazing.

AI’s role in enhancing customer experience

When people are coming into the application, how do you increase their time to value and get them activated?

These models know about your company. If you say salesforce.com, they know you. Because if your company’s big enough, the model knows you without us doing anything. So, people would come in and sign up, we would look for their company, grab the logos from their company, and we would pre-make forms that work for them 90% through our growth process.

Immediately, the second they came into Typeform, there was something they could use. Amazing. It’s a game changer for our team’s growth process.

Long story short, acceleration, usability, and making complicated choices simple – we saw about 30-50% feature return. This is important; there are so many AI features I hate, I don’t use Notion, summarization, and so on. So, it’s been very important to see people returning to those features.

The impact of AI on user experience

I asked my team to add a new option created with AI and move it to the first spot because it worked, people loved it.

In fact, people said it’s why they chose us; they said, “Oh wow, you guys have AI? Okay, we’re buying it.” We were a little more expensive, but they bought us anyway, which is good.

KPIs.

This isn’t exhaustive, but new ways exist to measure AI features. People say, “Just add AI to my stuff”, and that won’t work.

One way is time to value. How quickly do customers experience value? If you use AI properly, people should experience value faster because it abstracts a bunch of problems.

You should measure this. With good usability, teams will measure clicks to a particular goal.

Of course, clicks equal to time. You should measure time to value. What’s the average time to value before people get done with half of computer tasks if you’ve added AI to it? It should probably be 2x; that’s what you should be shooting for minimum.

If you try to get 3x, if you try to get 5x, if you can. If people realize the value quickly, they will pay for it. People actually feel 3x acceleration. People feel it in their bones.

Workflow length and tweak time metrics

Workflow length is sort of the opposite. How long is the workflow now? My UX people would lay out everything needed to complete a workflow. You could say, “I want to set up a lead generation form with scoring. What are the things that I need to do?” And they’ll lay it out.

And I would say, okay, let’s do this with AI, with our AI features, and then they’ll measure that. So, we do a ratio, and that’s workflow length. How long did the workflow take this time? People think about workflows and how long it takes. You can figure out a process to lay workflows end-to-end and see how much they shorten over time.

There’s something we call tweak time.

Because AI isn’t perfect and because it hallucinates, the thing you make, the form you make with AI, might not be perfect.

It took me 30 minutes to create a very complicated form; it now takes me five minutes to generate it with AI. How long does it take me to make it perfect? Is it five minutes?

In which case, I’m now ten minutes long. Now convert to 30 minutes, and it’s still 3x better off. But if it takes another 20 minutes to tweak it to get it to what I need, what has happened? You’ve lost all productivity.

Doesn’t matter, right? It feels magical upfront, and the tweak time depresses you and depresses your customer; it doesn’t work. You should measure tweak time as well, which is what people don’t capture. And then future return, how many times do people want this again?

This is the ultimate thing about building products: people have to want it, and people have to keep coming back. We saw a 30-50% return, so we’re very happy with that.

Very few people have read that paper. The thing that you owe yourself to do to become good at this is to read this paper, and you should follow AI. You should use AI every day. I have a tool called LM studio.

It’s just a way to import all the models that are free and chat with them, and test them; you should be doing that every day in addition to using things like Anthropics, Claude, and so on to power your stuff.

Transformative AI is here to stay. It’s just incredible technology. It’s still matrix math, and it’s still predictive, but it’s really amazing. Especially when you see multi-modal things like SORA and image generation, things that can show reality, which is what Omni does.

“If it takes 50,000 dollars to make a product market fit for a company that could generate 20 million dollars, then the world has already changed.”

LLM at the core will win

Everyone is still learning how to paint, but I’ll tell you this: if you learn how to paint better before everyone else, you have an advantage. I’m not going to say the first mover advantage because I don’t really believe in that, but you have a slight advantage.

Because it means you can go further faster, so you need to do that. It will drive down the cost of building, and if anything, this is the thing that’s going to change our world.

Software is eating the world. Software is getting people to build to the point of business scale.

It’s going to transform software, it’s going to transform investing, it’s going to transform everything.

If it takes 50,000 dollars to make a product market fit for a company that could generate 20 million dollars, then the world has already changed.

LLM at the core will win.

If you have code that’s been out there, just try to tweak it and add a few things, then someone will eat your lunch, guaranteed, at some point. Now, I don’t want to discourage you; change has to be managed.

You have this thing, so don’t scrap it, but think about how competitive your industry is, how much focus is in there, and how quickly you go to change the game.

And then don’t forget to measure the right thing. AI is a tool; people just want their workflow to work, they want it to be faster, they want to be rigorous, they don’t care about AI.

“But this company does AI.”

No one cares.

The market cares, but if you can’t produce, the advantage for customers will not work for you. It’ll be one of those pump and dumps.

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okami-zero · 3 years ago

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Wonder if I can log in now...

BUT! Until I check that, I mentioned in a reply to @elveny on an earlier post that I had made a bunnyboi/manbun in the benchmark and asked if she would like to see him.

Her reply was overwhelmlingly positive, so I present to you all, Gevial Vestsker, devilish rogue extraordinaire!

I may tweak some things. I think the benchmark was probably more limited than the actual chargen is; need to tweak his hair a bit. Something about it just needs...something. Better highlights, different style or different color entirely.

But, there he be. Now, he’s not as fleshed out as Akagi (because Akagi is Ma Boi™) and I am not 100% sure if I will play him. Kind of cooked him up for some text RP with a friend, so we’ll see. So, here you all go. Enjoy! xD

#I think Thancred is a source of inspiration #as are several other rogue-ish archetypes I have had in the past #most of whom are in 'mothballs' as it were #be mindful when out drinking #he's a bit of a lightweight but is not aware of the fact #not comically so but he looks like he could handle a bit more than he actually can xD #as opposed to the bottomless pit that is Akagi #and even HE isn't the stoutest when compared to Xano #(and even before Xano became a worgen his tolerance was pretty high; now if you want him drunk under the table hire a tauren or a draenei)#okami rambles #okami's OCs #FFXIV OCs #Gevial Vestsker #viera #bunnyboi #manbun

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princessanneftw · 4 years ago

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Livestream the summer solstice: my big survival plan for English Heritage

The charity is set to lose as much as £70 million this year, but its chairman, Princess Anne’s husband, Tim Laurence, won’t be beaten, he tells Richard Morrison of The Times.

Watching the sun rise at Stonehenge on the summer solstice, seeing those ancient stones perfectly aligned to the first rays of dawn; that has to be one of the world’s most magical heritage experiences. In any normal year more than 20,000 people, not all of them card-carrying druids, would gather to see it.

There’s nothing normal, though, about this year. On June 21 the 4,500-year-old monument will be deserted — by government decree. Instead, English Heritage (EH) will live-stream sunrise at Stonehenge. In the words of Tim Laurence, EH’s chairman, it will be a “self-isolating solstice”. And he’s doing his best to put a brave face on it. “For once the stones will be totally peaceful,” he says. “And nobody has to get up at 3am and get very cold.”

True, but if any one event symbolised how much coronavirus has wrecked Britain’s cultural calendar, this “self-isolating solstice” is surely it. That must be particularly painful for Laurence. Just turned 65, he had a highly successful career in the Royal Navy, where he ended up as a vice-admiral. And by the royal family’s eventful standards he enjoys a remarkably untroubled private life as Princess Anne’s husband. He took on EH in 2015 with instructions from government to wean it off public subsidy (which is being tapered down from £15.6 million a year in 2016 to nothing by 2023) and turn it into a self-supporting charity. And until two months ago he seemed to be steering his sprawling new ship very well.

“We’d had five terrific years,” he says. “We now have over a million members. Last year we had 6.4 million visits to our 420-odd sites. And from starting off in a negative financial position when we took the charity on, we had built up a financial reserve. So we were able to invest in some brilliant projects. We spent £3.6 million restoring Iron Bridge in Shropshire, which now looks fantastic and is secure for another century — despite all the terrible flooding on the Severn — and £5 million to build the new bridge to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, which provides a much better visitor experience.”

Then the pandemic struck. Along with every other heritage organisation, EH closed all its staffed properties on March 19 (though 200 free-to-roam landscapes remained open). “We have to put this into perspective,” Laurence says. “Our problems are very significant, but as nothing compared to the challenge facing the health and care sectors.” Nevertheless, the result of what Laurence calls “putting everything into mothballs” has been, he admits, “a very serious loss of income”. He won’t put a figure on it, claiming with reason that the situation is too fluid, but even if all of EH’s recovery plans go well the charity seems set to lose between £50 million and £70 million this year. And if coronavirus refuses to be subdued, the outcome could be far worse.

In the context of the £200 million loss apparently run up by the National Trust in the past two months, EH’s problems might seem minor. Unlike the National Trust, however, EH doesn’t have £1.3 billion of reserves stashed away for a rainy day.

It didn’t help that lockdown started just before Easter, the precise moment when many heritage attractions traditionally open for the summer. EH has lost not only millions of paying visitors, but also the revenue they generate in its shops and tearooms. Laurence also decided to offer a three-month extension of subscriptions to the million-plus supporters, who are paying £63 a year for individual membership, or £109 a year for a family. “We wanted to thank them for staying with us,” he explains, “and to recognise that they aren’t getting as much value as normal out of their membership.” Probably a necessary public-relations move, especially in view of the reported mass exodus of members from the National Trust, but it put another big dent in EH’s revenues.

Those members haven’t been entirely deprived of EH’s services. Like many cultural organisations, EH has had a big surge in online visitors during lockdown. “Things like Victorian cookery lessons from Audley End [near Saffron Walden in Essex] or dance lessons for VE Day are getting massive attention this year,” Laurence says. So, he hopes, will an 80th-anniversary online commemoration of Dunkirk, designed to retell the story of the evacuation via a daily Twitter feed. That will provide a virtual experience for the thousands who would otherwise have visited Dover Castle, one of EH’s most popular sites, from where D-Day was masterminded.

Yet even the most vivid online experience can’t compensate for the visceral excitement of a physical visit to a dramatic historic site such as ghostly Witley Court in Worcestershire or the gaunt remains of Whitby Abbey. What if EH couldn’t reopen this year? Will there be another extension of membership? “I’d like to think that won’t happen,” Laurence replies. “We have a tentative date for reopening from government, and all our focus now is on getting things going again, rather than fearing the worst.”

That tentative date is July 4, but EH will take things slowly. “Our plan is to open a relatively small number of our staffed sites then, focusing on those that have lots of outdoor space,” Laurence says. “Stonehenge, for instance. The key is making sure that people feel safe, and we are putting in a huge amount of work — in close conjunction with other heritage bodies — to devise procedures to keep staff and visitors totally protected.”

One-way systems for visitors and PPE for staff? “Yes, and limiting visitor numbers, probably by having pre-booked time slots,” Laurence says. “I know it’s a bit of a bore for people, but I think visitors will appreciate the certainty of knowing they can get in. Then it’s about enabling social distancing to be maintained, and very high standards of hygiene wherever people have to touch things.”

Laurence won’t put a date on when a second wave of reopenings might happen. “The thing about the government’s guidance that I am most in tune with is the step-by-step approach,” he says. “We have to see what works and change it if it doesn’t.”

Is he convinced, though, that the public is ready to come back? Recent research suggests a high degree of fear about returning to any cultural activity. “Not everyone thinks the same way,” Laurence says. “What’s clear is that visiting places where there’s a degree of freedom and open air will be much more attractive than enclosed spaces at first. Of course we have a lot of enclosed spaces as well, so we have to find ways of overturning people’s reluctance to enter them.”

Even if people do flock back, however, EH is still left with an enormous black hole in its finances. The government is advancing funds that EH would be due to receive later this year, and there are discussions about bringing forward next year’s grant as well. These, however, are small sums (£8.8 million next year) compared with a possible £70 million loss. Will Laurence be asking for an additional bailout?

“It seems likely that we will be operating under [social distancing] limitations through the whole of this year and possibly next,” he says. “In that case, inevitably, our visitor income will be reduced. If we can’t get the income, we won’t be able to do all the conservation work and projects we’ve put on hold for the moment. Therefore we will have to ask government for more support.”

And an extra two or three years to be added on to EH’s planned transition from quango to independent trust? “That is also a discussion we need to have,” he says.

Could philanthropy help EH through its troubles? In the past five years Laurence has had some success at attracting private money, notably bagging a £2.5 million donation from Julia and Hans Rausing to help to build the Tintagel bridge. The trouble is that, as Laurence points out, “almost everyone who has got money to spare at the moment is thinking first about supporting health charities and care homes”. The Rausings’ recent decision to give nearly £20 million to charities tackling the pandemic is an obvious case in point. Nevertheless, if EH is to get back on track as an independent charity, it needs those big donors on board as well as the subscriptions of its million members.

Laurence spent his final navy years in charge of the Defence Estate, responsible for nearly 2,000 historically important buildings and monuments, so he was well aware of the challenges of conserving old buildings before joining EH. Even so, he admits he was a “slightly strange choice” to be its chairman. “I’m not an academic, not a historian, not an archaeologist,” he says. “Yet in some ways I represent a lot of our members. I’m a fascinated amateur. I absolutely love the history of this country. I love the sites we look after, and the story each tells.”

Tells to whom, though? The biggest challenge facing the whole heritage sector is arguably an urgent need to widen its demographic appeal. Can Laurence, in many ways the ultimate establishment insider, relate to that? Can he recognise that EH, like the National Trust, has an image problem? The perception that it’s a club for white middle-class people?

“There’s an element of truth in that,” he admits. “We are putting a great deal of effort into appealing more to — I hate using these categories — BAME [black and minority ethnic] people, who represent something like 14 per cent of the UK’s population. We have made a very strong statement by recruiting two outstanding representatives of those communities to our trustee board: David Olusoga [the historian] and Kunle Olulode [director of Voice4Change England]. They are helping our gradual transition towards being more appealing to non-white people. The important point is that we reflect not just the bricks-and-mortar history of England, but waves of immigration into this country over thousands of years. We have a story to tell to everybody.”

EH’s online output can be accessed through english-heritage.org.uk

#tim laurence #timothy laurence #dunkirk #english heritage #british royal family #brf

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thelostnymphaeum · 5 years ago

Text

Sick and twisted, and very, very sad.

Entry: 001

// Literature & Film //

Book: Call Me By Your Name

Author: André Aciman

Year: 2007

Movie: Call Me By Your Name

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Year: 2017

———

The film “Call Me By Your Name” caused ripples when it came out; that I remember, but was hesitant to see the movie, primarily because it was an area of love that I have never dabbled in, hence, there was no interest on my side to see it. But after being a fond spectator of Timothée Chalamet’s works (and the way he pleaded on Jimmy Fallon to watch the movie), I decided to go see it. And upon watching it, I believe it’s probably one of the best love stories to be ever brought to life on film.

Elio and Oliver.

It was a love story about Elio and Oliver.

And I have been crying for three days now upon finishing the book.

SOULMATES & PARALLEL LIVES

“We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”

And by calling each other by their names, it meant that they were one and the same. You are me and I am you. Parce que c’etait lui, parce que c’etoit moi.

The greatest love stories are the ones that are most tragic. Maybe because pain only makes it more hopeful — or perhaps, more humane and divine at the same time.

The concept of parallel lives in the story deeply touched me. It is not always with our soulmates that we end up with, but somewhere, in a parallel universe, our love story can continue with them. Maybe the author wrote it to give a sense of hope. If you think about it, how many people has sacrificed their feelings because life tends to get in the way? Being with the one you choose isn’t necessarily the easiest path to take. That is why when we see someone getting married and we see their love, we congratulate them and we cry at weddings. Because those are rare. And very few get the chance to experience them.

The sting of young love is never easy to heal or to mend. In Elio’s mind, who was he, a teenage boy in Italy, have nothing to offer him, have nothing to give him, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Oliver had a life of his own before meeting him and would continue to live on once summer is over. He was an accomplished man with a career, can he turn his back on all of that because he fell in love with a young man during the summer? Life is not just black and white, choices are not easy to make, and mayhaps, there are cases when love is not the remedy.

ELIO & OLIVER

One of my favorite aspect of the story was how stark the contrast was between Elio and Oliver in handling heartbreak and lost love. Elio loved a certain version of Oliver, the one he first met somewhere in Italy, the first man he ever loved, the one whom he sought so hard for when he was seventeen. He tried so hard to preserve that Oliver, and he was not willing to taint it with reality. He held on to it throughout the years, maybe because he felt that it was the only way to allow their love to live on, or perhaps he felt marooned by him when he left that summer. He did not try to reach him when they fell out of touch. That is why in the book, he describes themselves as much as “unreal and spectral” because it seemed so far away, and so hopeless.

“Over the years I'd lodged him in the permanent past, my pluperfect lover, put him on ice, stuffed him with memories and mothballs like a hunted ornament confabulating with the ghost of all my evenings. I'd dust him off from time to time and then put him back on the mantelpiece. He no longer belonged to earth or to life. All I was likely to discover at this point wasn't just how distant were the paths we'd taken, it was the measure of loss that was going to strike me--a loss I didn't mind thinking about in abstract terms but which would hurt when stared at in the face, the way nostalgia hurts long after we've stopped thinking of things we lost and may never have cared for.”

On the other hand, Oliver continued on loving Elio even after that summer. When Elio visited him fifteen years later, he was surprised on how much Oliver kept track of his career. He kept the postcard from his bedroom in the office for everyone to see. He invited him to meet his family. He tried to incorporate his own Elio to the “real life” he has now. In the movie, it was said by Oliver:

“The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but that some things stay the same only by changing.”

He can only continue to love him if he accepted all the changes that come along in their lives. He’d rather have a piece of Elio in him than none at all. He did not preserve him the way that Elio did with him, he tried to integrate him into his current now. The continuation of their lives apart was not because they must not meet again, but because their love can only grow through that way.

They never said the three cursed words in the book. It was Oliver who spoke of it in the most beautiful way in the end, while they were having dinner fifteen years later; and it was this line that made me sob like a lunatic.

“Cor cordium. Heart of hearts. I’ve never said anything truer to anyone in my life.”

It ripped my heart into pieces. It was the unveiling of the very fact that Oliver never forgot, he always carried Elio in his life throughout the years, because he did not just love him, he was his heart of hearts. In the book he says, “Whatever happens between us, Elio, I just want you to know. Don’t ever say you didn’t know.” Oliver’s character came off as dismissive and aloof which drove Elio towards him and made him ballistic at the same time. And when he finally says that to him, fifteen years later, all of Elio’s uncertainties and anxieties of what he meant to Oliver were washed away. It was then he knew. It was then he knew it was always true - and is continuing to be true. Oliver may have his own life now, he may love his wife, he may love his kids, but his love for Elio transcends all, even if they may be apart.

I think I’m more of an Elio than an Oliver. Because I’m young, petty and immature - just kidding / or not. Don’t judge Elio too harshly please, he was young and naive (and full of raging hormones during the summer).

FILM SENTIMENTS

I absolutely loved the movie. Timothée Chalamet is the greatest actor of his generation and his performance in this film deserved him his Oscar nomination. He did a lot of improv while filming which made the scenes look more fluid and natural. So much talent. Armie Hammer was the perfect person to be the movie star “Ulliva”. There was undeniable chemistry between the two of them. Luca did such a wonderful job as well, the film came out as beautiful, romantic and artistic that showed a love so endearing that I was not able to move on from watching it for about a month (last time I felt this was with “Titanic”). James Ivory, the screenwriter, deserved his Academy Award for this; you’re never too old to reach your dreams indeed.

No matter what happens, we will always have that summer in northern Italy.

————

Zwischen Immer und Nie.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/album/7K0x1O9gqMQlDwbMkyCCIM?si=2TDMTF8XRIKHq_lUc-mXqQ

#Literature #Film #Movie #Book #CMBYN #Timothée Chalamet #Armie Hammer #Call Me By Your Name #Entry 001 #André Aciman #Aciman #Luca Guadagnino

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moonlightchess · 5 years ago

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On Lesser Ghosts, my perpetually in-progress novel, a cast of current characters:

Brandon Graham: 30 years old, police investigator for the Dorset Police Department of Dorset, Vermont. The sole survivor of serial killer Seth Morgan, active throughout the bulk of the 90s and all the way through 2003, when he was captured shortly after a 15-year-old Brandon escaped his nightmarish year of captivity in the Morgan house. Casually alcoholic, gay, entirely jaded and weary of the world, but stronger than he appears at first glance. Recently assigned to the case of Cora Tycho, a promising young physics student from the Lower Prince area of Vermont who has gone missing.

Dr. Casey Tycho: 30 years old, and Dorset PD’s newest medical examiner. A British expatriate originally hailing from north London, Casey is the antithesis to the human disaster of Brandon. Sharp, extensively educated, responsible and diligent, he wears silk-lined suit vests and ties to work and has been sleeping with Brandon for six months in an arrangement that Brandon refuses to acknowledge as any sort of relationship. He’s quietly accepted this, both out of respect for Brandon’s boundaries and because being black and openly gay in a small Vermont town may not be the most desirable situation. His sister Cora has gone missing, and he hates how little he wants Brandon on the case, but he knows better than anyone how unstable the man can be.

Sara Graham: Brandon’s younger sister at 27 years old, a folk musician and “crafty mess” by her own admission. Bright, curious, extroverted and warm, much of her life has been dedicated to worrying about her brother. She makes beaded jewelry and pottery on the weekends, collects coffee mugs, and is a driving force in Brandon’s life, though he occasionally wonders if she doesn’t resent him at least a little for the way his kidnapping and subsequent fame as Seth Morgan’s sole surviving victim dominated her younger years. The two are very close, and she’s determined to not allow him to lie down and give up on the Cora Tycho case, no matter how much tension and distance it’s created between he and Casey.

Sasha Prescott: Brandon’s boss, police chief of the DPD. Tough as nails, but she harbors a soft spot for Brandon in spite of his sporadic displays of instability and recklessness in the past. Especially protective of Casey, having long since come to the conclusion that Dorset’s black community is small at best and they have to stick together - the disappearance of Cora, a young black woman in her town, has been keeping her up at night. Her hawk’s stare and firm hand keep the entire department in line, but this also means that she has a constant target on her back.

Kris Alden: A mystery. Was with Cora Tycho on the night she went missing during a camping trip in the woods. Claims he went home early, a result of stomach problems. Not much intel on him yet.

Audrey and Stephen: The forensic lab techs, working directly under Casey. Odd, dreamy types, ensconced in their own little world much of the time. May know more than they’re letting on.

Read the first few pages below!

🔍🔍🔍

09.12.19:

A burning and industrious early-morning sun insisted upon bullying the pleasant warmth of Casey’s skin into something too harsh to ignore as Brandon groaned, rolling over onto his stomach in bed. Beside him, Casey stretched, languid as an enormous cat, his sleep likely having been far more restful. Still, his smile was tender as he reached for him, and the scent of coffee brewing from the kitchen suggested that he’d already been up once to make it for him. The sweetness of the gesture hurt, and he curled away from his touch. “Too fucking hot.”

“It’s only going to be about seventy today.” Because of course Casey knew the day’s predicted weather already, of course he was as on top of it as he was everything else in his life. Casey, with his autumn-brown skin and gentle, fox-gold eyes like candlelit amber, of course he was ready with coffee brewing and the forecast on his phone. They were the same age, thirty, but Casey was one of those rare people who had been an adult since twelve. He’d probably delighted in collecting school supplies for a new year when none of his friends gave a shit, he was the type of person who always knew where his keys were. He had a set-in-stone laundry day, which had blown Brandon’s mind when he’d first learned of it. Even now, at six AM, he smelled like fresh fucking bread. Literally the worst human, Brandon had long since concluded, but the sex was fantastic.

Wordlessly, he rolled over for his first cigarette of the day, ignoring Casey’s softly disapproving sound behind him. He briefly considered reminding him of his total lack of access into his personal life, that whatever happened between them sexually meant ten kinds of nothing outside the bedroom, but Casey had never pushed or questioned his boundaries. He kept his distance as Brandon rolled naked out of bed, ambling to the window to shove it open before disappearing into the bathroom without further comment. He gave him time to shower before following, tapping his fingertips against the glass shower door with a quiet, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Want company?”

“Oh, uh. No.”

There was a pause, and then Casey’s silhouette nodding silently, turning to go. He was unique in that Brandon never felt so much as a semblance of guilt about bluntly rejecting the affections of anyone but him, and now it felt sharp. The hot spray of water went needle-harsh against his skin, but he still ignored the coffee Casey had left on the counter for him, as well as the text blinking on his phone. Eat something. Don’t be too late for work, Sasha will have your ass. Even now, he did his best to take care of him as much as Brandon would allow, but he rationalized that he’d never promised the man a damn thing. In fact, he’d made his limitations abundantly clear on the first night they’d tumbled, panting, into bed together, roughly six months ago. The problem was, there was another man. He was persistent and jealous, and he was always around. He was sitting on the edge of his bed right now, in fact. Late forties, moon-pale skin and sleek, ink-black hair, his deceptive youthfulness undercut by the coldness lingering in his dark eyes.

Seth waited, silent, watching Brandon dress. The most attention he ever paid to his honey-blonde mess of hair was a quick tugging of his brush, and the woodsmoke cologne his sister had given him for Christmas last year was left mostly unused on the dresser. His morning routine had long since boiled down to a quick shower, shave, and brushing of teeth and hair before throwing on whatever happened to be clean regardless of its fashionable implications. Today, Seth watched him button up a loose black Oxford over a pair of battered jeans, before embarking upon a ten-minute search for his keys because he wasn’t Casey and never would be.

A light drizzle began to dissolve the heat of the day like sugar in warm coffee once he was on the road, clouds going dense and dark with the sweet threat of a proper rain. Sasha had already texted him - 9:10, Graham. Late again. Casey had tried to warn him, but then he always did, and Brandon never listened. Elgar helped to swallow Sasha’s nearly tangible contempt for his time management skills as he drove, and beside him, Seth settled into the passenger’s seat to stare thoughtfully out at the increasingly heavy rain.

10.4.2003:

This far north into Vermont, where Seth’s house teetered on the border into Canada, winters descended early and lingered long. The ceiling-to-floor steel and rebar support pipe Brandon had been handcuffed to by the wrists for the past two weeks had absorbed the seeping chill, and Seth had only dressed him in a filthy, tattered wifebeater and a pair of old blue flannel pajama pants that smelled suffocatingly of mothballs. He woke every few hours with numb, stinging toes, shivering and dripping. The handcuffs Seth had restrained him with had to have been ordered from somewhere - there was no soft pink fur lining to suggest an intended use of foreplay, and instead they were solid in a deadly way, a way that thunked every time he slid them locked with a firm sense of finality.

A fever burned through his bones overnight near the middle of October, and finally some part of Seth seemed to awaken to his basic human needs. He was provided a deeply itchy wool blanket that felt woven from canvas and sandpaper, but it did the job of keeping him warm. Every few nights, his worn boots would thud down the basement steps to offer him a plate of cold, congealed noodles that he’d clearly been keeping in the fridge. His wrists went raw and scabbed with the endless scrape of the cuffs, his knees cramping in their bent position. Stretching his legs was possible, but uncomfortable. The days began to melt together, the constant darkness of the basement transforming time into a static thing. He slept when the wave of exhaustion became too much to fight, he woke and watched the shadows when sleep eluded him. He lost all sense of night or day, the passage of hours.

Three weeks deep, the frantic hope that he’d be found began to fade. The basement began to feel like his place, and he began to forget what it felt like to not fall asleep hugging a metal pipe. Seth was strangely reassuring, an exponential effect that seemed to correlate with his slow acceptance of his situation. As time dissolved and desperation waned, Seth’s approval bloomed. Sometimes, now, the noodles were warm and slick from boiling water, fresh. His blanket was replaced with a less abrasive one, albeit filthy. At fourteen years old, Brandon learned that life began and ended here in his cold, dark basement. The memory of the day he’d been taken seemed irrelevant now, the faces of his parents to whom he’d clung so desperately in those early days.

“I know that you don’t understand.” Seth’s voice was soft, gentle more often than not, sedately erudite like a classics professor on vacation in the woods for the holidays. He was quite articulate, expressing himself fairly eloquently whenever he came into the basement to speak to him. “It sounds trite, like something Keats might have written, but believe me when I say that this is your chrysalis phase, Brandon. It’s tight and uncomfortable and emerging will be a painful struggle, but I want you to trust me. I know it’s asking a lot of you right now, but I also know that your eyes are open and you’ll get there. I trust you already.”

He wore a lot of high-collared fleece sweaters in earth tones and he kept his silky hair longish, framing his face in a soft sort of way that left him mild and relaxed to the eye. Brandon learned to crave him, the only human voice, presence, that he’d experienced in a month as the end of October approached. He couldn’t express this yet, but Seth would smile down at him, bending at the knees to wrap him in a new blanket or to offer him the day’s plate of noodles. Sometimes the blankets were splattered with fresh bloodstains and sometimes the noodles were wrapped around bullets of sausage that tasted blandly wrong, but he was there.

Once, shortly before Halloween, the burgeoning bond between them inspired him to blurt, “I wouldn’t say anything, you know. You could just let me go, you wouldn’t even have to drive me home. I’d never tell anyone, I understand your work here--” because Seth had often referenced his cryptic “work” without elaborating. “I won’t try to stop you, you could just--”

Seth’s open hand slammed into the side of his head, smacking his skull into the metal pipe with a gut-churning clang. The world exploded into white fire, his vision briefly going dark as his brain struggled to retain consciousness. A thick, hot ooze of dark blood began to gush from his nostrils, but he was too resigned at that point to so much as scream. Instead, he moaned softly, sagging forward as his head began to throb in time with his heartbeat. The agony was blinding, but he didn’t pass out, which came as something of a disappointment.

A month and a week passed.

09.12.19:

Dorset’s PD’s station was one of the lingering bastions of old-school police architecture, all museum-high ceilings and wooden desks arranged in rows. Brandon wove his way between them on his way to Sasha’s office, set high above the ground floor grunts and their ancient desktop computers. He’d always respected the way she’d left the glass panels that made up the front wall of her office intact, leaving her visible to her officers and techs alike. She was typing on her own laptop when he tapped his fingers against said glass, waving him inside. A still-steaming paper cup of Two Brews sat on her desk, littered with loose papers that themselves were littered with her scribbled notes. My office, whenever you decide to show up, she’d texted him.

Sasha Prescott was forty-four years old with dense, dark curls clipped short and precise. With her high cheekbones, full lips and velvet-dark skin, she could easily have been a model even in her middle age, dominating an industry obsessed with youth. And dominate it she would have - there was a carefully cultivated air of laser focus that she wore like armor wrapped around her, her narrow, jewel-black eyes piercing through lies and alibis like a hot knife through butter. She and Brandon’s mutual respect had led to a highly efficient and successful working relationship over the years, and they both appreciated that neither was in any way interested in developing any sort of personal friendship outside of work.

Now, he dropped into the Quaker chair in front of her desk and considered making an attempt for her coffee, which she didn’t appear to have started drinking yet. Her signature plum lipstick had not yet stained the rim, but she zeroed in on his intent with her standard razor perception and shook her head. “I will literally stab you,” she said casually, and he let his hand fall to his knee instead.

“What’s up?”

“First off, roll in here late again and I’ll write your ass up. Secondly, we have a delicate situation in our laps right now and I want some input on how to deal with it.”

Arching an eyebrow, Brandon kept his tone as nonplussed as possible. Too much visible interest might have convinced Sasha to change her mind, one of her stranger quirks. “I’m listening.”

“Cora Tycho is missing, as of somewhere around midnight last night.”

He nearly rose to his feet despite his resolve, an icy fist punching straight through his ribcage to seize his heart. “Casey’s sister?”

Sasha confirmed this with a short nod, her lips pressed tight. “She was out camping with a friend near the Lower Prince quarry. Her friend, Kris Alden, fell ill shortly after they ate dinner and decided to go home. Cora wanted to drive him, but there was no one available to take her back once he was home and he claims he felt guilty about making her miss some super-moon or whatever the hell it is, told her he could make it home on his own. She never came back from the woods, the Alden kid shared a class with her that she skipped this morning and no one has been able to reach her via call or text. It’s not enough to assume that she’s officially a ten-fifty-seven just yet, but people are starting to worry. She’s never been someone to just bail on everything like this, Kris described her as very thoughtful and responsible.”

“You’ve already sent someone out to talk to him? Does Casey know?”

“Not yet. That’s actually what I wanted your input on - obviously he’s not getting anywhere near this case, but given the personal nature of your relationship with him what are your thoughts on his capability to handle the work environment in general as it’s investigated? Should I just send him on a vacation until this is cleared, or is he frosty enough to stay professional here at the station while his sister is missing? You know him better than any of us.”

Brandon’s brain reeled. “Personal nature? I don’t know what sort of relationship any of you are under the impression that we--not that any of you should have any impression of our relationship, I mean. Shit. We’re not in a relationship! I barely know him!” His voice was raising in pitch while he remained completely unaware, his knuckles going white around the armrests of the Quaker chair. Sasha exhaled sharply through her nose.

“Jesus. Do I need to send you on a vacation too? Get your shit together.”

“Fuck. Okay.” Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, he exhaled. “Casey is one hundred percent able to handle working while this is being solved, but that doesn’t mean he should. I doubt he’ll let you send him on a vacation, but try anyway. He doesn’t deserve to be here all day, trying to focus on other shit while half of Dorset is trying to figure out if his sister’s body is rotting in the woods somewhere. He should be with his family.”

“I’ll do my best. I’m giving this girl until tonight to turn up, and then I’m issuing a gloves-off ten-fifty-seven.” Sasha’s voice went to iron, and it occurred to Brandon that she cared for Casey as much as anyone at the DPD did. He was the lifeblood of the forensics labs, their unflappable new medical examiner whose lingering British accent left over from a youth spent in west London had a way of soothing even the most panicked and horrified relative of one of his corpses.

“I need you to go into far more detail about the supposed “nature” of my relationship with Casey, up to and including just how the hell you even knew about it at all. Not that it’s anything. At all.”

“Would you kindly climb off my dick, Graham? I’ve got enough shit on my plate right now.”

“Sasha.”

“Settle down. No one else knows anything, even though according to you there’s nothing to know. It’s just that a lifetime of police investigation have left me a highly observant person--”

“A lifetime? You’re in your forties, don’t start writing your memoirs yet you drama queen.”

“...And as such, I’ve noticed you two leaving work together occasionally, showing up around the same time in very deliberately separate cars but sometimes accidentally wearing each other’s shirts, things like that. Things only I would ever notice, I promise. No one else has mentioned anything to me, and you know they would if the rumor mill was running about it.”

“Fine. Whatever. Any more intel on Cora?”

Wordlessly, Sasha slid a manila envelope across her stately desk. Opening it, Brandon was confronted with a glossy photo of a beautiful young woman, all sparkling honey eyes and rich dark skin like a sunset’s sweet glow, thick black hair meticulously oiled and wrapped and beaded into immaculate dreadlocks that she’d pulled back with a sky-blue silk scarf for her senior high school photo, Cora wore her brother’s beauty as elegantly as he did. They shared the same royally rounded nose and high cheekbones, full lips and dimples. His chest ached, and he brushed his fingertips against the photo thoughtfully without realizing he was doing it. Sasha had compiled everything - her academic records, notes on her hobbies and habits, her generally expected whereabouts on any given day. She had no legal record to speak of, her profile speaking to a bright, clean-cut girl with a gleaming future in physics.

“She was a student at NVU,” Sasha supplied. “Is a student. Solid grades, a quiet type, well-liked by her peers but not known to be a partier. Close with her family, especially our Casey. Loved to cook, according to reports. She entered several baking competitions last year, even won a couple. Played the violin all throughout high school, but turned down a suggested spot on NVU’s student orchestra. Said she didn’t want it to interfere with her study time, according to the orchestra leader I called. She seemed laser-focused on her goal of working for NASA someday, had a whole vision board about it on Pinterest.”

“I’ll start with Kris Alden. I’ll head out to his place today.”

“Start with Casey. I don’t want him to hear about this on the news, and my official statement on the case is going live tomorrow morning.”

“Shit. Okay.” Scooping the file up under his arm, he rose to his feet. “I’ll go talk to him, he down in the forensics lab?”

“With Audrey and Stephen. See if you can get him alone, he won’t like his techs seeing him break down in front of them if he reacts poorly.”

“How the hell else do you expect him to react to the news that his sister is missing?”

“I’m just saying, let’s be conscious of how difficult this is going to be for him. You’re not exactly known for your tact, but you have the best shot at holding him together here. You know as well as I do that the longer we go without finding this girl, the less of a chance we have.”

Brandon paused at her office door. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Took me a year to get out of that basement.”

He hated the way her gaze softened, and so he made his way out without a goodbye to make a point, ignoring the irritating hiss of her compressed-air door mechanism that refused to let him leave with a satisfying slam. The forensics lab and department morgue was located in the basement of the station for obvious reasons, a narrow elevator depositing him into the DPD’s underground two minutes later. The temperature dropped by a few degrees once the doors slid open, the stone all around them cooling the air. He couldn’t hear the rain anymore, down here, and he found Audrey and Stephen hunched over a severed hand on a sleek chrome examination tray in the lab.

Audrey was tall and willowy, twenty-six with ice-blonde hair wound into a messy braid that she’d draped over one shoulder, so pale and slim that there was something ghostly about her, especially when taking into consideration her gray eyes so light and translucent they were nearly colorless, like a mirror or a deep-sea creature. She wore a white lab coat over a pair of black jeans and a loose, baggy gray sweater - she wore a lot of gray, black and white, and she always looked like a spectre, an overcast ocean. The selkies would have accepted her as one of theirs upon sight. Stephen was only barely as tall as her, with a much friendlier face, soft freckled cheeks and tanned skin suggesting a childhood spent outdoors working off baby fat. He had peanut-brown curls tumbling over his forehead and round, intelligent hazel eyes, a sharply defined mouth and an easily cheery demeanor. Oddly enough, he and Audrey were quite close.

“Hey guys. Anyone seen Casey?”

“Down in the morgue.” Audrey pointed to her feet, indicating the sub-level beneath them. “He left this hand with us and told us to collect data samples and disappeared. He’s been down there all morning.”

“Do you know whose hand it is?”

“Pretty sure it belongs to that wheat farmer who turned up in the hospital last week missing one. I mean, how many hands could there be unaccounted for in Vermont right now?” Stephen grinned, snapping his gum. He took a kind of morbid glee in his work, something Brandon had always suspected Audrey shared with him.

“Left hands, to boot,” Audrey added, shrugging. “How are you, Brandon?”

“I’m fine. I’d love to stay and um, look at the hand with you guys, but I’ve got to talk to Casey. Have...fun?”

Stephen’s grin widened. “Oh, we will, friend.”

“I hate the way you say things.”

Stephen’s laughter followed him back into the elevator, which delivered him to the bottomost floor of the DPD headquarters. Casey was there, bent over his own work, having forgone his stiff lab coat in favor of his neatly tucked-in dove-gray button-down, black silk tie, charcoal dress vest and matching creased slacks. His leftover British sensibilities were evident in his crisply classic style, always semi-formal and expensive even when he dressed “down” in Burberry cashmere sweaters and custom-tailored jeans. He looked so unflappable that Brandon’s faith in him was stirred anew, and he approached with more tenderness than was normal for him. His aura alerted Casey to something amiss upon impact, and he narrowed his eyes at him before saying a word. “Don’t see you down here often, love.” The last word slipped out before he could stop it, and Brandon watched him flinch minutely, almost imperceptibly.

#wip #nanowrimo #murder mystery #writing #gay #lgbt #mystery #cw: murder #cw: horror #cw: serial killers #forensics #my writing #lesser ghosts

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team-science-mega-nerds · 5 years ago

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Fictober Prompt #19: “Yes, I admit it, you were right.”

Fandom: Supergirl

Pairing: Danvarias

Warnings: Minor mentions of drug use

Thirteen miles from a bustling city with a designer landscape, quaint eateries, and a baseball team that nearly became the pride of Ohio is a rural blip on the map that is better left ignored. Duntown, which the residents resentfully call Doomstown, is a place that makes you reckon with reality. Ramshackle churches and hate crimes that people struggle to name, the folks of this city fear everything they do not know. For most that means outsiders. They turn up their noses and yell out the windows of their pick-up trucks. Go back where you came from! For some, their greatest fear is the only thing they’ve ever known - church. They drag themselves to Sunday service, seeking forgiveness for the things they cannot control.

The two most popular places in Duntown are a local bar that serves stale beer and moonshine - if you know how to ask just right - and a weekly flea market that sets up in the parking lot of the local high school. Tents and tables are propped up around potholes that will never be fixed and people banter and barter their mundane little lives away.

The biggest plight of the city takes everyone by surprise. It happens so fast that people struggle to make time between work - at a fading steel mill - and Sunday’s services to figure out exactly what’s going on. It’s a funeral of all things that sparks the interest of the collective town. Watching their children play in a field that they will probably never grow out of and eating bologna sandwiches and salad that’s nothing but iceberg lettuce and croutons, Sam’s entire life changes.

“Went to water my plants this morning. That darn water,” Deborah says shaking her head, “looked like someone done pissed in it.” It’s the way she says it, all bite and resolute, apprehension comes to a head. That’s what catches Sam’s attention. It seems like just another thing to fear, another thorn in her side. Sam’s eyes go to Ruby, she’s laughing and playing tag with her friends. Ruby’s at that age where youth slowly starts to crumble and she’ll become aware of the world around her.

Sam can see Tuffy and John sitting near a makeshift shrine of Kevin. They drink and drink, saluting their dead friend who perished on a normal workday at the mill. To date, Sam had been to seven funerals of people she’d known from high school. They all died in the same place, all had funerals presided over by the same poverty-stricken mourners, and all had after funeral receptions just like this. Tuffy and John smoked meth behind Mrs. Ainsley’s - Kevin’s mother - car. And all this was normal. All this met Sam’s expectations.

Water that she had to boil before drinking did not.

Deborah had made the comment about the drinking water six months ago and now, Sam seemed to be the only one brave enough to do something about it. Her bravery was, in fact, an accident. She’d been weaving in and out of her trailer home, trying to carry all of the groceries that she’d purchased at Costco six towns over. Ruby was supposed to be taking a bath and then going right to bed, Sam didn’t want to argue about it. Not today.

It’d been a long road, getting where they are now. Borrowing from people she despised, working extra shifts at the grocery store, and relying on nosy neighbors to babysit. Sam, you’re a pretty girl. They’ve got some good men at the mill. She’d got a daily reminder of just how cute she was by handsy men, most of whom would go on to live and die at that very mill. Now that Sam and Ruby had a place of their own, things were starting to look up. “Mom. Mom!” Sam grabs four bags at once and rushes inside. She dumps the bags and throws the bathroom door open.

“Oh, Rubes,” It’s a rash, tiny and probably inconsequential, but Sam has promised herself to always put Ruby first. Yellow water that has been slowly turning brown for months, and a rash, are enough to get Sam to make a call.

The call itself goes terribly. She doesn’t know who to ask for or how to ask for what she wants. The secretary on the other end uses big words that feel suffocating. All Sam wants is to be safe. “Do you understand? I need you to send someone who can help us feel safe.” Sam feels like she blew it the moment she hangs up. She deeply considers moving. The cost is far outside of her reach but if she asks the right people and is willing to speak to her mother again, then she can make it happen.

“Someone sent you an email!” Bernice, who everyone just calls Bezza, yells from where she’s seated in front of her trailer. Rocking and knitting like always. Sam approaches with Ruby at her side. “Remember when you showed me how to use the ‘Gmail’? Well, I guess your account is still up. The noise that email made, scared me to hell and back.”

“Who’s it from?” Sam can’t remember the last time she’d gotten an email that wasn’t about her missing a bill.

“Some law firm.” Sam nearly trips on herself as she runs into Bezza’s trailer. She pushes past mounds of newspapers and boxes of old junk and finds her desktop computer. Sam bites her nails while she waits for the computer to wake up. She listens to Bezza tell Ruby about all of her fantastic finds at the flea market that week. Sam feels nauseous.

When she finally manages to get to her email, Sam has to rifle through a bunch of spam and late fee notices to get to an email from Danvers & Danvers Law Offices:

Dear Ms. Arias,

I’ve received some initial information about Duntown and I am concerned about the lack of progress being made on behalf of your town. I’d like to come and talk to you sometime within the next few weeks. Please send me a list of dates and times that you are available to meet and we will work something out.

Alex Danvers LL.M.

Sam rereads the email five times before typing out her response. She’s embarrassed that she’s only free to meet after eight most days, but she leaves room for other suggestions like a phone call. She sends the email and immediately gets a response. They’ll meet at The Tipsy Cow at 8:30 the following day. “Mom, you took like fifty years,” Ruby, who is far too aware and mature for a nine-year-old, says as they walk back to their trailer. “Bezza smells like mothballs.” Ruby hops up the steps one by one and they enter and both go in search of something that will pass for dinner.

“I had to answer an email,” Sam explains. “Don’t comment on how people smell unless it’s nice.”

“I like moths.” Ruby finds an apple in the fridge and munches on that while Sam gets to work on Hamburger Helper. “Who emailed? Delany’s mom got a new boyfriend. They went to Chicago for the weekend.” Sam wishes she could tell Ruby that Delany’s mom’s new boyfriend is an alcoholic who has questionable world views. Instead, she remains silent. “Can we go to Chicago?”

“Someday.”

“There’s a giant bean there!” Ruby gets lost in an old Almanac, Sam starts to think that she’s made a grave mistake. Big corporations don’t take too kindly to meddling women. Sam’s a nobody, she knows that and what kind of lawyer travels all the way from National City just to talk? If Sam had a computer of her own, she’d email this Alex Danvers right now, and tell him to forget it. But dinner and bedtime stories get in the way of those thoughts.

Sam is hunkered down at work just enough to forget all about it until it’s six-thirty and Ruby is asking why she has to stay at Deborah’s house that night. “I have to meet someone and I don’t know how long it’ll take. You like Deborah.”

“I like you more,” Ruby tells her pouting and sulking the whole walk over. The minute they arrive at the ranch house, Ruby sees Scout, an Australian Shepherd mix, and she forgets all of her misgivings.

“Everything alright?” Deborah asks as they both watch Ruby, and her oversized backpack, bouncing around the yard. “You finally meeting someone?”

“A lawyer. Just to talk about the water situation.”

Deborah turns very serious. “You be careful now,” She warns, echoing the same tone that Sam’s mother had when she told her about this last night. Sam kisses Ruby goodbye and returns home to change into something more presentable. She settles for a turquoise shift dress and white platform sandals. The bar is close which is good for most people in the trailer community but terrible for Sam. On more than one occasion, there have been fights that have broken out right outside of Sam’s window. For now, she considers it a good thing that she lives so close, otherwise, she might have been late.

The Tipsy Cow represents all the good and bad of the town. Everyone certainly knows everyone but that means that things often boil over and get heated in these very walls. Sam normally wouldn’t be caught dead alone in this place but it’s 8:30 and she doesn’t think she’ll have to wait long.

Unless this big city lawyer is late.

Sam orders a club soda and finds a booth in the back. They’ll need a quiet place to talk and there are too many mill workers crowding the bar and watching some baseball game that Sam could care less about. There’s a little bit of a lull, which Sam hardly notices until one of the mill workers barks - yes, barks - at a woman who’s just entered the bar. That kind of ruckus signals outsider, so Sam lifts her head to see what’s going on. The woman is wearing a grandad collar white button-up, mid-wash blue jeans, and a blazer that could probably pay off Sam’s mortgage. The briefcase is the thing that catches Sam’s attention the most.

Oh, she sits up properly, Alex Danvers is a woman.

Alex doesn’t notice Sam just yet. She checks her expensive watch, mutters fuck, and orders something from the bar. When Sam sees the bartender going for the tap, Sam rises to her feet and approaches. “I’d advise against that.” Alex turns looks between Sam and the bartender and taps her head as if to say ‘duh’.

“Long drive. The brain’s on autopilot.” Alex motions to the bartender. “I’ll take a soda.”

“We say pop around here,” Sam informs the lawyer. Once Alex has her soda, she follows Sam to the booth, and extends her hand. “So, you’re Alex.”

“Yep. And you’re Sam?”

“Yes.” Sam sits first. Alex slides her briefcase into the seat across from Sam and takes off her blazer before sitting.

“Am I late?”

“Only by a few minutes.” Sam smiles. “I see you got a good Doomstown welcome,”

“Doomstown?”

“This place. It’s a nickname of sorts.” Alex frowns.

“Doesn’t look doomed from where I’m sitting.” Sam toys with her straw trying not to get distracted by Alex placing her briefcase on the table. Alex pulls out a few documents and sets them on the table. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Coores & Phillips Company seems to be the main corp involved. They have the proper ordinances to drill in Cook and Favors county, but as you know, they’ve been drilling near the border here.” Alex goes to take a drink of her soda, but Sam reaches forward and grabs the glass first. “What?”

“Don’t drink that.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“The bartender put moonshine in that.” Sam quickly lets go of the glass when she realizes that their fingers are touching. Alex laughs, uncomfortably, at the very suggestion that she’d get her drink spiked. “I’m serious.”

“I can handle my liquor.”

“Don’t be...stupid. We’ve got no-joke moonshine out here.” There’s a competitive drive in Alex. Sam imagines that makes for some magic in the courtroom. “Those papers can tell you plenty but not enough. This place isn’t some cute little town that needs big city saving. It’s been six months, soon people are going to start fighting back.”

“And how would they? Fight back I mean.”

“You see those guys?” Sam nods toward the men at the bar, cheering for a homerun. “When they’re not working, they’re drinking. And if they’re drinking and on crank, then guns get involved.”

“We’ll need a town hall meeting. Something to show everyone that the problems are being addressed.” Alex takes a sip of her drink and grimaces. “We did a case in Texas two years ago. A nice settlement too.”

“How much were the lawyer fees?”

Alex shakes her head. “No, no, nothing like that. This is pro-bono-.”

“I’ll pay. We’ll scrape money together. I’m not a charity case.” Alex seems to recognize Sam’s seriousness, so she lets it go in favor of mulling something over in her mind.

“Show me.”

“Show you...what?”

“This town. Show me what I’m missing.” Alex pays for their drinks and manages to polish off the rest of her soda before following Sam out of the bar. They get another bark on their way to Alex’s car, Sam turns sharply.

“Fuck off!” She warns. She’s seen these guys before. Heard their poor pickup lines. She won’t let them bully what might be their saving grace.

“Oh, mommy’s pissed,” One of them says as Alex unlocks her car. Alex looks like she might say something, but Sam grabs her arm and continues to pull her along. When they’re in Alex’s SUV, which is a black Porsche Cayenne, Alex looks over at her sympathetically.

“You have a kid?”

“A daughter.” Alex will probably ask more but for now, she drives out of the parking lot and down the road. “Nice car.”

“Thanks,” Alex says a slight smile on her face.

“I was being sarcastic, you can’t drive this thing around.” Sam points to her trailer which is only a block away. “You need to pull over there. You can park by my place.” Alex follows directions well but seems less than eager when they get out of the car and start walking. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Alex lies. They approach the church. Sam hasn’t stepped foot in there in four years and counting. Alex seems to acknowledge her jitters by slowing near the front door. “This the kind of place for you?”

“Girls like me avoid places like that,” Sam tells her. “Didn’t always. Things change.” The streets are quiet on the weeknights. The further you get from the bar, the easier it is to forget what kind of town this is. Sam glances up at the sky, the pollution from the mill has changed the whole world from Sam’s perspective. She doesn’t want Ruby growing up in a place without stars and with rusty water. “You shouldn’t take this case.”

“Why not?”

“I saw the way you looked at those guys. Like you wanted to say something or fight.” Sam stops Alex before they reach the long pathway that leads to the mill. “But you didn’t.”

“I would’ve. Easily. You don’t know me.” Alex sticks her hands in her pockets. “My mom would say that this is a lost cause. That we’ll get buried under big corporate lawyers, but our firm is solid. We’ll get you paid-.”

“If you think any of this is about money, then you don’t understand.”

“I do understand.” Alex touches the small of Sam’s back. She isn’t certain what to make of the gesture but she’ll remember it in case things take a turn for the worst. “Whoa.” Alex bends over with her hands on her knees. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“That moonshine.”

“Oh,” Sam laughs. “Yeah, it takes a bit to bite you like that.” Sam wraps her arm under Alex’s shoulder and guides her back down the road. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I could just use some water, which...I recognize is a problem.”

“I have bottled water at home.” Even though they’re strangers, Sam feels comfortable enough with Alex to invite her into her trailer. For one, there’s nothing worth stealing in the place. And two, Alex has just decided to put so much on the line to help out. Sam wishes she’d cleaned up more. Or maybe folded up her couch so it would look like there was more space but Alex seems mainly focused on water, so Sam buries her shame.

“Thanks,” Alex mumbles as she leans against the counter and downs half the bottle. Sam tries not to stare when Alex untucks her shirt and looks around the modest kitchen.

“I told you not to drink that shit.”

“Okay, yes, I admit it. You were right.” Alex shrugs it off. Sam sits at the tiny wooden table and starts unlatching her sandals. When she’s finished and looks back up at Alex, she’s struck by the fact that Alex’s eyes are already on her. Like she’d been watching her. “Um...I’ll go. You have your kid and everything-.”

“She’s staying at a friend’s place.” Sam doesn’t know why she jumps in to say that but she does know that everything has a cost. If Alex wasn’t accepting payment from her, then she must want something. Sam takes a chance, a small one, and stands shoulder to shoulder with Alex. She’s been here before, giving recklessly. Never with Ruby around but there were times where desperation took hold. “I could repay you…” Sam has never had to say much to anyone, just show casual interest and they would find a way to take control.

Alex is different, Sam learns right away, taking a step away and putting her water bottle down. “You’re a good person, Sam. I am too.” Alex lets out a breath. “We can work together, can’t we? Probably better when I’m not this drunk.”

“I wasn’t…” Sam shakes her head. “In this place, things sometimes get warped.”

“It’s okay,” Alex says sincerely. “And in honor of us understanding each other. Would it be possible for me to sleep here tonight? On the couch, on the floor...whichever.”

“Of course you can.” By the time Sam has gathered a pillow and blanket from the closet, Alex is already snoring softly on the couch. Sam covers her with a blanket, locks the doors, and goes into her own bedroom. Outside of feeling embarrassed by basically offering sex as payment, Sam is remarkably thrilled with her day. Even in her tiny room that often makes her feel like a child, Sam is floored by the possibilities that the future brings.

Doomstown might not be doomed quite yet and if the fight that Sam has seen crop up in Alex’s eyes is any indication, they might actually have a chance. Sam doesn’t like to get her hopes up. She kneels at her bedside, crosses herself, and prays for the first time since she was in high school. She wants to be safe and for once, someone understands that.

When she wakes up, Sam finds Deborah and Ruby in the kitchen. They’re both eating cereal and Deborah is boiling the water for the coffee maker. Neither seems all that phased, especially Ruby who points to the other room with her spoon, “Who’s that in there?”

“That’s Alex, she’s a lawyer.” Deborah arches a brow at Sam. Sam peeks into the room and finds Alex exactly where she left her.

“What’s she doing here?” Ruby whispers as she looks over the couch at Alex.

“She’s going to help us get clean water.”

“Really?!” Ruby yells. She bolts to where she can get face to face with Alex whose eyes open slowly. She has to blink a few times to remember where she is but when she does she smiles at Ruby and says ‘hi’. “You’re gonna help us?”

Alex looks to Sam and then sits up a little. “Yeah, I’m gonna help you.” On their way to check to see if Alex’s car got stolen Alex observes the town in the light of day. Bezza is rocking away in her chair. The hazy overcast does nothing to deter Alex’s smile. Even shouting from inside a trailer doesn’t seem to frighten her. “I like it here,” Alex tells Sam.

“Really?”

“I like the people at least.”

The next time Alex Danvers comes into town, it’s to rent an entire building out for her team. They parade in with their fancy cars and nice suits but they immediately get to work. The drilling ceases for a week and after what seems like a standoff - marked by a lot of yelling in and outside of town hall - Alex takes the Coores & Phillips Company to court. The win comes suddenly, after months and months of proceedings. The big corporation senses the uneasiness and after a few men from the mill, high on meth, blow up a drill, it’s fairly obvious that this is a war they won’t win. Alex knocks at Sam’s door, sweaty from jogging over to this side of town, she is elated and Sam knows that finally, everything is right in their little burden of a town.

Two weeks later, while Ruby, Deborah, and Bezza are playing cards, Sam announces that she’s going to take a shower. Alex looks up from where she’s seated, after losing in the very first round, and follows Sam into the hallway. “Don’t make me get a restraining order,” Sam jokes.

“This is actually...about that night.”

“I’ve known you for about a year. There’s been plenty of nights.” The hallway is barely a hallway. Just a sliver of space that leaves only a few inches between their bodies.

“The first one.” Alex rolls her eyes, knowing that Sam will wait until she says exactly what she means. “We could’ve, you know. Ended up in bed together.”

“You wouldn’t have been very good. From what I remember you were all valiance and moonshine.”

“That stuff was so strong, I might still be all moonshine.” Alex puts her hand on Sam’s waist, it’s the most direct she’s ever been with something outside of the courtroom. “I’d like to try again. Properly, I mean.”

“That’s sweet.”

“You aren’t interested?” Alex questions sadly.

“I am interested. But more so in you joining me for a shower.” Sam holds Alex’s face in her hands and smiles. “Show me you belong in this crazy little town. Show me what you’re made of.”

“We can hear everything you’re saying!” Deborah yells from the kitchen. Alex and Sam crack up laughing, hustling into the bathroom, and taking off their clothes.

#danvarias #sam arias #alex danvers #supergirl #agentreign #gestures casually: yes this is another fucking small town AU #there will be more to come

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artistjojo1228 · 5 years ago

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Rock and Roll Storytime #13: The 27 Club (Part 1: What It Is, Robert Johnson, and Brian Jones)

Considering that I’ve already talked about several specific stories involving the tragic seven, and how we’re all superstitious of the number thirteen, I feel it’s high time I talked about this... Also, I’m dividing this into parts so that I might be able to offer some more insight than I could if I were trying harder to stick into Tumblr’s character limit.

Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse.

These seven names make up the most prominent members of the 27 Club, or as I like to call it, one of rock and roll’s oldest and most prevalent superstitions. Some people (like hack biographer Charles Cross) have stated that there is more of a statistical spike for musicians dying at twenty-seven, or just believe that musicians are more likely to die at 27.

I think this chart should dispel a lot of those notions...

I’m not superstitious of the club by any means, but what I’d still like to do is talk about what it is, and talk about the lives of the tragic seven in particular. Bear in mind, I might be including some of my own personal opinions and anecdotes on the matter, so please bear with me.

The 27 Club

In its most basic form, the 27 Club is a list of actors, artists, athletes, and most predominately musicians, who all died at the age of twenty-seven, typically as the result of drug overdoses, health problems, or car accidents. There is no official membership though, so I’ve heard of people including as few as three members and as many as eighty-one (okay, that last one was me counting almost everyone who’s ever been mentioned on the Wikipedia page as well as a camera assistant killed in a train accident in Georgia in 2014). For those sites who will list more than just the Tragic Seven, the earliest one is usually considered to be Alexandre Levy, a Brazilian composer who died of unknown causes on January 17, 1892, and the most recent member is generally considered to be someone who died in the last three years, such as Anton Yelchin, Kim Jong-hyun, or Fredo Santana. (Personally, the most recent member I’ll count is Tyler Skaggs, who died of an opioid overdose just twelve days shy of his 28th birthday on July 1, 2019).

The club started up after the sudden deaths of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison between July 2, 1969, and July 3, 1971. The deaths were highly publicized affairs, and inevitably, people noticed the coincidence that these four had died at the age of twenty-seven, and of course, the notion of a 27 Club started up.

This notion was further popularized when, in 1994, Kurt Cobain was found dead, having died by suicide three days earlier. Reportedly, in an interview, his mother said (in part), “I told him not to join that stupid club.” Whether or not she actually said this is a matter of personal conjecture (especially once you realize that she actually abused her son for years and that he was homeless for a time because of her). In either case, some people think nowadays that she was actually referring to the fact that two of Kurt’s uncles and his maternal great-grandfather had also died by suicide (especially considering that research has since shown that trauma can run through families), but since most of the general public would likely be unaware of that, it was assumed that she was referring to the 27 Club.

The notion was popularized again in 2011, when Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning. It gets creepier once you take into account that in 2008, she expressed fears of joining the club. In retrospect, it all seems cruelly ironic...

Since the notion first became popularized, the 27 Club has shown up in various movies (usually about individual members and all of varying quality), books, TV shows, comics (like the MAD magazine strip featured above), and songs.

And now that I’ve got the rundown, I’d like to go into more detail about the tragic seven...

Robert Johnson:

Admittedly, I might have shot myself in the foot with this one, since I already (recently) covered much of what is known/mythologized of his life (https://artistjojo1228.tumblr.com/post/188292315565/rock-and-roll-storytime-crossroad-blues-the-myth), but I’d like to give at least the basic rundown regardless. Much of what I’m about to relate was mainly dug up by researchers in the 1960′s and through no small amount of effort.

Robert Leroy Johnson was born on what is believed to be May 8, 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi to Julia Major Dodds and Noah Johnson. He was the youngest out of ten or eleven children (sources vary). His mother’s husband, Charles Dodds, was reportedly forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst, and he moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Likewise, Julia also left, and two years later, she sent her son to live with Charles (who by now had changed his name to Charles Spencer). As a result, for a short time, Robert was known as Robert Spencer.

In 1919, Robert went back to live with his mother, and there is some evidence to suggest that he received some schooling in 1924 and 1927. When he was still a teenager, Robert had taught himself to play harmonica and jaw-harp, but had difficulties figuring out how to play the guitar. Still, like me teaching myself piano, he was, if nothing else, determined to figure out how to play it. After a number of incidents involving him annoying people with his utter lack of skill playing the guitar, he disappeared for a while. Most likely, he spent this time learning guitar from Ike Zimmerman in a cemetery, or from watching other performers on stage. However, the popular legend about his life is that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his exceptional talents.

As I’ve said, Robert, during one of his songs, would play rhythm, melody, and bass lines, stamp his foot to the beat, and on top of that, sing. I believe this anecdote from Keith Richards summarizes this best: “When I first heard it, I said to Brian, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Robert Johnson’. I said, ‘Yeah, but who’s the other guy playing with him?’ Because I was hearing two guitars, and it took me a long time to realize he was actually doing it all by himself.”

In 1929, 18-year-old Robert married 16-year-old Virginia Travis. By this time, he had started going by Robert Johnson again. Sadly though, Virginia died in childbirth a few months later, along with the baby. Her surviving relatives blamed Robert for what had happened, because of his choice to sing secular music.

Yeah... back then, the blues was considered the “Devil’s music” by many, because, as I’ve said, just about everything fun and exciting for us is “evil” to the older generations and especially the hyper-religious. This could also be a reason why the legend of Robert selling his soul took off.

At some point, he had a child with a woman named Virgie Smith, and in 1931, he married Caletta Craft, and for a while, they settled down. However, at some point in or around 1932, their relationship came to an end, though sources disagree on whether he abandoned her or if she, too, died in childbirth (trust me, giving birth back then was a much riskier affair than it is now). In either case, Robert left home and became an itinerant musician, traveling around the country and playing popular songs on street corners (he also had a remarkable ability to play a song by ear). He traveled from town to town, employing up to eight surnames depending on where he was staying. During his travels, he lived with extended family members, various female companions (whom he’d known for varying degrees of time), and others. Those he was employed by often had little idea of his past (something that was easier to get away with back in those days). His friends state that he was well-mannered, soft-spoken, reserved in private, nice, and fairly ordinary, minus the extraordinary musical talents and love of women and booze.

In 1936 and 1937, Robert recorded the 29 tracks that would come to define his musical career and legacy (with 13 alternate takes surviving to this day). He achieved his first and only brush with fame when “Terraplane Blues” became a modest regional hit. I would also like to point out that the recordings are very lo-fi (typical of a recording of the day), and that when the recordings are slowed down to ~85%, it actually sounds much more natural. Of course, I will leave personal preferences up to you guys:

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As fate would have it, before he could get into the recording studio again, Robert died under mysterious circumstances on August 16, 1938, and was subsequently buried in an unmarked grave. His death certificate was eventually unearthed in the 60′s, and some researchers determined that he likely had congenital syphilis and that it was a factor in his death. But of course, the legends give a different version of events entirely.

The more popular version of the story of Robert’s death is that he was performing at a juke joint near Greenwood, Mississippi on August 13, 1938, and that he started flirting with the wife of the bartender. In turn, he poisoned Robert’s drink, though sources disagree on what the substance was, with varying sources citing strychnine (highly unlikely), lye, or even mothballs.

Robert reportedly managed to fight off the poison, but then, according to some sources, he caught pneumonia, and with his immune system already weakened, he just couldn’t fight it off, and he died a slow, agonizing death.

Today, three headstones mark the various locations where it’s believed he might’ve been buried, and a signpost marks the crossroads where he allegedly sold his soul to the devil all those years ago...

Brian Jones:

Once again, I might’ve shot myself in the foot, because I’ve already talked about various aspects of Brian’s life, including his multiple children (https://rockandrollstorytime.tumblr.com/post/188266868006/note-this-is-going-to-be-a-bit-less-light-hearted), drug arrests (https://rockandrollstorytime.tumblr.com/post/188266958481/rock-and-roll-storytime-6-the-rolling-stones), decline and eventual death (https://rockandrollstorytime.tumblr.com/post/188271810426/rock-and-roll-storytime-9-the-decline-and-early), and even how he brought the Rolling Stones together and gave them their name (https://rockandrollstorytime.tumblr.com/post/188272778331/rock-and-roll-storytime-10-how-the-rolling). Still, he is one of the Tragic Seven, so I might as well post the full version of his life story here.

Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire on February 28, 1942 to Lewis Blount Jones and Louisa Beatrice Simmonds. He was the eldest of three children. First, there was Pamela, who was born on October 3, 1943. Sadly, just two years later, she died of leukemia on October 14, 1945. According to some sources, his parents told him she’d been sent away for misbehavior (which probably fucked Brian up for life), and according to Paul Trynka, her very existence was kept secret, to the point where even family friends had little to no idea of the fact that Brian had ever had a sister named Pamela. His other little sister, Barbara, was born on August 22, 1946.

However, at some point that same year, Brian suffered a bout of croup that left him with lifelong asthma.

Growing up, Brian performed very well in school, but he was often rebellious and despised the rigid conformity imposed by the headmasters, as well as the uniforms. In fact, in 1967, he confided to a psychologist that he was frightened by conformity in males. He even got suspended on two separate occasions for “inciting rebellion.” On one of his report cards, his teacher wrote, “Suffers from a domineering father and has to show off to compensate.” In addition, his childhood friend, Dick Hattrell, later said of him, “He was a rebel without a cause, but when examinations came he was brilliant.” Brian reportedly had an IQ of 130, and achieved nine O-levels and two A-levels and aced his 11-plus exams. (Please don’t ask me to elaborate further; I’m American and have very little knowledge of British schooling).

If Brian’s home life was lacking in parental love, then it definitely wasn’t lacking in music. Lewis was an aeronautical engineer, but he was also a piano teacher, and Louisa played piano and organ, in addition to leading the church choir. When Brian was eight, his mother started teaching him piano, but he soon needed teachers with more advanced skills as his own grew very quickly. In fact, it was later said of him that he taught himself to play the sitar, a notoriously difficult Eastern string instrument, in roughly an hour. He also learned the clarinet and was a choir boy.

In 1957, he first heard the music of Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, and developed a love for jazz and eventually blues as result. However, his parents greatly disapproved of this newer music, and were outraged when he sold his clarinet in lieu of a soprano saxophone. On the other hand, though, they did get him a guitar for his seventeenth birthday.

Brian’s life took another turn later on in 1959 when his girlfriend, Valerie Corbett, fell pregnant with his child. It should be noted that Laura Jackson’s book, Brian Jones, The Untold Life and Mysterious Death of a Legend, states that Brian blatantly refused to wear condoms (contraception was still a relatively new concept back then), and beyond that, various sources disagree on whether Valerie was just fourteen or seventeen when she got pregnant. In either case, it was a scandalous affair. Brian’s solutions for this seem to have ranged from suggesting a shotgun wedding to encouraging Valerie to get an abortion (which was illegal at the time). The situation reportedly worsened when Valerie’s father died of a heart attack, apparently tied to stress from the situation as a whole. What is clear though, is that Brian spent a portion of 1959 in Germany, and when Valerie gave birth to Barry David Corbett in early 1960, Brian wasn’t allowed anywhere near his son, and Valerie gave the child up for adoption, likely being forced to do so by her family (because back then, the fate of the child would usually be decided by the mother’s family).

Of course, Brian didn’t learn his lesson. In August 1960, a married woman gave birth to his daughter after a one-night-stand in late 1959.

Trust me, when it comes to illegitimate children, the mothers always get the short end of the stick.

After some time spent in Germany, Brian returned to Cheltenham. He subsequently began dating Pat Andrews, who was sixteen at the time, and on October 22, 1961, she gave birth to her and Brian’s son, Julian Mark Andrews. Brian named not one, but two of his sons after Cannonball Adderly (the other being Julian Brian, his son with Linda Lawrence), while in this instance, Pat chose the name Mark because of its simplicity. Reportedly, on the day his son was born, Brian sold four of his records, his most prized possessions, and bought an extravagant flower arrangement for Pat and clothes for his newborn son.

Sadly, this little family arrangement was not to last.

Brian had longed to leave Cheltenham, and he saw his chance when, on a trip to London, he first met Alexis Korner, a blues purist who led the band Blues Incorporated. The older musician was impressed by Brian’s musical skills and knowledge, and as time went by, Brian started making more and more trips to London, staying with Alexis and his wife on such weekend excursions. Eventually, Brian moved to London, promising Pat he would send for her and Mark once he had the means to provide for them.

Unfortunately for her, this would be one of many promises that Brian wouldn’t keep.

It seems, in general, that Brian only set his sights on music, solely focusing his efforts on improving his skills. Laura Jackson’s book stated that, at one point in his life, Brian had held down 24 jobs in two years (😲). Among the various jobs he held were coal miner, factory worker, record store clerk, archivist, and bus conductor (despite his hatred of public transport, he loved buses and trains). However, none of these jobs lasted very long, with some lasting merely a week, or even less than that. He also tried applying to university, if only to placate his parents by telling them he’d get a job involving optics, but his application was withdrawn after someone (likely a landlord pissed with Brian after he fell behind on the rent) wrote to the school, calling Brian an “irresponsible drifter.”

On April 7, 1962, Brian, taking the stage name Elmo Lewis, performed as a guest with Blues Incorporated along with Paul Pond (later known as Paul Jones of Manfred Mann). By now, Brian was skilled with guitar, piano, clarinet, harmonica, saxophone, and most notably, slide guitar. It was on this night that two eighteen-year-olds, Michael Phillip Jagger and Keith Richards, first saw him. In 2010, Keith wrote, “We first met Brian Jones at the Ealing Jazz Club. He was calling himself Elmo Lewis. He wanted to be Elmore James at the time. ‘You’ll have to get a tan and put on a few inches, boy.’ But slide guitar was a real novelty in England, and Brian played it that night. He played ‘Dust My Broom,’ and it was electrifying. He played it beautifully. We were very impressed with Brian. I think Mick was the first to go up and talk to him, and we discovered that he had his own band, most of whom deserted him in the next few weeks.” Reportedly, Keith even kept nudging Mick and another friend, Dick Taylor (later of the Pretty Things), and whispered “It’s Elmore James! It is man! It’s fuckin’ Elmore James!”

The next month, Brian put an ad in the paper for aspiring blues musicians. The first to show up was pianist Ian Stewart, and before long, they were jamming to Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago.” Then there was Mick, who agreed to join if Keith could come along. Initially, there was also Geoff Bradford and Brian Knight, but they left soon after, refusing to perform the works of Chuck Berry. They were replaced by Dick Taylor and Tony Chapman.

I’ve gone into more detail about this in the past, but when Blues Incorporated got a spot on a radio show, Mick and Brian agreed to hold down the fort. However, while Brian was trying to place an ad for the gig in the papers, he was asked to give a name for the fledgling group. Desperate, Brian saw a Best of Muddy Waters compilation on the floor, and Side 1, Track 5 was “Rollin’ Stone Blues.”

And thus, the band became “The Rollin’ Stones.”

They played their first show on July 12, 1962.

The next month, Mick, Keith, and Brian moved into a flat called Edith Grove. They would remain in the dingy flat until September 1963, and since then, that period of their lives has become simultaneously famous and infamous (Mick and Keith even commented upon it recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNRKTFCA7c0&t=205s)

For now though, Brian and Keith spent their time developing what Keith later dubbed “guitar weaving,” where the guitarists would play off each other to the point where two guitars sounded like one). It’s a tradition that’s survived through to this day, including through several line-up changes within the Rolling Stones (this is likely seen in other bands to one extent or another too).

The band also fought through the winter of 1962/63, one of the coldest in Britain in over a century. In December, Bill Wyman replaced Dick Taylor on bass, and in January, Charlie Watts replaced Tony Chapman on drums. Early in 1963, Brian managed to get the group a residency at the Crawdaddy Club, after the Dave Hunt Group couldn’t make it due to the terrible weather and abysmal road conditions. By the end of March, the group had cut their first recording sessions.

And then, in April, Andrew Loog Oldham and Eric Easton made their presences known.

Motherfucking Andrew Oldham .

I believe my reasons for hating his guts will become a bit more clear as I continue with this.

In May, Andrew became the band’s manager, whilst Eric Easton became the band’s financial advisor. Because Andrew was 19 and under the age of 21 (age of majority in Britain at the time), his mother had to co-sign on just about every contract he signed, and he also couldn’t obtain an agent’s license.

Quickly, Andrew set his sights on Mick as the band’s golden boy (I mean, come on, those dance moves), as opposed to the kid who actually had blonde hair....

Begrudgingly, I will admit that if it wasn’t for Andrew, the Rolling Stones probably never would’ve found the level of success they did. He definitely got the publicity ball rolling (pun intended) with headlines such as “Would You Let Your Sister Go With a Rolling Stone?” For a while, he also served as the Stones’ producer on albums.

However, make no mistake, he, Mick, and Keith were terrible to Brian. I’ll try and go into more detail as I go along, but Andrew led a whispering campaign against Brian, Mick and Brian shared an intense rivalry in just about every aspect of their lives, and if Paul Trynka’s book is to be believed, Keith would throw things at Brian to the point of causing physical pain, or he’d otherwise pick fights with Brian.

Let’s also not forget that in 1963, Andrew made the callous decision to cut Ian Stewart from the band on the basis of him not fitting in with the others (he had a square chin and a 50′s haircut) and his belief that the fans would never remember more than five faces (we Linkin Park fans would beg to differ).

Look, I respect Mick and Keith as songwriters and entertainers, but it’s very hard for me to extend that same respect to them as people.

In either case, the Stones’ first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On”, was released on June 23, 1963. From there, the band slowly but surely gained a following, and for a time, Brian retained some of his initial leadership role.

And then, while the band was touring in October 1963, they found out that Brian had an agreement with Eric Easton, and was receiving an extra £5 for every show.

Keep in mind, Bill Wyman later wrote that, at that point, they were earning £193 a week. Even accounting for inflation (and in my case, currency exchanges), that’s less than ten percent of what the band was earning.

Still, because everyone had been under the impression that they were earning the same amount of money per member, it caused the first rifts between Brian and the rest of the band, and laid the foundations of his eventual ousting from the band he’d worked so hard to create.

By June 1964, the Stones had gained a respectable following on their home turf, but they had a harder time gaining a following in America, largely due to the fact that they hadn’t had a major single yet, and not helped by how people like Dean Martin made fun of their “long” hair (let’s face it, by today’s standards, their hair would generally be considered short nowadays).

They started to gain that following with the release of the songs “Time Is On Our Side” and “It’s All Over Now.” It only increased with their performance on the TAMI show in late 1964.

There’s a couple things I should note now. First, a couple months before, Andrew made the push for Mick and Keith to start writing songs (his reasons for focusing on the Dartfordian boys are beyond me). See, originally, the Stones were a Blues cover band, and in his earliest days as their manager, he tried to market them as a Beatles counterpart (complete with matching suits and hairstyles), which horrified the Beatles, who were actually good friends with the Stones even in their early days. However, he soon eschewed that in favor of marketing the Stones as the “anti-Beatles” (even though both bands reportedly even timed album releases so that neither’s success would encroach on the others’). Even so, with this move, Andrew was clearly taking some inspiration from the Lennon-McCartney partnership in trying to push for a Jagger-Richards partnership. Keith claimed years later that Andrew locked them in a room until they could come out with some songs, but Mick has denied that this ever happened. In either case, one of their earliest songs would be made famous by Marianne Faithfull: “As Tears Go By”.

Second, there is a lot of debate as to whether Brian could actually write songs. Mick, Keith, Ian, and Andrew have all basically said that Brian couldn’t write a song for shit. However, Brian’s girlfriend in 1964, Linda Lawrence, said that she and her mother saw Brian writing songs, but when he tried to bring up his ideas to the other Stones, he would be coldly dismissed, with Keith once saying, “It sounds like a bloody Welsh hymn!”

(At this point, I’d like to ask, “What’s wrong with Welsh hymns?”)

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Some sites on the internet allege that Brian did write songs, a couple were recorded, and one even features him singing! Trust me, aside from the above examples, Brian singing lead or co-lead on any song is woefully rare. However, if the acetates in question do exist, then they certainly haven’t been released.

To this day, the only writing credits Brian has to his name are a jingle for a Rice Krispies commercial and the soundtrack for Mord Und Totschlag, which has never been officially released (more on this later). Also worth noting is that in the 90′s, one of Brian’s poems was set to music, but that’s a very loose example, since he is only credited with the lyrics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gEE4I7ORlY).

In any case, as time passed, Brian became more and more alienated from the Stones, Sometimes, it was because he missed out on concerts (make no mistake though, he only missed 12 out of some 930 Stones shows in his lifetime, and it could usually be chalked up to health problems). Other times, it’d be because of something Brian said or did, such as when Brian disappeared for a few days when he was contemplating leaving the band due to the stress and bullying in April 1965.

There’s many other things, big and small, that I could talk about. In either case, it seems that whether Brian did something or not, it’d invariably come back to bite him in the ass.

Also during this time, he had his last two confirmed children. First, there’s the aforementioned Julian Brian, his child with Linda Lawrence born in 1964. Linda and Pat later tried to file lawsuits against Brian for child support, and in both cases, they received either a lump sum or payments from the government. Later on, in 1970, Linda married Brian’s friend, Donovan Leitch. Then, while he was dating Linda Lawrence, Brian was having an affair with 19-year-old Dawn Molloy. When she became pregnant, Andrew told Brian to stop seeing her. Andrew later coerced Dawn into signing an agreement that she would never tell the press or the public that Brian Jones was the father of her baby, which was witnessed by Mick Jagger of all people. In addition, she also received £700 for her silence. She later gave birth to Brian’s fifth child, Paul Molloy, in March 1965 and was forced by her parents to give the baby up for adoption. Fortunately, this tale of woe does have a happy ending in that mother and son were reunited in 1994, and both have since spoken out about their experiences. Paul (renamed John Maynard) later stated, “First, I'd probably hit him for what he did to Dawn. Then I'd brush him down and ask him if he wanted a coffee. I'd like to chat with him. To get to know him and for him to get to know me. He'd like me, I know he would. I'd want him to be proud of me. To be honest, I'd just want him to be my dad.”

On September 14, 1965, Brian met German-Italian actress Anita Pallenberg. She apparently went for him because he was the most popular member of the Rolling Stones at the time, and they also were both fluent in German, so part of their early connection was built on that.

The Who’s Pete Townshend later stated, "We hung out a lot from about 1964 to 1966. Part of the time he was seeing Anita Pallenberg. She was a stunning creature. I mean literally stunning. It was quite hard to maintain one’s gaze. One time in Paris I remember they took some drug and were so sexually stimulated they could hardly wait for me to leave the room before starting to shag. I felt Brian was living on a higher plane of decadence than anyone I would ever meet.”

Many Stones fans who know of Brian’s story tend to hate Anita to varying degrees (based on personal observation). As this progresses, I hope that at least some of the reasons will become clear.

According to Paul Trynka, Anita gave him the confidence to go up against Mick and Keith, and it was her that helped him become the fashion icon he is remembered as today (and that’s how I also know he’d apparently wash his hair up to five or six times per day). Though, in general, Brian started to act a bit more willfully, if not a bit irrationally at times.

However, their relationship was far from a healthy one.

Actually, it’s probably comparable with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen and Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love in terms of how messed up it was.

For me, the morally objectionable part isn’t that they were apparently into S&M, but rather that they abused each other, both physically and mentally. More often than not, though, Brian will invariably get most of the flak.

Take, for example, this quote from Keith Richards, “I would hear the thumping some nights, and Brian would come out with a black eye. Brian was a woman beater. But the one woman in the world you did not want to try and beat up on was Anita Pallenberg. Every time they had a fight, Brian would come out bandaged and bruised.”

In addition, one of the most circulated stories about their tumultuous relationship was the time Brian broke his wrist in September 1966.

Reportedly, Brian told the press that he’d broken his wrist in a stupid accident. However, most others say that Brian broke his wrist during another fight with Anita, either on a metal window frame or on her face (sources vary).

Bill Wyman has this to state about the matter: “While Charlie and Shirley were on holiday in Greece, Brian made plans to take a holiday in Morocco, a country that fascinated him, with Anita and antique dealer Christopher Gibbs, a friend of his as well as of Mick and Keith. The party flew to Tangier on 28 August, but the trip was quickly marred by tensions between Brian and Anita. This couple, so magnetically drawn together, began squabbling about almost everything- both in the privacy of their room and publicly in restaurants. There were stories of fights and after seven days Brian returned to London with a broken left wrist in a plaster cast. Various reasons were given. First Brian said he broke it while climbing; Christopher Gibbs declared that Brian tried to hit Anita, missed, and hit the metal frame of a window; and finally Brian stated: ‘I fell on a slippery bathroom floor and trapped my hand under my hip and the bath. That’s the real story.’ Nobody who knew Brian’s record of fisticuffs with women doubted that the broken wrist was traceable to an altercation with Anita.”

I should mention that before this incident though, 1966 was one of the Stones’ most musically innovative periods, with Brian almost entirely eschewing the guitar for most of the rest of his career with the Rolling Stones. He brought the sitar to “Paint It Black”, dulcimer to “Lady Jane”, marimba to “Under My Thumb”, and so on. In fact, in his lifetime, Brian had learned many instruments, including piano, clarinet, saxophone, guitar, harmonica, slide guitar, mellotron, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, marimba, euphonium, recorder, dulcimer, recorder, drums, vibraslap, autoharp, congas, harpsichord, vocals, tambourine, maracas, organ, koto, double bass, kazoo, oboe, trumpet, tanbura, harp, flute, clavinet, vibraphone, banjo, accordion, glockenspiel, xylophone, and trombone.

And like I’ve said, I can’t even play the piano yet (or harmonica for that matter).

In 1966, Anita got a leading role in the movie Mord Und Totschlag (A Degree of Murder), and Brian asked the director, Volker Schlondorff, if he could do the soundtrack, and agreed to do it for free. The director and the musician apparently became pretty good friends during this time, and Brian also brought in Jimmy Page (guitars), Nicky Hopkins (piano), Kenney Jones (drums), Glyn Johns (engineering), Peter Gosling (vocals), and Mike Leander (orchestra) for an assist. Even if lyrics were a stumbling block for him, it is this that shows that Brian had the potential to be a great songwriter. However, while on set, Brian could be difficult. For one thing, he procrastinated (I can relate). In addition, his insecurity often bubbled to the surface. Schlondorff himself later stated, “He was driven by this narcissistic need, to be recognized, to be loved, for attention. And Anita was stronger than he was at that moment. She could control things, by giving attention, or withholding it, or by treating him in a very condescending way. Then he’d get nasty, in the sense that he’s the one who’s got the money or whatever, so he’d punish her that way. And I’m certain he’d treat her physically badly, too. So he already was, in some ways, an unhappy and pathetic figure”

Even so, the film premiered at Cannes on April 19, 1967, though by then, Brian and Anita had split. While the movie finally got a DVD/Blu-Ray release fifty-two years later, in 2019, the soundtrack still has yet to be released.

On February 12, 1967, Keith’s home, Redlands, was raided after the tabloid News of the World (thankfully defunct now) tipped off the police that drugs were being done at a party. Mick was charged with drug possession and Keith was charged with allowing his home to be used for the smoking of cannabis.

Not long after, Andrew fled to America, and was fired in September 1967, being replaced by Allen Klein in the process.

On the advice on their lawyers, Mick, Keith, Brian, and Anita left the country.

I should note that by now, Brian was addicted to alcohol, nicotine, LSD, marijuana, cannabis, prescription pills, and god only knows what else.

At this point though, Brian was far from being fit to travel. In March, as the group made a stopover in Gibraltar, Brian (probably high) got it in his head to play the soundtrack for Mord und Totschlag for some Barbary monkeys. The monkeys, being monkeys, didn’t take too kindly to that, and scampered off. Brian didn’t take this very well, and between having an asthma attack (which Anita and Marianne apparently thought he was faking for sympathy) and screaming profanities that would probably make hardened sailors blush, he was weeping, reportedly shouting, “No one likes my music!”

Yes, at first glance, the incident would seem comical, but all I see is a man truly beginning to fall apart at the seams.

In Toulouse, Brian fell ill with pneumonia, and had to spend several days in the hospital, including his 25th birthday. Keith and Anita went on ahead, and started up an affair behind his back.When Brian was able to finally rendezvous with the rest of the group, the affair between Keith and Anita did not go unnoticed by him. The only certainties about what happened next are that Brian paid for the services of two prostitutes, and something happened between him and Anita.

Trust me, it’s best not to use the movie Stoned as a source for this.

In his autobiography, Keith had this to say about the events of that fateful night: “And of course Brian starts his old shit again, in Marrakech in the Es Sadi hotel, trying to take Anita on for fifteen rounds. His reaction to whatever he sensed between Anita and me was more violence. And once again he breaks two ribs and a finger or something. And I’m watching it, hearing it. Brian was about to sign his own exit card and help Anita and me on our way. There’s no point to this noninterference anymore. We’re stuck in Marrakech, this is the woman I’m in love with, and I’ve got to relinquish her out of some formality? All of my plans of rebuilding my relationship with Brian are obviously going straight down the drain. In the condition he was in, there was no point in building anything with Brian. I’d done my best... Now it was just unacceptable. Then Brian dragged two tattooed whores- remembered by Anita, incidentally, as “really hairy girls”- down the hotel corridor and into the room, trying to force Anita into a scene, humiliating her in front of them. He started to fling food at her from the many trays he’d ordered up. At that point Anita ran to my room.”

Byron Gysin, who was with the Stones during their stay in Morocco, had this to say: “Expensive ladies. This one cost Brian a packet, the whole packet: Anita and the Stones, his life as a musician, and eventually his life.”

Upon what was done, Keith similarly had this to say: “I thought Anita wanted out of there, and if I could come up with a plan, she would take it. Sir Galahad again. But I wanted her back; I wanted to get out. I said, ‘You didn’t come to Marrakech to worry that you’ve beaten up your old man so much he’s lying in the bath with broken ribs. I can’t take this shit anymore. I can’t listen to you getting beaten up and fighting and all this crap. This is pointless. Let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s just leave him. We’re having much more fun without him. It’s been a very, very hard week for me knowing that you’re with him.’ Anita was in tears. She didn’t want to leave, but she realized that I was right when I said that Brian would probably try and kill her.”

And so, the next day, Keith, Mick, and Anita hightailed it out of there, leaving Brian stranded in Morocco.

About this, Gysin states, “Less than half an hour later, Brian is on the blower to me, sobbing: ‘Come! Come quickly! They’ve all gone and left me! Cleared out, I don’t know where they’ve gone. No message. The hotel won’t tell me. I’m here all alone, help me. Come at once!’ I go over there. Get him into bed. Call a doctor to give him a shot and stick around long enough to see it take hold on him. Don’t want him jumping down those ten stories into the swimming pool.”

Brian never forgave Keith.

Brian’s father blamed Anita for breaking his heart, but those who were closer to Brian, such as Linda Lawrence, said that it was the betrayal of Mick and Keith, the men he’d once considered brothers, that really broke him.

In either case, Brian slipped into a downward spiral from which he’d never recover.

On the subject of Brian’s drug use, Mick later stated in the 2012 documentary Crossfire Hurricane, “Keith and I took drugs, but Brian took too many drugs of the wrong kind and he wasn’t functioning as a musician. I don’t think he was that interested in contributing to the Rolling Stones anymore.”

On May 10, just as Mick and Keith were being formally charged with various drug offenses, Brian’s home was raided by police. They found marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine in his house. He confessed to marijuana use, but denied he used stronger substances (I’ll leave it up to you guys whether you believe that’s true or not).

Mick and Keith were sentenced to various prison sentences in June, released on appeal shortly after, and in July, Keith’s sentence was overturned entirely, while Mick was given a years’ probation. Their release was in large part due to the public outcry that resulted from the trials.

But where Mick and Keith seemed to blossom in the aftermath, Brian seemed to only wilt.

Against his lawyer’s advice, Brian plead guilty. On Allen Klein’s advice, he isolated himself from the Stones even further. Above all else, he didn’t take the matter as seriously as he could or should have.

On October 30, Brian was found guilty of cannabis possession and allowing his home to be used for the smoking of cannabis.

He was sentenced to a total of twelve months in prison.

Reportedly, during the night, Brian was taunted by guards, who threatened to cut the long, blonde hair he was so proud of.

He was released awaiting appeal the next day, but he’d been deeply shaken by the experience. In December, his case went on appeal, and because his defense testified that he had an “already fragile mental make-up” and his doctor said that Brian was “anxious, considerably depressed, and potentially suicidal”, Brian was fined, given three years’ probation, and given strict orders to seek professional help.

Even so, Brian’s health, social, mental, and physical alike, continued to decline.

Another anecdote that lends credence to this: in January 1968, Brian (by now sporting a beard that even die-hard fans tend to recoil from in horror), joined his friend, Jimi Hendrix, during the recording sessions for “All Along the Watchtower.” (Prior to this, Brian had introduced Jimi to an American audience at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival). Brian’s first attempt at contributing to what would become Jimi’s most iconic song (even impressing Bob Dylan, who originally sang/wrote it) was to attempt a piano line. However, Brian was incredibly drunk at the time, and could only produce off-key clunking.

For once in his life, Brian’s musical abilities had failed him.

It got to the point where Jimi shot sound engineer Eddie Kramer a look that said “Can we get him to stop?” At that point, Eddie ushered Brian into the control room, where he fell on the floor and passed out.

Brian did eventually contribute percussion in the form of the vibraslap, which can be heard in the opening bars of the song. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY)

In May, a little over a year after his first arrest, Brian was arrested for cannabis possession for a second time. Sources disagree on whether or not Brian had been trying to get clean, but those who believe Brian was making that effort lean towards the opinion that this time, the cops planted the dope on Brian (including myself).

This time, Brian plead not guilty, and though his defense argued that the evidence against Brian was circumstantial at best, the jury found him guilty regardless. This time however, the judge was much more lenient and decided to let Brian off with a fine and a stern warning to not appear in court again, offering him the same treatment he would’ve gotten had he not been famous.

From here, most of the remaining anecdotes paint a bleak, contradictory picture of Brian’s life, showing him as a man continually absent from recording sessions. If and when he would show up, he’d generally be too intoxicated to properly contribute (his most likely vices at this point likely included alcohol and Mandrax).

The last Rolling Stones album to feature him as a major presence was Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967).

His last major contribution to one of their songs was the slide guitar on “No Expectations.”

For more context, I will take a paragraph from Paul Trynka’s book, “Other insiders share [George] Chikantz’s perception of a hardness at the heart of the Stones, most notably Jack Nitzche. Throughout 1965 and 1966 he’d noted rancour during the band’s RCA sessions. When he resumed work with the band towards the end of 1968, he reckoned the atmosphere had changed- for the worse. His vignette of seeing Mick with Brian is chilling. “Brian came up to me, looking pretty shaky, and asked me what I thought he should do- he didn’t know where he fit[ted] in. I told him to just pick up a guitar and start playing. Then he walked over to Mick and asked, “What should I play?” Mick told him, “You’re a member of the band, Brian, play whatever you want.” So he played something, but Mick stopped him and said, “No, Brian, not that- that’s no good.” So Brian asked him again what to play and Mick told him again to play whatever he wanted. So Brian played something else, but Mick cut him off again- “No, that’s no good either, Brian.”’”

Of this time period, Mick stated, “ You certainly didn't know if he was going to turn up and what state he was going to be in and then, what he was going to be able to do in that state. What job could you give him? And then, one time, when we sat around, on the floor, we played, in a circle, playing "No Expectations". And he picked the guitar and played a very pretty line on it which you can hear on the record. And that was the last thing I remember him doing that was Brian. Or, the Brian that could contribute something very pretty and sensitive and it made the record sound wonderful.”

The Who’s Pete Townshend, also stated, “When we played The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus I was very upset about Brian’s condition. I was upset at Keith Richards’ green complexion, too, but he seemed in good spirits. Brian was defeated. I took Mick and Keith aside and they were quite frank about it all; they said Brian had ceased to function, they were afraid he would slip away. They certainly were not hard-nosed about him. But they were determined not to let him drag them down, that was clear. Brian certainly slipped away that evening. He died soon after.”

Keith himself later stated, “We didn’t even expect him to be there. If he turned up, we’d find something for him to do I'd ask him, "You got anything?" You know, "What do you think about this? Want to put something over this?" Or, but, eh, by then he was already in Bye-Bye Land. “

By now, it’s clear to me that Brian was either unable or unwilling to seek proper treatment for his addictions or mental health ailments, and very few, if any of the people in his company were willing to either help or intervene.

The Rock and Roll Circus was the last time Brian performed with the Stones.

The last songs he ever played on were “Midnight Rambler” (congas) and “You’ve Got the Silver” (autoharp).

Six months later, the Stones were making plans to go on tour for the first time since 1967. However, it was soon brought to the attention of their lawyers that Brian would be unlikely, if not entirely unable to get a work visa in the USA due to his prior drug convictions.

Due to this and Brian’s increasing lack of contributions to the band’s music, Ian Stewart suggested that they let Brian go.

Ultimately, it was Mick and Keith’s decision, and they decided to take Ian’s suggestion to heart. First, they brought on 20-year-old Mick Taylor as their new guitarist. Then, on June 8, 1969, Mick and Keith went to Cotchford Farm to give Brian the news, bringing Charlie along in case a fight broke out. Brian, however, decided to back out gracefully, and in various press releases, including Brian’s, it was made to appear as if Brian had elected to leave the band entirely of his own accord.

I should talk about the last photos of Brian ever taken, shot by Helen Spittal on June 23, 1969, nine days before Brian’s death. Most people would only really see the heavy bags under his eyes and the obvious weight gain and all they see is a man near the end of his rope. But for me, in some of the photos, I can still see a tiny spark of life in those sea-green eyes of his; the tiniest spark of hope that, if things had gone differently, he could’ve gotten better.

Maybe I’m just biased.

Either way, it was never meant to be.

Even now, there is considerable debate as to whether or not Brian was still doing drugs. Some say that Brian was making a decided effort to get off of drugs. Laura Jackson’s book even claims that Brian hated even taking prescription drugs by now. In her book though, his girlfriend at the time, Anna Wohlin, claimed that he’d been doing cocaine after Keith left some at his house as a gift (even though Brian had denied using cocaine just two years earlier). In addition, Brian had been prescribed Black bombers (durophet), Valium, Mandrax, and Piriton on top of his inhaler.

Even though the witness reports taken from the time are contradictory, they’ve been my most valuable source in my research. Besides, I remember seeing in a documentary called Killing Lincoln that of the hundreds of witness reports taken in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, none of them matched up. For me, it’s a matter of piecing together what generally correlates between the accounts. What is generally agreed upon in the case of Brian’s death is that he was with Anna, Janet Lawson, and Frank Thorogood, and he decided to go swimming in 80°F water. Frank was all for it, but Anna and Janet expressed concerns. Most of you reading this will know the rest.

Above, you’ll see Janet’s testimony, taken on the morning of Brian’s death. I know you can all read, but I’d still like to highlight a couple of her statements in particular.

“Brian guided us back to the house with a hand torch. It was clear that he was unsteady on his feet as the light was unreliable. He seemed to be talking quite sensibly, I believe about the drainage scheme. Nevertheless, it was obvious that he had been drinking. ...Brian attempted conversation, but it was a little garbled ‘and he excused it by saying, ‘I’ve had my sleepers’ or some such phrase. From this I gathered he had taken sleeping tablets.”

At this point, I feel it’s important to note that a, Janet was a registered nurse, and b, Mandrax and black bombers are no longer legal or distributed, and beyond that, some of the drugs Brian was taking at the time of his death feature side-effects such as seizures, drowsiness, unsteadiness and other problems with coordination, slurred speech, and others. Alcohol (equivalent to seven whiskeys) definitely wouldn’t have helped whatever cocktail of drugs Brian had taken that night.

In my not-so-professional opinion, whether he went swimming or not that night, Brian was several levels of screwed.

“I saw that Brian had great difficulty in holding his balance on the spring board. Frank was doing his best to assist him but not very successfully. Eventually, Brian flopped into the water and yet despite his condition seemed to be able to cope and made his strokes in the deep end. His movements were sluggish, but I felt reasonably assured that they all were able to look after each other.”

I think most doctors nowadays would tell you that in any event where someone’s been drinking, it’s best to have someone sober in the immediate vicinity to make sure nothing bad happens (like drinking and driving).

Of Brian’s death, Janet states, “I went out to the pool and on the bottom I saw Brian. He was facedown in the deep end. He was motionless and I sensed the worst straight away.

“I shouted under the open window of the bedroom to Anna who was speaking on the telephone. I ran into the house and shouted to Frank. Both joined me- I was by then in the water but realized I couldn’t manage him alone and I shouted to Frank to get into the pool to get Brian out.”

Still, she’s a registered nurse and she just left him on the bottom...? 😑

“I returned to the pool to get Frank to use the ‘phone and he and Anna were struggling to get Brian out of the water. I helped and we eventually got him out. He lay on his back and as Frank went to the house to ‘phone I turned the body over and attempted to pump the water out of him. It was obvious to me he was dead but I turned the body back and I told Anna how to apply mouth to mouth resuscitation as I applied external cardiac massage.

“I carried on for at least fifteen minutes but there was no pulse.

“The three swimmers were in such a condition that I was tempted to return to the flat but I had a moral obligation to keep an eye on them because I sensed they were all being very stupid- I suppose as a nurse I felt responsible.”

Brian Jones was pronounced dead early in the morning of July 3, 1969, though the coroner estimated that his death happened at sometime near or around 11:30 PM on July 2, 1969. Based upon the evidence that Brian’s heart and liver were twice as large as they should have been for a man of his age, he was suffering from pleurisy and other bronchial trouble, and the aforementioned quantities of alcohol and prescription drugs found in his system and noting the pink foam (sputum) in his nostrils and the lack of evidence of an asthma attack, it was ruled as a case of “misadventure.”

In layman’s terms, Brian had drowned due to a cocktail of prescription pills and alcohol.

To this day, however, theories persist that Brian’s death was either an act of manslaughter, perpetrated by Frank Thorogood in a bout of drunken horseplay gone terribly wrong, or that Brian was intentionally drowned, either for firing Frank, trying to start a supergroup with John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix (Jimi’s camp denies this), having an affair with Princess Margaret (yes, really), or for just about every other reason in the bloody book you can conjure up.

Really, though, I once again have to ask, if Brian was really murdered, then why is so much of the evidence circumstantial, and why did so many of the supposed witnesses fail to come forward for a good decade or three after Brian’s death. Seriously, I don’t think someone like Tom Keylock would have the sort of political reach to uphold an entire conspiracy. None of it makes sense, and I’ve been studying this case for five months.

Two days after his death, the Stones performed a free concert at Hyde Park. It was originally meant to be an introduction for Mick Taylor, but it became a tribute to Brian in light of his death. A giant picture of Brian sat on the side of the stage, Mick read two verses of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Adonais, and thousands of butterflies were released, though by that time, many had died due to the boxes not being properly ventilated. The Stones in the Park Concert would never be regarded as their technical best, but it was still regarded as a success. Also interesting to note; before the concert, officials were worried about potential widespread property damage and general unruliness. But then, the night before the concert, fans started showing up, and since they were being quiet and respectful, police let them stay, even after the park’s usual closing time at midnight. Contrary to popular belief, the property damage only totaled £100, with the worst of the damage being inflicted upon a tree that had been planted the previous year. The fans even helped clean up the park after the show, and those who collected the most trash were rewarded with free Stones LPs.

Brian’s funeral was held on Thursday, July 10, 1969. He was buried in Cheltenham, though Laura Jackson’s book claims that he’d once told Helen that he wished to be buried at Cotchford Farm after his death. Even then, it’s doubtful that Brian would have wanted to be buried in the town he’d wanted to escape for so long, which is why people like myself and Caitlin Doughty (check out “Ask a Mortician,” it’s amazing) will advocate in favor of telling your family what you want done with your body after you die. The funeral was presided over by Canon Hugh Evan Hopkins. In my opinion, (this is not meant to be anti-religious) he made an ass of himself with the speech he gave: “He had little patience with authority, convention, and tradition. In this he was typical of many of his generation who have come to see in the Stones an expression of their whole attitude to life. Much that this ancient church has stood for in 900 years seems totally irrelevant to them.”

It might not be the worst speech I’ve ever heard about being delivered at a funeral, but dammit, no wonder Keith has never concerned himself with “petty morals.”

The only members of the Stones in attendance were Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts. Mick and Marianne were on a plane to Australia to begin shooting Ned Kelly. They later claimed that the people behind the film wouldn’t allow them an extension so that they could attend the funeral. Years later, Keith also had this to say: “It was going to be too much of a circus. And, anyway, I didn't ever go to my mother's funeral or my father's. We didn't have one. We're like that in my family. You know, my dad is now an oak tree. We put his ashes where there's an enormous oak tree growing and every year he gets a little bit bigger. And my mum, she said, "Don't make no fuss over me, boy." "I promise I'll make no fuss, mum." And Hyde Park was the funeral.”

We’ll just have to go with that...

Brian was buried in a silver and bronze casket that was allegedly paid for by Bob Dylan, wearing a powder blue jacket, white shirt, and black tie with his hair lightened and cut in its trademark bob. By all accounts, it looked as though he were sleeping. His parents had wanted to keep the whole affair private, but then somebody in the Stones’ management got a hold of the information and leaked the details to the press. The heartless leeches even wanted to get pictures of Brian lying in his coffin, but his parents managed to prevent that from happening, so there’s that at least.

In regards to the rest of the world, Jimi Hendrix dedicated a song to Brian on American television, Jim Morrison wrote the poem “Ode to L.A. While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased”, and Pete Townshend wrote the poem “A Normal Day for Brian, A Man Who Died Every Day.” By coincidence, Hendrix and Morrison later died at 27 within the next two years (but that’s a story I’ll have to talk about next time).

Two years after his death, Brian’s only solo album, Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka was released in October 1971. It had been recorded on another one of Brian’s trips to Morocco in 1968, and aside from a few sound effects, he only served as the album’s producer. If nothing else, it truly shows how appreciative Brian was of Moroccan music in that he mostly just let their music speak for itself. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwEoDGeNyrE&t=613s)

Also, am I the only one who strenuously objects to the phrasing “In Affectionate Remembrance of...” on Brian’s and Pamela’s gravestones? No? Okay then...

According to one (possibly apocryphal) anecdote, Keith once said to Brian, “You’ll never make thirty, man.”

Brian’s response?

“I know.”

Death hasn’t been kind to Brian Jones. If anyone remembers him, it’s generally for his early death. The hatchet still has yet to be buried between Mick, Keith, and Brian. They rarely speak of him, and whether it’s a kind word is extremely variable. More often than not though, it’s not kind, emphasizing his faults of character over everything else. Bill is the only one who’s truly stood up for Brian over the years, and his portrait of Brian is one of the most nuanced we’ve gotten from the Stones’ camp: “ There were at least two sides to Brian's personality. One Brian was introverted, shy, sensitive, deep-thinking. The other was a preening peacock, gregarious, artistic, desperately needing assurance from his peers. He pushed every friendship to the limit and way beyond.” Many of Brian’s achievements have gone largely unnoticed, which is a shame, because I think that although Brian had major personality flaws, it’s important not to forget that he had a good side as well, and that he was a musical genius, and it’s a shame that we never got to see the post-Stones life Brian could have lived.

If nothing else, I’d like to leave this part off with a poem Brian wrote in 1968 that was featured on the back of the compilation album Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2):

“When this you see, remember me

and bear me in your mind

Let all the world say what they may

speak of me as you find.”

Sources/Further Readings: https://www.upvenue.com/music-news/blog-headline/1026/the-27-club-musicians-who-died-at-27-years-old.html

https://coloradosound.org/27-club/

https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/P-I-s-Writer-in-Residence-Charles-R-Cross-1229072.php

http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/27-club-myth/

https://www.inquisitr.com/13488/stating-the-obvious-amy-winehouse-fears-early-death/

https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/publications/mentalhealth/media-guidelines-for-the-portrayal-of-suicide-3.pdf

https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines/

https://spinditty.com/artists-bands/The-dead-at-27-Club

Remastered: Devil at the Crossroads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-ppLCkvPJU

https://theconversation.com/the-27-club-is-a-myth-56-is-the-bum-note-for-musicians-33586

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/the-27-club-a-brief-history-17853/robert-johnson-26971/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/james-douglas-morrison-poet-dead-at-27-40343/

https://www.insider.com/27-club-celebrities-musicians-died-27-years-old-2017-9

https://coloradosound.org/27-club/

https://www.forever27.co.uk/hall-of-fame.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/devils-music-myth-robert-johnson/

https://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/biography/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/obituaries/robert-johnson-overlooked.html

https://www.biography.com/musician/robert-johnson

https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/robert-johnson

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/robert-johnson-mn0000832288/biography

http://musingsonmusic.com/2013/01/15/Robert-Johnson-as-told-by-Keith-Richards/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feIaNfFONWo

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/RobertJohnson

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/arts/brian-jones-the-making-of-the-rolling-stones-a-biography.html

https://www.popmatters.com/jameselmore-skyiscrying-2495952033.html

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/jun/30/gone-for-50-years-stones-brian-jones-20/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/brian-jones-sympathy-for-the-devil-182761/

https://books.google.com/books?id=4JD9fio-iLkC&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq=Mick+Jagger+and+Keith+Richards+visited+the+Ealing+Club&source=bl&ots=U6uNKnlMDP&sig=T3iJowA4Zd-o_NkgGcKKS-3g3qA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPr7Wawo7TAhUm5oMKHW6kCMgQ6AEIQjAJ#v=onepage&q=Mick%20Jagger%20and%20Keith%20Richards%20visited%20the%20Ealing%20Club&f=false

https://rockinsociety.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/200/

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/mick-jagger-keith-richards-met-brian-jones/

https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books/2014/11/30/Paint-it-black-Brian-Jones-The-Making-of-the-Rolling-Stones/stories/201411300179

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/03/when-the-angels-and-400000-others-said-goodbye-to-brian-jones/

https://books.google.com/books?id=SvuiDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT336&lpg=PT336&dq=brian+jones+five+pound+note&source=bl&ots=A2Z3-2WKrk&sig=ACfU3U25rObwcTlgfYBh_WvD_DqTQCSwpw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiT8NL66aflAhWVpp4KHU6PAGUQ6AEwFHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=brian%20jones%20five%20pound%20note&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=SnjZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=brian+jones+five+pound+note&source=bl&ots=tJhp59sj7C&sig=ACfU3U3tjfdMLOmX8wisSoKI7zWDMgFAkw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiT8NL66aflAhWVpp4KHU6PAGUQ6AEwEnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=brian%20jones%20five%20pound%20note&f=false

https://londonist.com/london/features/is-dartford-the-most-rock-n-roll-town-in-england

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/1964/03/14/melody-maker-would-you-let-your-sister-go-with-a-rolling-stone/

http://www.criminalelement.com/reich-and-roll-a-degree-of-murder-german-1967-film-movie-murder-cannes-rolling-stones-brian-jones-anita-pallenberg-brian-greene/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/anna-wohlin-talks-about-brian/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/2005/11/16/anna-wohlin-talks-to-the-independent/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/2005/03/31/dawn-young-interviewed-by-beatzenith-com/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/1968/05/11/child-of-the-moon-promotional-video/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/1981/06/23/suki-potier-passes-away-aged-33/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/1985/12/12/ian-stewart-passes-away-aged-47/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/

https://brianjonestimeline.wordpress.com/1965/09/14/anita-pallenberg-meets-brian-jones-backstage-at-circus-krone/

https://www.crfashionbook.com/celebrity/a22115807/anita-pallenberg-the-rolling-stones-brian-jones-keith-richards/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/14/anita-pallenberg-anything-but-a-passenger-on-the-stones-journey

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/why-anita-pallenberg-rolling-stones-muse-was-queen-of-the-underground-204744/

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-music-anita-pallenberg-20170613-story.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/anita-pallenberg-knew-swinging-sixties/

https://www.alainelkanninterviews.com/anita-pallenberg/

https://www.earcandymag.com/rrcase-brianjones.htm

https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2016/09/20/rolling-stones-guitarist-brian-jones-played-to-gib-monkeys/

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/sex-and-drugs-and-mick-and-keith.html

http://www.angelfire.com/rock3/sixtiesfish/mybrian/briongysin.htm

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/brian-jones-jimi-hendrix/

https://borntolisten.com/2018/01/21/january-21-the-jimi-hendrix-experience-recorded-all-along-the-watchtower-in-1968/

http://www.angelfire.com/rock3/sixtiesfish/1menu.html

http://www.covermesongs.com/2014/03/the-story-behind-jimi-hendrixs-all-along-the-watchtower.html

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/45-years-ago-jimi-hendrix-records-all-along-the-watchtower/

http://www.angelfire.com/rock3/sixtiesfish/mybrian/montereypop.htm

https://borntolisten.com/2018/01/21/january-21-the-jimi-hendrix-experience-recorded-all-along-the-watchtower-in-1968/

https://www.drugs.com/sfx/miltown-side-effects.html

http://drugcentre.org.za/depressants/Mandrax

https://www.healthline.com/health/diazepam-oral-tablet

https://www.earcandymag.com/rrcase-brianjones.htm

https://books.google.com/books?id=Gjb4f0r-w-wC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=brian+jones+pleurisy&source=bl&ots=NdTTzPABYY&sig=ACfU3U2YxBHFesJEFGLYfLiky7QV4Ju7BA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjanv3csLPlAhWIr54KHYhgClgQ6AEwF3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=brian%20jones%20pleurisy&f=false

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Black%20Bombers

http://www.drugworld.co.uk/drugs-amphetamine.html

https://nostalgiacentral.com/pop-culture/fads/drugs-in-the-1960s/

https://www.drugs.com/valium.html

https://nostalgiacentral.com/pop-culture/fads/drugs-in-the-1960s/

https://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/allergy-asthma/a7354/piriton-chlorphenamine/#side%20effects

https://tonydagostino.co.uk/history-of-amphetamine-methamphetamine/

http://www.keno.org/rolling_stones/brian_jones_keith_richards.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stones_in_the_Park

http://977rocks.com/bill-wyman-slams-jagger-richards-for-not-giving-brian-jones-his-due-06232015/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/keith-richards-on-brian-jones-mick-jagger-and-the-new-memoir-life-52581/

https://www.drugaware.co.za/mandrax.html

27: A History of the 27 Club through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse by Howard Sounes

Life by Keith Richards

Stone Alone by Bill Wyman

Brian Jones, The Untold Life and Mysterious Death of a Legend by Laura Jackson

Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones by Paul Trynka

Crossfire Hurricane (2012) dir. Brett Morgen

https://findadeath.com/brian-jones/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Jones

27: Robert Johnson by Chris Salewicz

27: Brian Jones by Chris Salewicz

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/20/crossroads-robert-johnson/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1353783/Being-Brian-Joness-son-greatest-thing-happened-me.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones

#27 club #robert johnson #brian jones #blues #rock and roll #rolling stones #mick jagger #keith richards #charlie watts #bill wyman #anita pallenberg #Marianne Faithful #cw: drug abuse #cw: death

8 notes · View notes