Brian Jones ( b2 )

Long-time Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman said of Jones, "He formed the band. He chose the members. He named the band. He chose the music we played. He got us gigs. ... he was very influential, very important, and then slowly lost it – highly intelligent – and just kind of wasted it and blew it all away."

Biography

Early life and children

Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones was born in the Park Nursing Home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on 28 February 1942. An attack of croup at the age of four left him with asthma that lasted for the rest of his life. His middle-class parents, Lewis Blount Jones and Louisa Beatrice Jones (née Simmonds), were of Welsh descent. Brian had two sisters: Pamela, who was born on 3 October 1943 and died on 14 October 1945 of leukemia; and Barbara, born on 22 August 1946.

Both Jones' parents were interested in music: his father, Lewis, was a piano teacher in addition to his job as an aeronautical engineer, and his mother, Louisa, played piano and organ and led the choir at the local church.

In 1957, Jones first heard Cannonball Adderley's music; this inspired his interest in jazz. Jones persuaded his parents to buy him a saxophone and two years later his parents gave him his first acoustic guitar as a 17th-birthday present.

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