The Stones and Brian Jones (2023)

For Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones were meant to be a blues band, or at least R&B. The band’s pivot to rock and pop soon after he had started it at the age of 19 is symbolic of his own life veering off course: the insecurity instilled by bourgeois parents who never said a kind word, the redemption he found in music and then promptly lost to his creative envy of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and his serial infatuations, which resulted in a habit of flitting between women and abandoning the children he had with them. Thus, the sex symbol with gorgeous hair who craved greatness ended up succumbing to depression and self-destruction. Using a wealth of archival footage and interviews with people who had intimate knowledge of Jones’ many facets, director Nick Broomfield (Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love) unravels the sad story of a musical legend.