Wycked World Forum Page

Here in the UK there has recently been an upsurge in the publicity of the up-coming Stephen Woolley film 'The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones'.

Articles have appeared in national and local press and the soon to be produced film has featured on local television networks. We understand from the coverage that the script has been finalised and 'shooting' starts in a few months time. Now this is great news if, as the publicity suggests, new or re-assessed evidence will feature in the film and will show conclusively that Brian's death was no accident nor death by misadventure and that, as stated in the London Evening Standard (copied below), Stephen Woolley's film will pressurise the Sussex Police into re-investigating the events of the evening of July 2nd 1969.

However the 19th May 2004 article copied here from the UK national newspaper, the Daily Express (click picture left for article) indicates that the film will be based on the 'deathbed confession' of Frank Thorogood and that he alone was responsible for Brian's death. We want to hear your views and hopefully gain a swell of opinion that there were other things going on at Cotchford Farm on the night and the days and weeks leading up to Brian's death.

To help, you can view the BBC South East report aired on Friday 21st May 2004 where both Terry Rawlings (author of 'Who Killed Christopher Robin') and Stephen Woolley comment on the circumstances surrounding the death of Brian Jones. The clip will take a few minutes to load depending on your internet connection speed.

Broadband (1.8mg)

approx ½ minute @ 512k

Dialup modem (0.8mg)

approx 3 minutes @ 56k

When we published the London Evening Standard article last year a few letters were received but we would now like to widen the forum and hear your thoughts and possibly, with your permission, publish your comments at the foot of this page. To this end please complete the form at the foot of this page with your comments. Also, if you feel strongly that the case should be re-opened then you can add your name to the petition calling on the police to reinvestigate Brian's death at ipetitions.com - there are in excess of 200 names on the petition at the moment but a lot more support is needed so please take the time to add yours and if possible, spread the word that this petition exists. Thank you.

The television, newspaper and web articles reproduced on this page are not intended to infringe copyright and we acknowledge the BBC, Associated Newspapers, Gloucestershire Echo, Variety Magazine and others as copyright owners. If any infringement is taken by copyright owners then we apologise most sincerely and ask that you contact editor@brianjonesfanclub.com whereupon we will rectify the situation immediately.

Filming will soon begin on a documentary which will claim Brian Jones was murdered. The late Rolling Stone's body was found in 1969 floating in the swimming pool of his Sussex mansion. An inquest shortly afterwards was told the Cheltenham-born guitarist drowned through drink and drugs.

Film director Stephen Woolley has spent the past decade researching the evidence about Brian's death. Now he is making a film which will put forward the theory the 27-year-old was murdered by Frank Thorogood, an East End builder working on the star's home. Filming on 'The Wicked World of Brian Jones' will begin in September.

The murder theory has been put forward before in several books but this is the first film to make the claim. As well as interviewing Brian's close friends, Mr Woolley has used a clairvoyant to try to provide new insights into the tragedy. He says his film will raise questions which need answering.

Anna Wohlin, the guitarist's Swedish lover, told Mr Woolley that Mr Thorogood had been hiking up his building bills at the Sussex farmhouse before the star's death. She said Brian was an able swimmer and the builder was at the house when he decided to take his fateful dip.

As Mr Thorogood was dying of cancer, in 1993, he made a startling statement from his death bed, in which he said: "It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped".

Mr Woolley, whose works include 'The Crying Game', described his film as a 'murder mystery'. He said: "The project has taken 10 years to get off the ground. It will be about how and why. It's not fiction but it's not a documentary".

Fans have been campaigning for two decades for police to re-investigate Brian's death. David Reynolds, chairman of the official Brian Jones Fan Club Cheltenham, welcomes the film. He said: "Brian had only drunk three pints of beer and was a good swimmer. We need to do anything that will stir things up and make the police reconsider their original decision”.

Brian was born in Cheltenham in 1942 and lived in Eldorado Road. He is buried at Cheltenham Cemetery, in Bouncer's Lane. The fan club is fundraising for a statue of the star to be erected in the town centre. In February councillors reversed a decision to name a Cheltenham street after him.

A new film will claim that Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was murdered, it was revealed yesterday. Jones's body was found floating in the pool of his Sussex mansion in 1969. Drink and drugs were found in his bloodstream and an inquest recorded a verdict of misadventure. But a British film, 'The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones', will put forward the theory the 27-year-old was murdered by Frank Thorogood, an East End builder working on the star's home.

Thorogood reportedly confessed to the murder on his deathbed in 1993, saying: "It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped".

Film-maker Stephen Woolley, who has explored real-life events before in Scandal, about the Profumo affair, has spent 10 years researching the project, which will start filming in September. The murder theory has been advanced before in several books, but this is the first film to make the claim.

Jones's Swedish girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, has always maintained that Thorogood was cheating the star out of money over renovation work on his home and that an argument led to the murder.

Mr Woolley said: "The project has taken 10 years to get off the ground. I wanted the film to be a piece of entertainment, I don't want to do a documentary and at the same time I don't want to do a rock biopic. I'm doing a murder mystery".

After a decade in development, 'The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones' is finally ready to rock 'n' roll, with producer Stephen Woolley making his directorial debut. Tom Hardy ('Star Trek Nemesis' and 'Black Hawk Down') is in talks to star as debauched sixties rock icon Brian Jones, the charismatic guitarist who founded the Rolling Stones but was fired in 1969 and found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool a few weeks later.

The official verdict was accidental death. But the screenplay, by 'James Bond' scriptwriters Neal Purvis and Rob Wade claims Jones was killed by Frank Thorogood, the builder who was working on his house. That thesis has been put forward in several books, notably 'Who Killed Christopher Robin?' by Terry Rawlings and 'The Murder of Brian Jones' by his girlfriend Anna Wohlin, who was in the house when Jones died. Thorogood reportedly confessed years later, on his deathbed.

As well as optioning all the available literature, Woolley has conducted extensive research into the case. He hired private detectives to track down Thorogood's girlfriend Janet Lawson, who was the only other person present on the fateful night but disappeared after the inquest.

The film is set in the final few weeks of Jones' life, focusing on his intense and deteriorating relationship with Thorogood, flashing back to his childhood and the early days of the Stones.

Stephen Woolley has pulled 'The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones' out of development hell, and is now in production, with him directing, according to Variety. Tom Hardy ('Star Trek Nemesis' and 'Black Hawk Down') is in talks to star as debauched sixties rock icon Brian Jones, the charismatic guitarist who founded the Rolling Stones but was fired in 1969 and found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool a few weeks later.

The official verdict was accidental death. But the screenplay claims Jones was killed by Frank Thorogood, the builder who was working on his house.

"I'm doing a murder mystery, not a rock biopic or a cut-and-dried documentary", Woolley says. "The inspiration is films like 'The Servant' and 'Performance,' which were about people like Jones and Thorogood".

The film is set in the final few weeks of Jones' life, focusing on his intense and deteriorating relationship with Thorogood, flashing back to his childhood and the early days of the Stones.

"I don't intend to have any trouble from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, because this film is not about them" Woolley says. "This is not about some saintly talented person who was ill used and sadly snatched from life. Brian was in many ways a monster. He lived life so fast, he became a parody of sixties hedonism, with five kids by five different women, none of whom he acknowledged. He was the last decadent".

A new screenplay being shown at Cannes seems to suggest so, and could lift the lid on the Rolling Stones' darkest hour by Keith Dovkants

Few tears were shed for Brian Jones. He was, according to a contemporary, a "nasty little shit" and although he had started the Rolling Stones, his music-making genius burned out in a fever of drink and drugs. When he was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool, aged 27, he was considered merely another casualty of the excesses that defined the 1960's.

Producer Steve Woolley returns from the Cannes Film Festival this week to realise a project he says will rewrite this dark chapter of rock 'n' roll history. Jones was murdered, Woolley believes, and he thinks he can prove it. The idea has been aired before in a conspiracy-theory kind of way, but Woolley claims his new film will provide conclusive proof that Jones's death was caused by an act of violence. And he will name the killer.

The screenplay Woolley took to Cannes has been seen by only a few people and remains a confidential document. He said when the film is made, later this year, he will hand his evidence over to the police. Until then the "proof" that Jones was murdered will be kept secret.

Woolley has been investigating the Brian Jones affair for nearly 10 years and he has left his own trail of clues. It is known, for example, that he has had long discussions with Anna Wohlin, Jones's girlfriend and a key witness. He has also probed deeply into the background of a member of Jones's entourage, an East End hard case who was with the rock star the night he died. For anyone else who has investigated the Jones case, these facts point only one way. As Woolley concluded a series of meetings with the movie industry's money men — securing finance for the new film, he says — I put it to him that l could guess what was in his script.

"Yes, that is what has emerged," he said. "But we've spent years on this and we have uncovered all sorts of facts that were never brought out at the time. It is a fascinating and disturbing story. I believe the police will have to reopen the investigation."
So what will they find? The official records show that on the night of 2nd July 1969, Brian Jones was dragged from the floodlit pool at his home, Cotchford Farm, in Sussex, his lungs full of water and clinically dead. Attempts to revive him failed and at the inquest there was evidence he had been drinking and taking drugs.
Such deaths were part of the zeitgeist. If a young rock start died, this was the way it happened. The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure and Brian Jones headed a long list of casualties that would include Keith Moon, Jimmy Hendrix, Momma Cass, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and many others.
It is not the dead who make the Jones story intriguing, but the living — people such as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg. She was the mysterious blonde who captivated Jones at the beginning of his stardom. He was a restless, pretty young man, born into a middle-class family in Cheltenham.
When he simultaneously made his teenage girlfriend and married mistress pregnant, he packed up his guitar and headed for London. He was 19. Jones, like many musicians of his generation, had fallen under the spell of the great American blues artists.
He played in the London clubs that were beginning to spring up around the new music, and when he met Jagger and Richards the Rolling Stones were born. The name was chosen by Jones and he revelled in his role as leader of the group, but he was soon to fall out with his new friends.
He began drinking heavily and experimenting with drugs. His moods and foul temper enervated Jagger and Richards. Relations between the three founder members of the band disintegrated when Ms Pallenberg deserted Jones for Richards. Soon after, she had an affair with Jagger. Jones took himself off to Sussex, to Cotchford Farm, former home of A A Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh.
The Stones offered him a payoff of £100,000 and £20,000 a year — the equivalent of about £1 million and £200,000 in today's money — and he was thinking about it when he died. Sir Mick Jagger, who approved the deal, is said to be worth £170 million now. But he was always more shrewd than Brian Jones. Jones's household at Cotchford included his beautiful new girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, and a man called Frank Thorogood. He was a burly cockney, 44 years old, who had become part of Jones's circle. He was friend, minder and factotum, and in the summer of 1969 he was organising building work on the farm.
Ms Wohlin, who returned to her native Sweden after Jones's death, never believed it was an accident, but as a very young woman in a foreign land, immediately swept up by the powerful interests that surrounded the Rolling Stones, she felt unable to influence events. Now she believes she can.

She has written her own version of the affair and collaborated with Woolley on the new film. The story she tells suggests at least one person had a motive for killing Jones. According to her, Thorogood had been cheating Jones out of money. He had been inflating bills, swindling large amounts through the building work and when Jones discovered this he instructed his accountant not to pay any more of Thorogood's claims. Thorogood said he was owed £6,000 — the price of a London flat in those days — and he was furious. But the row blew over and he was at the house the night Jones decided to take a late swim.

"We have uncovered

all sorts of facts that

were never brought

out at the time. It is

a disturbing story. I

believe the police

will have to re-open

the investigation".

Stephen Woolley

Ms. Wohlin, who now runs a successful family business in Sweden, remembers that Jones had drunk a little wine, but was not drunk. Indeed, the post mortem showed only a moderate amount of alcohol. She said he had not taken drugs, although some traces of substances were found in his body.

He was a strong swimmer, she said, and when she left him at the pool to take a telephone call, he had been fine. Fifteen minutes later he was dead.

Frank Thorogood, who had also been swimming in the pool earlier, finally jumped in to help her pull Jones out but, Ms Wohlin recalled, he showed no great interest in rescuing Jones quickly. She believes he probably murdered Jones by holding his head underwater while she was in the house, but she has no hard evidence to prove this.

But there is evidence that Thorogood was the killer, and it came from his own lips. Rock author Geoffrey Giuliano, in his book Paint It Black, claims Thorogood made a deathbed confession just before he died in 1993. He called his long standing friend Tom Keylock, who was the Stones' road manager in the late Sixties, and, according to Giuliano, told him: "It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped. It just happened."

That, of itself, would not prompt a reopening of the case. But Steve Woolley said be has more.

"Statements made at the time were factually incorrect," he said. "People lied — and we can prove that."

He is calling his film 'The Wycked World of Brian Jones'. If what he believes is true, it was wicked indeed.