滾石樂隊歷史上被抹去的那個人

Brian Jones is to the Rolling Stones what Leon Trotsky was to the Russian Revolution: organizer, ideologist and victim of a power struggle. Jones founded the group, gave it its name and recruited the schoolboys Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who then marginalized him, eventually expelling him from the band. Since his death in 1969, a month after he was forced out, Jones has largely been airbrushed from the group’s history.

布萊恩·瓊斯之於滾石樂隊就像列夫·托洛茨基(Leon Trotsky)之於俄國革命：組織者、思想家和權力鬥爭的犧牲品。瓊斯組建了這支樂隊，爲它起了名字，招募了還在上學的米克·賈格爾(Mick Jagger)和基思·理查茲(Keith Richards)，兩人後來卻排斥他，最終將他逐出樂隊。他於1969年去世，距離被逐出樂隊只有一個月，自那以後，瓊斯在很大程度上便從樂隊的歷史上被抹去了。

Paul Trynka’s biography “Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones” challenges the standard version of events, focused on Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, in favor of something far more nuanced. Though Mr. Trynka sometimes overstates Jones’s long-term cultural impact, his is revisionist history of the best kind — scrupulously researched and cogently argued — and should be unfailingly interesting to any Stones fan.

保羅·特倫卡(Paul Trynka)的傳記《布萊恩·瓊斯：滾石樂隊的締造》(Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones)挑戰了對於樂隊事件中通常以賈格爾和理查茲爲中心出發的看法，關注更微小的事件。儘管特倫卡有時誇大了瓊斯的長期文化影響力，但他的傳記是一部經過修訂的歷史，有着一絲不苟的研究和中肯的探討，任何“滾石”的樂迷都會感興趣。

Specifically, “Brian Jones” seems designed as a corrective to “Life,” Keith Richards’s 2010 memoir. Mr. Trynka, the author of biographies of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and a former editor of the British music magazines Mojo and Guitar, has interviewed Mr. Richards several times over the years and obviously likes him, but also considers his memory of events highly unreliable.

更何況《布萊恩·瓊斯》還刻意對基思·理查茲2010年的回憶錄《滾吧·生活》(Life)做了訂正。特倫卡是大衛·鮑伊(David Bowie)和伊基·波普(Iggy Pop)的傳記作者，還曾在英國音樂雜誌《莫約》(Mojo)和《吉他》(Guitar)擔任編輯，多年來，他曾數次訪問理查茲，顯然也很喜歡理查茲，但他覺得理查茲對各種事件的回憶很靠不住。

“History is written by the victors, and in recent years we’ve seen the proprietors of the modern Rolling Stones describe their genesis, their discovery of the blues, without even mentioning their founder,” Mr. Trynka remarks in the introduction. Without naming Mr. Richards, he also expresses his distaste for an assessment that appears in “Life,” that Brian Jones was “a kind of rotting attachment.”

“歷史是由勝利者所書寫，近年來，我們看到現代‘滾石’的各位所有者們描述他們的起源，他們如何發現了布魯斯，卻沒有人提起樂隊的創始人，”特倫卡在前言中寫道。他沒有對理查茲指名道姓，但對《滾吧，生活》中評論布萊恩·瓊斯是“腐爛的附屬品”這個說法表示厭惡。

The portrait of Jones that Mr. Trynka offers here is bifurcated. Though he is impressed with Jones’s “disciplined, honed sense of musical direction” and his dexterity on guitar and many other instruments, he does not hesitate to point out his subject’s more unpleasant personality traits: He was narcissistic, manipulative, misogynistic, conniving and dishonest about money. It’s not accidental that this book is called “Sympathy for the Devil” in Britain.

特倫卡在書中爲布萊恩描繪的肖像具有兩面性。儘管他喜歡瓊斯“在音樂方面節制而精微的方向感”，以及他演奏吉他與多種樂器的才華；但特倫卡也毫不猶豫地指出，自己筆下的主人公有着令人不快的個性特徵：他自戀、愛操縱他人、厭女、在金錢方面狡詐，不誠實。這本書被稱爲獻給布萊恩的《對魔鬼的同情》(Sympathy for the Devil)實非偶然。

Mr. Trynka attributes Jones’s downfall to a conjunction of factors, some related to those character flaws but others external to him. Much has been written about the drug busts that swept up Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards in the mid-1960s and their court battles, though Jones seems to have been even more of a target, because he was such a dandy and so successful with women.

特倫卡認爲瓊斯的覆滅是由多種因素導致，有些是由於他的個性缺陷，但也有外部因素。書中寫了很多20世紀60年代中期對賈格爾和理查茲的突擊毒品搜查行動，還有法庭上的鬥爭，不過瓊斯似乎更是衆矢之的，因爲他是個花花公子，而且在女人方面很有一套。

But as Mr. Trynka tells it, Jones did not receive strong legal advice or fight charges as hard or as successfully as the Jagger-Richards team. After his first arrest, he pleaded guilty, which drove a wedge between him and other band members, who feared it would mean they could no longer tour abroad, all of which left him feeling crushed, isolated and vulnerable. That, in turn, increased his consumption of drugs and alcohol and made him less productive as a musician.

但是，正如特倫卡所說，瓊斯並沒有得到有力的法律建議，也不像賈格爾-理查茲團隊那樣，有着強大的戰鬥力，最後還獲得了成功。第一次被捕後，瓊斯就認罪了，但其他人擔心認罪後就不能出國巡演，這爲他和樂隊其他成員帶來了隔閡， 其他人任憑他一人承受崩潰、孤獨和脆弱。反過來，這也導致他變本加厲地使用毒品和酒精，削弱了他在音樂上的創造力。

Nevertheless, Mr. Trynka demonstrates convincingly that the original Rolling Stones were Jones’s band and reflected his look, tastes and interests, not just the blues but also renaissance music and what today would be called world music. (He recorded the master musicians of Joujouka in the mountains of Morocco.) In “Life,” Mr. Richards describes his discovery of the blues-tinged open G guitar tuning, familiar from hits like “Honky Tonk Women” and “Start Me Up,” as life changing, and says it came to him via Ry Cooder in the late 1960s. But Mr. Trynka notes that Jones often played in that tuning from the band’s earliest days and quotes Dick Taylor, an original member of the Stones, as saying, “Keith watched Brian play that tuning, and certainly knew all about it.”

不管怎樣，特倫卡令人信服地展現出最初的“滾石”其實是瓊斯的樂隊，反映了他的樣子、品味和興趣，不僅僅是布魯斯，也有復興音樂，也就是如今被稱爲世界音樂的東西（布萊恩曾在摩洛哥山中爲土著Joujouka音樂大師錄音）。在《滾吧，生活》一書中，理查茲說自己發現了受布魯斯影響的開放G和絃吉他調音法，以其在《小酒館女人》(Honky Tonk Women)和《讓我開始》(Start Me Up)等金曲中的使用而爲人們熟知，他還說這是60年代末從萊·庫德爾(Ry Cooder)那裏得到的啓發。但特倫卡指出，瓊斯在樂隊最早期的時候也經常使用這種調音法，還引述“滾石”原始成員迪克·泰勒(Dick Taylor)的話：“基思看着布萊恩用那種調音法彈琴，肯定什麼都學到了。”

Some of Mr. Trynka’s account is not new, having appeared in “Stone Alone,” the often overlooked 1990 memoir of the Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, or other books written by band outsiders. What makes Mr. Trynka’s book fresh and interesting, and gives it credibility, is the length he has gone to find witnesses to corroborate and elaborate on those stories.

特倫卡的若干說法不算新鮮，有些可以在“滾石”的貝斯手，比爾·懷曼(Bill Wyman)1990年的回憶錄《孤獨的石頭》(Stone Alone)中讀到，這本傳記常常受到忽視；還有若干樂隊圈外人的書中可以找到的內容。但特倫卡的書新鮮有趣、而且非常可信，這是因爲他努力尋找證據去證實和詳細描述這些故事。

It’s not just that Mr. Trynka has sought out those who worked with the band on the creative side, such as the singer Marianne Faithfull, the arranger Jack Nitzsche and the recording engineers Eddie Kramer, Glyn Johns and George Chkiantz. He has also interviewed those with more of a worm’s-eye view: drivers, roadies, office staff, old girlfriends and former roommates like James Phelge, whose surname the band would appropriate to designate songs that were group compositions rather than Jagger-Richard numbers.

特倫卡不僅走訪了那些在創作方面與樂隊合作的人，比如歌手瑪麗安娜·費斯弗(Marianne Faithfull)、編曲者傑克·尼采(Jack Nitzsche)，以及錄音工程師艾迪·克拉默(Eddie Kramer)、格林·約翰斯(Glyn Johns)和喬治·奇科安茲(George Chkiantz)等，他也關注那些小人物的視角：司機、巡演工作人員、辦公室人員、舊日女友和前室友，比如詹姆斯·菲爾格(James Phelge)，“滾石”曾經給由全樂隊創作（而不是由賈格爾-理查茲創作）的歌曲署上“菲爾格”這個名字。

“Brian Jones was the main man in the Stones; Jagger got everything from him,” the drummer Ginger Baker, who played in the band at some of its earliest shows and went on to become famous as a member of Cream, says in the book. “Brian was much more of a musician than Jagger will ever be — although Jagger’s a great economist.”

“布萊恩·瓊斯纔是‘滾石’的主腦，賈格爾的一切都是從他那兒得到的，”鼓手金格·貝克爾(Ginger Baker)在一本書中說，在“滾石”的最早幾場演出中，他曾爲他們打鼓，後來因爲加入“奶油”(Cream)而成名。“布萊恩從來都比賈格爾更像音樂家——雖說賈格爾是個了不起的經濟學家。”

Citing those present at the creation, Mr. Trynka contends that Jones had a hand in composing some well-known Stones tracks, including “Paint It, Black” and “Under My Thumb.” He also claims that “Ruby Tuesday,” a No. 1 hit early in 1967, is actually a Jones-Richards collaboration — written not by Mr. Richards in a burst of inspiration and heartbreak in a Los Angeles hotel room, which is how the story is told in “Life” and elsewhere, but, according to Ms. Faithfull and Mr. Kramer, “labored over” by the pair in London for weeks.

特倫卡引用很多出現在創作現場的人的話，聲稱瓊斯參與了“滾石”許多名曲的創作過程，包括《塗成黑色》(Paint It Black)和《在我的拇指下面》(Under My Thumb)。他還說，1967年初的金曲《露比星期二》(Ruby Tuesday)其實是瓊斯和理查茲合寫的——理查茲在《滾吧，生活》和其他地方說，這首歌是他在洛杉磯的酒店房間裏，出於一時的靈感迸發，在失戀情緒下寫成的。但費斯弗和克拉默說，這首歌是兩人在倫敦“艱苦勞作”了幾星期的產物。

“I used to say to Brain, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ ” Stan Blackbourne, the accountant for the Rolling Stones at their mid-1960s peak, recalls in the book. “ ‘You write some of these songs, and you give the name over as if Mick Jagger has done it. Do you understand, you’re giving ’em thousands of pounds!’ All the time I used to tell him, ‘You’re writing a blank check.’ ”

“我曾經對布萊恩說，‘你到底是在幹嘛啊，’”“滾石”60年代中旬鼎盛時期的會計斯坦·布萊克伯恩(Stan Blackbourne)在這本書中回憶，“‘這些歌有的是你寫的，你卻放棄了署名，好像它們是米克·賈格爾寫的一樣。你不明白嗎，你這是白送了他們數以千計的英鎊！’我總是告訴他，‘你這是在籤空白支票呢。’”

Mr. Trynka also looks into the circumstances of Jones’s death, on July 3, 1969, in the swimming pool at his home in East Sussex, once owned by A. A. Milne, but after all the Sturm und Drang that has come before, the subject is somewhat anticlimactic. In numerous books and in films like “Stoned,” it has been suggested that Jones was murdered, but Mr. Trynka painstakingly examines the flaws in each of the theories, and ends up close to the official verdict, “death by misadventure,” because of drug and alcohol consumption.

特倫卡還研究了瓊斯去世時的情景，瓊斯於1969年7月3日死在東蘇塞克斯家中的泳池裏，這棟房子曾經屬於A·A·米爾恩(A. A. Milne)。儘管之前有着狂飆突進的時期，瓊斯已經開始過氣了。《迷幻》(Stoned)等無數書籍和電影都認爲瓊斯是被謀殺的，但特倫卡艱苦地研究了每個論點中的缺陷，最後的結論和官方意見很相近“他死於不幸的意外”——由毒品和酒精所導致。

“The official coroner’s verdict on Brian’s death was perfunctory and lazy,” Mr. Trynka concludes. Nonetheless, “I’ve come to share their belief that Brian’s death was most likely a tragic accident” and to believe that “many of the existing theories that his death was in fact murder rely on unreliable witnesses.”

特倫卡說，“關於布萊恩的死，官方驗屍官的結論敷衍而懶惰”。不過，“我開始和他們一樣，相信布萊恩的死主要是一樁悲劇性的意外，”他也相信“很多關於他死於謀殺的論點都建立在不可靠的證據之上”。

In the end, with the advantage of 45 years’ perspective, Mr. Trynka maintains, it is Jones’s music that matters. “It’s understandable why the survivors resent Brian Jones beyond the grave,” given his founder’s role, he argues, and also writes: “Brian Jones got many things wrong in his life, but the most important thing he got right.”

最後，特倫卡站在45年後的有利角度，堅持認爲瓊斯的音樂纔是最重要的。“活下來的人怨恨冥府中的布萊恩，這是可以理解的，”特倫卡說，這是由於布萊恩的創始人身份。他還寫道，“布萊恩·瓊斯的人生中搞砸了很多事，但在最重要的事情上，他做對了。”