Brian Jones in Jail; Stones Album Delayed
The Rolling Stones have finished a two-record album, their first since splitting with manager-producer Andrew Loog Oldham. It’s tentatively due for release on December 1.
The delay in release is not due to the tracks themselves, but the album cover. Production problems in fitting it with a thin plastic plate to make the photograph behind appear to move in 3-D is now holding it up.
Bassist Bill Wyman wrote one track. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the rest. Jagger produced both records.
His experience may have set back the rumored plans for a Beatles-Stones merger centered on record producing. “I’m getting fed up with record producing myself,” Mick said this week. “I don’t think I’ll do any more. Recording the Stones is enough.”
But the merger idea, in some form or another, is still not completely dead. Jagger is talking over plans, possibly for a new label, with Beatle Paul McCartney.
Meanwhile, amid the tearful squeals of teenage fans, Stones’ rhythm guitarist Brian Jones was sentenced to nine months imprisonment for possession of marijuana and for allowing friends to smoke it in his London apartment.
The sentence was handed down despite a psychiatrist’s evidence that Jones’ mental health would be completely destroyed by confinement.
“He would go into psychotic depression as he could not possibly stand a stigma of a prison sentence, and he might well attempt to injure himself,” argued Dr. Leonard Henry, who treated Jones for a breakdown after his arrest last May.
Jones had pleaded guilty to the charges, but the sentence will be appealed.
Jagger is now on one year’s probation for his drug conviction in June. An earlier sentence of one year in prison was reduced on appeal; Richards’ conviction at the same time was completely reversed on the same appeal.
This story is from the November 23, 1967 issue of Rolling Stone.