Anna Wohlin

Swinging Sixties - London street scene 1966

Anna Wohlin (* 1946 in Stockholm ) is a former Swedish dancer . She was the last girlfriend of Brian Jones , the founder and guitarist of the Rolling Stones, who died in 1969 .

Life

Brian Jones 1967

In 1962, Anna Wohlin traveled to Great Britain for the first time at the age of 16 and came to Wales as an exchange student . A little later she visited London . She was quickly fascinated by the atmosphere and the music of the swinging sixties and soon fell in love with Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. Five years later she got to know the musician personally when she appeared as a dancer for the group The Ravens in the Speakeasy Club. The two eventually became a couple.

In the spring of 1969, Wohlin moved to Jones' Cotchford Farm in Hartfield , Sussex , formerly owned by Alan Alexander Milne , the author of the Winnie the Pooh books . According to Wohlin, Jones felt very much at home in the country and wanted to stay there until the end of his life. They also wanted to get married and have a family.

On June 8, 1969, Mick Jagger , Keith Richards and Charlie Watts appeared at Cotchford Farm and informed Jones that the band had decided to split up with him. Jones accepted and accepted the offer of a one-time severance payment and an annual allowance . According to Wohlin, Jones wanted to leave the group anyway because he no longer agreed with the musical direction of the band.

On the evening of July 2, 1969, in addition to Jones and Wohlin, Janet Lawson, the friend of Rolling Stones Road manager Tom Keylock , and the building contractor Frank Thorogood were at Cotchford Farm. At midnight, the men were bathing in the property's swimming pool while the women were in the house. A short time later Thorogood came back into the house. Fifteen minutes later, Janet Lawson went to the swimming pool and found Brian Jones motionless at the bottom of the pool. After Jones was pulled from the pool, Anna Wohlin tried unsuccessfully to revive him. The resuscitation attempts of the emergency services called also failed.

On July 5, 1969, a concert by the Rolling Stones that had been planned for a long time took place in Hyde Park, London . Jones and Wohlin planned to attend the concert as a spectator. After the death of Jones, the concert was rededicated as a memorial service for the guitarist. The shocked Wohlin stayed in a nearby hotel room that day and was unable to appear at the concert alone.

On one of the following days, Wohlin was interviewed along with Lawson and Thorogood as part of the police investigation into the circumstances of death. Jones's death was ultimately classified as an accident . The official cause of death was death from drowning while under the influence of alcohol and other drugs , although the tests showed little evidence of drugs and about three and a half pints of beer consumed . On July 10, 1969, Brian Jones was buried in his hometown of Cheltenham with great public sympathy. Anna Wohlin did not show up for the funeral, Suki Potier , Jones' former girlfriend, did.

Road manager Tom Keylock apparently made sure that Anna Wohlin went to Sweden out of the country for a short time. Wohlin returned to England two months later to collect her personal belongings from the farm. She had to find out that the property had been cleared out and that all items had disappeared. At that time, Wohlin said he was suffering from depression because, in addition to Jones, they had also lost a child they had never known about.

In subsequent years, Anna Wohlin married, gave birth to a daughter named Amanda and founded his own in Stockholm Fashion - Boutique . Eventually she divorced her husband. At the turn of the millennium, Wohlin looked at her past again and wrote a non-fiction book entitled The Murder of Brian Jones: The Secret Story of My Love Affair with the Murdered Rolling Stone , which described her relationship with Brian Jones and the circumstances surrounding his death become.

Wohlin is firmly convinced that Jones did not die of natural causes, but was negligently killed by Frank Thorogood . Their assumption is supported by Tom Keylock , the long-time chauffeur of the Rolling Stones. He claims that Thorogood confessed to him on his deathbed in 1993 that he had killed Jones. However, Wohlin assumes that Thorogood drowned the musician without intent to kill, perhaps in the course of a scuffle. The relationship between the two men was strained at the time due to construction work on Cotchford Farm and outstanding bills.

In 2005 British film producer Stephen Woolley brought out the biopic Stoned about the life of Brian Jones. In this film, the death of Jones is also portrayed as a result of Thorogood's assault. As part of the release of the film, Wohlin gave several interviews in which she described her view of her fateful relationship with Brian Jones. A new edition of her book was also published under the title The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones: The True Story of My Love Affair with the Rolling Stone .

The main concern of Anna Wohlin was to correct the impression that a vicious and drug-marked hedonist had died that night . According to her, Brian Jones was a lovely person, he stopped using drugs in the last weeks of his life and began to realign his life. Between 2009 and 2010, the police re-examined the circumstances of the death, but found no reliable evidence that would warrant further investigation.

Works

Anna Wohlin: The Murder of Brian Jones: The Secret Story of My Love Affair with the Murdered Rolling Stone. John Blake Publishing, London 2000, ISBN 9781857823349 .
Anna Wohlin: The Wild and Wycked World of Brian Jones: The True Story of My Love Affair with the Rolling Stone. John Blake Publishing, London 2005, ISBN 9781857825671 .

literature

Stephen Davis: Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones. Broadway 2001, ISBN 9780767903127 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Well, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swedish dancer
DATE OF BIRTH	1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	Stockholm