27: Brian Jones

Brian Jones, multi-instrumentalist, visionary and the "golden boy of the '60s", was, at the age of 27, the first rock casualty of his generation. A strange, somewhat impenetrable character, Brian Jones was a founding member and guiding spirit of The Rolling Stones. Adored and misunderstood in equal measure, Jones was perhaps the most creatively ambitious cultural force of his time, an artist whose commitment to the experimental and exotic remains profoundly influential. Always unconventional, Jones's voracious appetite for life's extremes led to unparalleled debauchery, drug and alcohol fuelled paranoia, and ultimately personal ruin.