He was also known for his multi-instrumental skills, fashionable mod image, drug and sexual excesses, and his early death at age 27.

Brian Jones was born in the Park Nursing Home in in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England during World War II, suffering from asthma his entire life. While he was alive during the war, he was too young to remember anything about it. His parents, Louis Blount and Louisa Beatrice Jones, were of Welsh descent, and middle-class residents of the town. Brian had a sister, Pamela, born in 1943 who died a year later as a result of leukemia. A second sister, Barbara, was born in 1946.

Brian's parents were both very interested in music, and it seems their interest had a profound effect on young Brian. In addition to his job as an aeronautical engineer, Brian's father played both piano and organ, and led the choir at the local church. Jones's mother Louisa was a piano teacher and started teaching her son the instrument at a very young age. Eventually Brian required formal lessons as he progressed too quickly for her to continue teaching him. He soon learned how to read music, and eventually took up the clarinet, becoming first clarinet in his school orchestra at 14.

In 1957 Jones was first exposed to the jazz musician Charlie Parker; this sparked a lifelong interest in jazz music and Jones persuaded his parents to buy him a saxophone. As with many instruments he learned, Jones initially played endlessly, only to find he became somewhat bored with the instrument after he mastered it, and finally would search for another instrument to play. Two years later his parents gave him his first acoustic guitar as a present for his 17th birthday.

Attending local schools including Dean Close School and Cheltenham Grammar School for Boys, Jones was known as an exceptional student, getting very high marks in all of his classes while doing relatively little work. He enjoyed badminton and diving but otherwise was not very skilled at sports. However he found his schooling to be too regimented and formal, and refused to conform when he reached adolescence. He was known to eschew wearing the school uniforms, refusing to wear his mortarboard, and angering teachers with his behaviour. As a result, he remained very popular and well-liked with the students, while the teachers would often cane him. This open hostility towards authority figures got him suspended from school on two separate occasions.

All this came to an end, however, when in the spring of 1959 (aged 17) Jones impregnated his girlfriend, a 14-year-old Cheltenham schoolgirl named Valerie. Jones encouraged her to have an abortion, however she wanted no further contact with Brian and instead chose to have the baby boy adopted. The child was given to an infertile couple upon his birth and Brian quit school and left home, travelling throughout northern Europe and Scandinavia for the summer. During this time, Jones later claimed, he lived something of a bohemian lifestyle, busking and playing guitar on the streets for money, living off the kindness of others.

Jones eventually left home completely and moved to London, where he met and befriended fellow musicians Alexis Korner, future Manfred Mann singer Paul Jones, future Cream bassist Jack Bruce and others who made up the small London Rhythm n' Blues scene that the Rolling Stones soon dominated and spearheaded. He became a proficient blues musician, for a brief time christening himself "Elmo Lewis", and Bill Wyman claimed he was one of the first guitarists in the UK to play slide guitar.

In the spring of 1962, Jones recruited Ian "Stu" Stewart and singer Mick Jagger into his band - who with Jagger's childhood friend Keith Richards met Jones when he and Paul Jones were featured playing Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" with Korner's band. On his initiative, Jagger brought guitarist Richards with him to the rehearsals and who then joined the band. Jones' and Stewarts' acceptance of Richards and the Chuck Berry songs he wanted to play coincided with the departure of blues purists Geoff Bradford and Brian Knight who had no tolerance for Chuck Berry. As Keith Richards tells it, it was Jones who came up with the name "The Rollin' Stones" (later with the 'g') while on the phone with a venue owner.

The Stones had their first gig on 12 July 1962 in the Marquee Club in London with the following line-up: Jagger, Richards, Jones, Stewart, bass player Dick Taylor and as drummer probably Tony Chapman.

Throughout much of 1962 and 1963 Jones, Jagger and Richards shared an apartment in Chelsea, London at 102 Edith Grove with James Phelge, a future photographer whose last name would later be used in some of the band's writing credits. While they lived there, Jones and Richards spent day after day playing guitar while listening to blues records, and Jones showed Jagger how to play the harmonica properly.

Keith Richards maintains that what he and Jones called "guitar weaving" grew out of this period, from listening to Jimmy Reed albums.

"We listened to the team work, trying to work out what was going on in those records; how you could play together with two guitars and make it sound like four or five."

The four Rolling Stones then went searching for a steady bassist and drummer, and after several auditions and try-outs they settled on Bill Wyman on bass. After having played with Mick Avory later of the Kinks, Tony Chapman and Carlo Little for a few gigs, jazz-influenced Charlie Watts from the Alexis Korner group Blues, Inc. was chosen to play drums, considered by fellow musicians to be one of the best drummers of the London music scene.

The group played at local blues and jazz clubs around London, eventually forming a solid fan base despite strong resistance from traditional jazz musicians who felt threatened by the Stones' popularity. While Mick Jagger was the lead singer, Jones, in the group's embryonic period, was the leader, promoting the band, getting them shows around London and negotiating with venue owners. Jones would often act more as an entertainer in these early days, playing several instruments including vocals, rhythm guitar, slide guitar and harmonica.

During live performances around this time, and especially at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Jones was frequently a more animated and engaging performer than even Mick Jagger. Jagger initially stood still while singing, mainly by circumstance, as there was hardly any room for him to move at all.

As the Stones' popularity grew, they came to the attention of Andrew Loog Oldham, who met the band in April 1963 at the suggestion of Record Mirror music writer Peter Jones (no relation) and soon became, with Eric Eastman, their co-manager. Oldham, who had worked briefly as the Beatles publicist, was an admirer of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange, cultivated an image for the band as unruly and slightly menacing, a kind of blues-inflected, rough-edged answer to the more amiable Beatles, using the novel's protagonist and his gang as his inspiration. It was Oldham who coined the phrase "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?". Keyboardist Ian Stewart was pushed into the background by Oldham for two main reasons. Oldham felt that Stewart, a somewhat burly Scotsman, did not fit in with the image he wanted of the group. In addition, Oldham felt that six group members were too many for audiences to remember clearly. Stewart remained the Stones' road manager and principal keyboard player until his death in 1985.

Oldham's arrival also marked the beginning of Jones' own slow estrangement from the band, one which saw his prominent role progressively diminished as Oldham sought to shift the Stones' centre of gravity away from Jones and towards Jagger and Richards.

Until this time all of the songs in the group's repertoire were either blues covers or instrumentals credited to "Nanker Phelge" - a credit that indicated the song was a Jagger/Jones/Richards/Watts/Wyman composition. Oldham, and everybody in the group, recognised the financial lucrativity of writing one's own songs with the Lennon/McCartney team, as well as the simple fact that playing covers won't keep in the limelight for years to come. Further, Oldham wanted to make Jagger's onstage charisma and flamboyance a central focus of the band's live performances. Jones saw his influence over the Stones' direction slide as their repertoire comprised fewer of the blues covers he would have preferred and more Jagger-and-Richards-penned originals, and as Oldham began asserting increasing managerial control, displacing Jones from another key role.

In 1964 Jones fathered another child out of wedlock, this time to girlfriend Linda Lawrence. Jones named this child Julian Brian Lawrence, and Julian would adopt the surname Leitch after Lawrence later married the folk singer Donovan. Jones is said to have named both sons Julian in tribute to the jazz saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley.

Throughout his career Jones showed a musical aptitude, having the ability to play a myriad of instruments, due to his training on the piano and clarinet in his youth. As the 1960s went on, Jones soon started experimenting with different wind and stringed instruments. Throughout his years with the band he played guitar, slide guitar, piano, sitar, tamboura, organ, dulcimer, mellotron, xylophone, marimba, recorder, clarinet and several other instruments.

In total he is known to have played at least 15 instruments with the Stones, and possibly many more. Brian's signature guitar is a teardrop-shaped prototype Vox Phantom Mark III, though he used many others throughout his career, being fond of Gibson models (various Firebirds and ES-330 models) as well, along with the Rickenbacker 12-String model made famous by George Harrison.

In the Stones' early years, Jones was also a backing singer for the Stones, particularly from 1962-1964, although he can be heard on a few later 1960s hits. Notable examples are "Come On", "Walking The Dog", "Ruby Tuesday", "She's A Rainbow" and "Sympathy For The Devil".

Jones and Keith Richards created the "guitar weaving" technique that has become a signature part of the sound of the Rolling Stones throughout their career. It involves both guitarists switching between rhythm and lead parts; the best example is probably on "It's All Over Now", their first English #1 hit. The 1966 album Aftermath, the 1967 albums Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request and the 1968 album Beggars Banquet showcase Jones's multi-instrumental talents throughout.

Around 1968 Jones purchased Cotchford Farm in East Sussex, the former home of Winnie the Pooh author A. A. Milne.