10 Legendary Musicians That Play Multiple Instruments
10. Brian Jones - The Rolling Stones
As the British Invasion works its way across the rock landscape, The Rolling Stones were the perfect archetype for what your standard rock band should look like. While most of the attention went to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the foundation of the band was always in Brian Jones, who brought everyone together in the first place and even knicked the name of the band from an old blues song. When talking about his talent for instruments, the question should really be what instrument this man couldn't play.
Going through the Stones' '60s catalog, Jones was responsible for every single weird extension they would add into their songs. In their traditional blues era, Brian usually was reserved for lead guitar and a bit of harmonica here and there, but that was only the beginning of the madness. As things started to take a more psychedelic turn, Jones was responsible for putting even weirder instruments into the mix, being one of the first to put a sitar on a rock record with Paint It Black and even giving a chamber pop sound to their songs by adding dulcimer and even clarinet behind some of their traditional pop tracks.
After adding all of that to the Stones' repertoire though, it wasn't enough to get him in the same spotlight as the Glimmer Twins, leading to him drinking heavily and passing away shortly after being fired from the band for being too unreliable. If Brian hadn't tried something different in the Stone's glory period though, the classics that we know them for today would sound a lot different.