Omg yes I updated. It's been a while I know. I'll spare you the lame excuses this time, but well I'm writing a new Rolling Stones story and had to do some research, because despite that my stories might not be exactly labelled historical correct by 100% I do try to portray everything as accurate as I can, especially characters. 

That's why I decided to look up more on Tom Keylock, I knew the basics I guess, but nothing more concrete and well I don't think most people do. The few times I've come across him in stories on here, he always seemed like a huge asshole- I'm not saying he isn't, but I've seen people portray Brian too as a total dick or the sweetest thing ever, who couldn't hurt a fly, which are both untrue, so I thought before I make him out to be an ass I want to read more on him and came across this text, I want to share and well that way I don't lose it in my notes as well I guess XD

Everything in italic are my comments.

 Tom Keylock: Rolling Stones fixer

Keylock, left, accompanying Brian Jones to a hearing for drug possession in London in September 1968 

Tom Keylock played a crucial part in the turbulent 1960s history of the Rolling Stones. Initially employed as a chauffeur, he swiftly became indispensable as the band's
most trusted all-round "fixer".

Dubbed "Mr Get-It-Together" by the band's principal guitarist Keith Richards, his duties expanded to include bodyguard, cook, road manager, procurer and much else
besides.

Fiercely loyal in the defence of his employers' interests, he was there when band members appeared in court on drugs charges, and - as he was a man of the world from an older generation - his youthful charges frequently sought his advice on relationships and other personal matters. When hanging around the recording studio waiting to drive the Stones home one night, he was even invited to sing in the backing chorus on their recording of Sympathy for the Devil.

Although he kept a low profile during most of this activity, he achieved notoriety when, after being detailed by the band's management to keep a watch on the erratic Brian Jones following his departure from the Stones, he was one of the first to arrive on the scene after Jones's death by drowning in his swimming pool in 1969.

Rumour and mystery still swirl around Jones's demise, with Keylock's role at the centre of much of the more lurid speculation. He subsequently acted as an adviser during the making of the film Stoned (2005), which depicted the events surrounding Jones's death and was portrayed in the film by the actor David Morrissey.  (Maybe I should talk about the movie sometime?)

Born in 1926 in North London, Keylock joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 and subsequently in Palestine. He was discharged in 1948 and returned to London, working as a driver and developing a shrewd toughness that was to hold him in good stead.

By 1965 he was running a car hire company in Wood Green, North London, when he received a booking to chauffeur two young men to Heathrow airport. The duo were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and they were so impressed by the dexterity with which Keylock dodged traffic, fans and photographers alike, that he was offered a full-time job on the spot.

He initially balked at the idea, and his wife, Joan, was even more appalled. But he was given a month to think about the offer and finally accepted after a further meeting with Jagger in which the singer asked him about his war experiences. As he subsequently explained to the biographer Christopher Sandford in his book Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight: "I'd had plastic surgery on me nose and on me face when I'd been in the Army. And I'd had this skin graft from the side of me leg and me backside on to me face. When I told Mick about it, he said, 'So that's why you talk so much shit'."

The irreverent humour appealed to Keylock and he agreed to sign on. His employment was a typically astute move by Jagger. The Stones' manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, was no older than the band and although his early stewardship had been brilliant, it was as if Jagger intuitively realised that as the pressures and dangers grew with their increased celebrity, Keylock's worldly-wise experience would prove invaluable. He began driving the group on their tour of
Britain in the autumn of 1965 and his wider set of skills was soon in evidence. Bill Wyman, the Stones' bass guitarist, recalls the tour arriving in Manchester and a military-style operation to get them from hotel to venue without being mobbed by fans, involving back stairways, fire escapes and decoy vehicles. Keylock relished such subterfuge and played a key part in organising the manoeuvres.

By 1966 he had become so highly regarded within the Stones camp that when Bob Dylan toured Britain and required a chauffeur and bodyguard, Richards suggested he should borrow Keylock. He did sterling service again, administering a "good kicking" to a waiter who, after delivering room service to Dylan at his hotel in Glasgow, decided to give him a lecture on how he was a "traitor" to folk music.

He also rescued Dylan when members of the Stones took exception to Dylan telling them that while he could easily have written Satisfaction, the Stones could never write a song as good as Mr Tambourine Man. One group member was allegedly about to take a swing at Dylan but Keylock hustled him out of the way before the incident could get any uglier. (That wasn't exactly that dramatic the Stones took it as a joke, Mick even said he would like to hear Bob sing Satisfaction then, if it was that simple. XD)

Keylock can be seen in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary film of Dylan's 1966 tour, Eat the Document, in a bizarre scene in which he drives Dylan and John Lennon around the streets of London while they are high on drugs. The episode closes with Dylan asking Keylock to get him back to his hotel, because he is about to be sick.

On a European tour in 1967 Keylock was again busy in the defence of his employers. He hit a fan who jumped on stage and attempted to molest Jagger during a concert in Zurich so hard that he broke his own hand, and he got into a brawl with a French immigration official who had the temerity to suggest that each member of the band present his passport individually rather than Keylock proffering them collectively.

Back in Britain, he accompanied band members to court after their various drug busts in 1967 and when Richards and Jones decided to escape the unwelcome attentions of the press and the drugs squad by fleeing abroad, Keylock was deployed to drive them across Europe to North Africa in Richards's Bentley, nicknamed "the Blue Lena".

When Jones fell ill and had to be left in a hospital in Toulouse, Keylock drove on through France and Spain, crossing to Morocco via Gibraltar, barely able to keep his eyes on the road while Richards became intimate with Jones's girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, on the back seat. (or in other words Anita was busy giving Keith a blow job on the back seat. That's something I often don't get, Brian might have threaten Anita not right and might have hit her once out of anger in Morocco, but excuse me she left him ill in France and drove of with one of his friends with whom she cheated on him... I would be fucking mad too in Brian's place. It's no excuse, but an explanation. That doesn't mean he's automatically an aggressive bastard or anything. Sorry I always wanted to mention that somewhere, but I haven't gone around to make a post about their Morocco travel yet.)

When Jones had recovered he rejoined them in Morocco. But after he assaulted Pallenberg, he was abandoned for the second time as Keylock helped the rest of the party to decamp without him.

It was the beginning of the end for Jones. He became an increasingly marginalised figure within the group and his departure from the Stones was eventually announced in June 1969. A month later he was dead, drowned in the swimming pool at his home in Hartfield, East Sussex.

Keylock was informed immediately by a phone call from Frank Thorogood, an old friend whom he had recommended to Jones as a builder to carry out work on the property, and who was
staying in the house. After the police, Keylock was the next person to arrive at the scene. He immediately took charge, burning many of Jones's clothes and personal effects (allegedly at the behest of his family) and then spiriting away Jones's girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, to prevent the media getting to her.

Two days later the Stones played a famous concert in Hyde Park, during which thousands of white butterflies were released as a memorial to Jones. It was Keylock who stood on stage behind the band and opened the boxes to free the butterflies to float above the crowd.

If that was a noble gesture, Keylock's other side can be seen in the film of the same concert made by Granada TV, in which he tells the Hell's Angels deployed as "security" how they will operate. If they don't like his instructions, he informs them that they're welcome to come and see him "when I've got my baseball bat".

When Thorogood died in 1993, Keylock claimed that his old friend had confessed to him on his deathbed that he had drowned Jones in his pool. But despite several books on the subject and Stephen Woolley's film Stoned, the exact circumstances in which Jones met his end are disputed to this day. Coincidentally, Keylock died 40 years to the day after Jones.

Soon after Jones's death, Keylock left the Stones' employment to start his own transport company. He was a devoted family man who was married for 58 years. He was a keen football fan who was at one time chairman of Beaconsfield FC. During the 1980s he worked for the England football team, transporting the kit and laying it out for the players in the Wembley dressing room before a game.

He is survived by his wife Joan, to whom he was married in 1951, and by four daughters.

Tom Keylock, Rolling Stones fixer, was born on August 9, 1926. He died on July 2, 2009, aged 82.  (Does everyone have to die on my birthday? Hemingway died  on the 2 July too... among others. Sorry for the random comments I guess XD)

And to end this I guess this is my favourite picture of Brian Jones and Tom Keylock.