The Stones are playing - if not writing - as well as ever. So much guff about Brian Jones I have never read. Even Ian Stewart, who never said anything unpleasant about anyone, described his attempts at songwriting as "desperate". Brian Jones was mediocre on several instruments. That is what the "legend" of that unpleasant young man was based on. Maybe he would have matured into a more likeable man had he lived. The Stones fired him because he was unreliable at a time when they were all working day and night. There is also no real reason to suspect that he was murdered. He wasn't the only sixties icon to die after mixing drugs and alcohol.Watch any clip of the Stones playing live in the sixties and you will see that Keith was the main guitarist even then. Mick Taylor was far and away the best guitarist the Stones ever had. I think his leaving was the greatest loss musically that the Stones ever had to bear. I don't like stadium rock. It usually means musicians having to stand too far away from each other to be able to understand what's really going on. You can hardly blame the Stones for being so popular that it is effectively impossible for them to play in a smaller venue.