Roxanne Fontana interviews the late (Jan 2009) American architect and designer Bill Willis  (as appeared in The Spirit Magazine, UK, Autumn 2001)

Marrakesh, Morocco January 2001

Winding through some back roads of an extremely seedy area of Marrakesh, one finds the home of Bill Willis, the Tennessee-born architect, who’s been a worldly artist since a very young man having left ‘the South’ to live in France, Rome, London and, for a very long time, Morocco.

Bill is a very good friend of the Rolling Stones, even today, and his association goes way back, having been friends with Anita Pallenberg before she herself, or the world, ever knew of the band!  He first came to Morocco just a little bit before the Stones fell in love with the country, as he was hired to work on Paul Getty Jr’s house.  He still isn’t over his love affair with the country as it is his home today, and an illustrious home it is.

As I chose Morocco for my honeymoon (a dream from teenage years from reading of the romantic adventures of the Stones), I was determined to do something on Brian Jones other than just dig the place, so I got in touch with Bill Willis to talk about Brian.  Our driver rushed us on foot as we got closer to the residence, almost visibly sweating.  Sure, as a Marakesh resident he’d heard of Bill Willis and his magnificent abode, but it was the .. well you can hardly call it a neighbourhood.  Through the tiniest of so called ‘streets’ you can imagine, and through dark tunnel passageways we went, and I, Miss Panic-attack-for-no-reason, just pushed myself forward, somewhere beyond ‘scared’.  Upon arrival we were greeted by at least two of Mr. Willis’ servants and waited in the small sitting room of a place that seemed to consist of many garish yet incredibly furnished rooms.  He greeted us by taking a step back at the sight of me, “Oh my god.  You look just like Marianne Faithfull.  It’s uncanny!”  I wished he’d said Brian (!) and when he brought it up again later on he assured me that he was referring to Marianne in 1967, not now thank you. 

We went to hang out in Willis’ bedroom because the sitting room wasn’t warm enough for him, or probably anyone who likes his Jack Daniels a bit!  Near his bed he has a series of memorable photographs, one of them was a photo of him with the Stones ‘party’ taken in 1967 – most likely by Michael Cooper.  Bill seemed a bit insulted that I had a tape recorder, he thought it to be more a ‘new friend’ kind of visit, which it was, but I told him I’d had insomnia for the past week and wanted to get what he said about Brian right, that I wanted to write about him in Brian’s magazine, (The Spirit).

He understood and went on about how awful insomnia is.

BILL WILLIS:  “There were a couple of extraordinary experiences I had with Brian Jones.  One was when I was living in London, the Chelsea Embankment, I was giving a lot of parties.  Brian was with Anita Pallenberg in those days.  Anita was an old friend of mine in Rome because I lived there for three years, and I knew her long before she knew a Rolling Stone.  And I was waiting for Brian and Anita to arrive, for what I can’t remember.  Drinks?  A party?  I have no idea, no.  I heard this car screech to a halt below, and I looked out of my window and there was Brian’s Bentley or Rolls Royce, some English car.  He was beating Anita up on the bonnet of his car.  BAFF!!  Socked her right in the face.  Well a few moments later my front door bell rings on the first floor and I open the door, and there is Anita bleeding in front of me, and Brian had calmed down by this point.  But I never had anyone arrive for drinks at my house bleeding… it was really… or since my dear!  It was a unique experience”. 

Bill told me and my husband, Mat Treiber, all about how he was living in Tangier in 1966 and had invited Paul Getty Jr and his wife Talitha over to Morocco for their ‘honeymoon’.  He had designed two houses for Getty in Italy and, as he drove around the rest of Morocco for the first time himself with the Gettys, they all fell so in love with the country – from the food to the buildings – that Paul asked Bill to pick him out a fine house to work on and that it would be a present for Talitha, which all came to pass. 

BW:  So, one of their first houseguests was Brian.  He wasn’t with Anita anymore.  I don’t remember what the girl’s name was.”

RFT:  “Suki?  Suki Potier?”

BW:  “Maybe.  That rings some far-off bell.  I don’t remember.  So Brian came to stay in the Getty palace in Marrakesh.  The house still exists, Alain Delon bought it, I did it up for Alain Delon and now the new owner, a French philosopher, owns it.  I’ve really come full circle in Marrakesh doing the same house three times!  In those days it was the Getty palace.  Ok, it was a period when we were all taking a lot of drugs, and everybody finally goes to bed at some point.  Brian decided he wanted to call long distance, England, and he couldn’t make the Marrakesh telephone respond or work at three or four in the morning, so what did he do?  He just pulled the cords out of the wall, one phone after the other.  Well Paul … was livid!”  “I don’t know if Brian took amphetamine, but ..  he was ready for anything.  It was that nervous thing one gets from taking amphetamine.  He was the most paranoid person I think I’ve ever known. 

RFT:  “Paranoid that people didn’t like him?”

BW:  “Uh, that people were working against him.  I was present – they picked me up, I was living in Tangier before I lived in Getty palace here.  I was on the beach when this big black Bentley with black glass pulled up next to this simple beach place I was living in, and it was Keith Richards’ car, with his very gangster-like chauffer.  Shady character, oh my dear he was so shady.  They picked me up on the beach and they were going to Marrakesh in two days, “Come with us”.  I said Okay.  Brian and Anita, Marianne and Mick, me, Robert Fraser and Bryon Gysin, Canadian writer – artist good friend of William Burroughs, who lived for years and years in Tangier.  I remember I went  there one night with Mick and Brian, and so forth, and we were snorting just mounds of coke, the only drug I really like.  I like things that enhance your awareness, or you think you’re being enhanced.  I don’t like the downers like hash and kif, it’s too damn strong.  So I got in the car, they were staying at the Minzah Hotel in Tangier and we got so stoned up in one of their suites before hitting the road for Marrakesh that we didn’t leave until nightfall.  I went downstairs from the Minzah and climbed into this big black Bentley and immediately passed out and woke up in Marrakesh, so it’s the best trip I ever had (laughs) you know, because I didn’t remember anything about it!  So they took a floor at the Hotel Saadi, which is the other 5 star Hotel here, there is the Mamounia, which is a hotel in a category all of its own, and then there’s the Saadi, which is a hotel built by a French man in the 50s, not very pretty, but it’s the best service in town … we were all by the pool ..  Anyway, Keith Richards – he was the only Stone that I found physically attractive, sexy – god knows he’s not anymore.  Oh, my Lord!  My dear, talk about 25 miles of dirt road – that’s a Southern expression.”

RFT:  “At that time he was so in love with Anita …”

BW:  “But my dear she came down with Brian”.

RFT:  “But Keith was probably really glowing at that time, maybe know what was going to …”

BW:  “Well what I liked about him wasn’t about … glow.  No, he was very sexy in a bathing suit.  I never thought Mick was sexy, and I never really thought Brian was sexy.  But I did at one point in the 60s think Keith was very sexy.  Well it was during our stay at the Saadi Hotel that Anita decided to go off with Keith, leaving Brian.  And me and Bryon Gysin, the late Robert Fraser .. we.. he (Brian) was left with the whole bill for everybody for the whole floor.  So I mean, not only did one of the Stones walk off with his girlfriend, but you know, just ‘You pay everything’.  But, uh, so I mean there was a reason to be a bit paranoid”.

RFT:  “But maybe in a sense being that way makes things happen that way”.

BW:  “Because you’re so vulnerable, absolutely.  You’re so vulnerable, it brings out the sadist in people.  They want to make you paranoid.  I used to suffer from paranoia, I don’t anymore, the hell with it.  One of the few advantages of getting old is you’re so damn sure of yourself.”

I informed Bill of the many, many books that have come out on Brian and the contents of them, saying that Brian was murdered, possibly just by someone working on his house.

BW:  “Well, he could enrage the Christ child my dear.  I remember one night in London in my apartment.  I took him into the loo, and we were going to have a snort of coke and he immediately dropped it in the flushing loo!  I said “How can you be such an idiot, how can you do …’  ‘Oh, I’ll replace it with five times that much’.  Well of course he never replaced it with anything.  But, that would enrage even a placid person”.

I informed Bill of the problems Brian had in his immediate family, according to research into his life, how his parents treated him cruelly, most especially in his puberty years, when his manhood and self-esteem were really being structured for adulthood.  Bill found this all very interesting and completely could see how this could have led to Brian’s type of personality.  Bill was aware that he was brought up a bit more uptight socially and financially than his fellow band mates.

RFT:  “I think he was trying to get reactions out of people, get attention …”

BW:  “Well that comes also from being small in stature also.  I‘ve known small people in my life …”

RFT:  “So have you got any nice stories about Brian?”

BW:  “Uh … you know my dear, I can’t think of a single one.  But I liked him.  I liked him a lot.”

Therein lies the mystery of Brian Jones according to those who knew him!

BW:  “We were good friends and he, in that period that I lived in Tangier, came back to Morocco quite often.  He came to Tangier a lot and I took him to local parties.  Wait a minute, I remember the girl he was with, she was very thin and blonde.  Suki, of course!”

Bill and I went back to discussing the end of Brian’s life.  I told him about the severance pay he was promised right before he died “his death of misadventure”, a somewhat outrageously high severance pay reportedly promised by his fellow band members yet also, according to some researchers, unbeknownst to their then manager (Alan Klein).

Bill went on to tell me about a memorable dinner he had with Mick Jagger and their friend Christopher Gibbs in London around the time of the recording of Let It Bleed.  That would be near the time of the official break with Brian.  Bill said the dinner out together was memorable because of how distressed and depressed Mick was about his money situation.

BW:  “We told him, ‘You’re are a rich man, what is this?  What’s going on?  Referring to Mick not seeing or being able to get at his money as Mick sat frowning with his head bowed.”