The Elizabethan Elegy of ''Lady Jane'': Brian Jones's Dulcimer and Jagger's Courtly Love Rebellion

The most startling thing about “Lady Jane” isn’t the dulcimer—it’s that the Rolling Stones, the snarling embodiment of 1966 rebellion, sat down and wrote a song so polite it could have been a madrigal. Mick Jagger penned the lyrics based on a letter from an aristocratic girlfriend (often rumored to be Jane Ormsby-Gore), adopting the mock-Elizabethan “Lady Jane” / “Lady Anne” / “Lady Mary” address. Musically, Brian Jones hammered out a haunting melody on the Appalachian dulcimer, an instrument he’d just learned by listening to Richard Fariña records, and Jack Nitzsche helped arrange the spare harpsichord and bass into something that felt centuries old.

The recording at RCA Studios in Hollywood was a quick, one-take affair—Jones laid down the dulcimer track live with Jagger’s vocal, and the band barely touched it afterward. It was completely out of step with the rest of Aftermath, an album full of snarling blues and proto-psychedelia, and that’s exactly the point. By embracing anachronistic, courtly restraint, the Stones proved they could rebel against expectations themselves: the loudest statement they could make in 1966 was to whisper.