Stoned Book

In the 1960s, there were only two bands that really mattered: the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. And there were only two managers that mattered, too. The Beatles had the suave, charming, but ultimately conservative Brian Epstein, who persuaded them out of their Hamburg black leather gear and into suits. The Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham, who took them on when he was only 19. He did everything he could to provoke, outrage and disgust--one realises how Malcolm McLaren created the Sex Pistols according to the formula first devised by Oldham. He also had a powerful formative influence on the Stones as pop artists. It was Oldham who first suggested--no, told--Jagger and Richards that they should write their own songs from now on. A few hours later, Oldham returned to their flat and Jagger said, "we've written this f***ing song and you'd better f***ing like it." And so a rock'n'roll legend was born ... This is a superb hodge-podge of an autobiography, taken from conversations between Oldham and such iconic figures as Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, Mary Quant and, er, ... Jimmy Greaves? Throughout it all, Oldham emerges as brilliant, manipulative, slightly sinister and ultimately unknowable. He retains that essential aura of mystery to the end: his cover biography notes only that he "now lives in Bogota, Colombia." An interesting place to live, I'm sure, but hardly a town one associates with peaceful and contented retirement. The Oldham mystery endures.--Christopher HartRead More