TamTam Books News Monday, May 24, 2004: For the past three or four years I have been fascinated with a certain gentleman by the name of Andrew Loog Oldham. He was the manager and record producer of the 'classic' Rolling Stones. In my world, Oldham along with Brian Jones (and I am sure Mr. Oldham would disagree with this) were the Rolling Stones. I can't recommend anything more highly than Oldham's two memoirs: "Stoned" and "2Stoned." The following is an article in the current Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/homeentertainment/story/0,12830,1221068,00.html r Hip hustler Andrew Loog Oldham Will Hodgkinson Friday May 21, 2004 The Guardian 'Every boy of 19 should have their own orchestra': Andrew Loog Oldham. Photo: Pete Millson In Sweet Smell of Success, Alexander Mackendrick's sleazy 1957 masterpiece, Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, an oily press agent whose livelihood depends on getting his clients into a gossip column written by Burt Lancaster's JJ Hunsecker. While Falco leaves his coat at home when he visits a nightclub to save on a tip, Hunsecker pulls up in his limousine and checks his coat in with the knowledge that someone will be there to tip for him. When the young Andrew Loog Oldham - who would go on to discover, shape and manage the Rolling Stones and have his own orchestra to play with before hitting voting age - saw the film, he knew which of the two he wanted to model himself on. "I looked at the press agent and thought that his didn't seem like a bad job," says Oldham, who has come over to London from his home in Bogotá with his wife Esther, the country's most famous model of the 1970s and 80s. "I saw no point in being JJ Hunsecker. It was Falco's willingness to shamelessly hustle that I loved. I came from a country that didn't do that unless it was hidden behind an RAF blazer, a drink and an accent, and this guy made no bones about being desperate." Oldham turned hustling into an art form. His most dramatic stunts, like hiding underneath the floorboards at early Rolling Stones concerts to scream louder than the girls, or planting the line "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" on a newspaper headline writer, are behind him, but his patter is as hip as ever. He's in town because The Rolling Stones Songbook by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, a 1966 album of lush instrumental versions of songs like Heart of Stone and Satisfaction, is getting a re-release. "It was a vanity project," says Oldham of the album, which features the version of The Last Time that the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony was built around. "This was Andrew's Folly, and I was opiatedly happy in my little orchestral heaven. Every boy of 19 should have their own orchestra." Three years before he discovered the Rolling Stones, then a rather earnest R&B covers band, at a pub in Richmond, Oldham had already staked his claim in the new era. In 1960, at the age of 16, he held down three jobs: he worked for Mary Quant by day; at Ronnie Scott's nightclub in the evenings, where American jazz musicians were playing in England for the first time; and at the Flamingo, the birthplace of mod culture and one of the only places to hear American R&B records, at weekends. "Then I orchestrated my first nervous breakdown - I even decided on the day I would have it. I left notes for my mother and Mary Quant, had the breakdown, and went to the South of France dressed as Sherlock Holmes." Oldham's early inspiration came from film - French actors like Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo showed him how to dress and move, and the British film Expresso Bongo, in which Laurence Harvey plays a fast-talking pop manager, enticed him to the world he ended up in - but it was in France that he first saw Vince Taylor, a rock'n'roll wildman whose career, having started only two years before, had pretty much dried up in England. Taylor had some hits, including the classic Brand New Cadillac, but his wild ways, which included a prodigious intake of LSD at a time when few knew of its existence, excluded longevity. "You couldn't call him an acid casualty because he looked so good on it," Oldham remembers. "You don't think of an acid casualty looking immaculate in a beautiful French suit and slicked back hair. I remember him standing outside the Ad Lib, which was the club, and laughing at the Beatles and the Stones, telling us that we were a bunch of fuck-ups. His rock'n'roll ethic was offended by our posturing, and he looked great while we were so tawdry. He was perfect." Oldham had two other role models: Pete Meaden, the Who's first manager and one of the original mods, and the teenage svengali and producer Phil Spector. "I heard Every Breath I Take by Gene Pitney, and Spector's ability to make the cellos on it sound like voices blew me away. Jackie De Shannon's Needles and Pins is the most perfectly understated record: the piano suggests the presence of horns, so you don't actually need horns to be there." Did the Rolling Stones ever match the highs of Spector? "I think with Let's Spend the Night Together, because there is nothing forced: it just sits there, which is not the case with a lot of Stones records. It has a groove and an ease, and it is unusual for English folks to hit that layer of comfort." Oldham's tastes may lie closer to the string-laden sophistication of the Andrew Oldham Orchestra than the raw R&B of the early Stones. Coming from the fashion world, Oldham was a sharp contrast to the scruffier world of his main act. He famously locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen until they came out with their first song, As Tears Go By. "Mick and Keith had to take brave strides to master the work, rather than the craft," says Oldham. "Here was a purist R&B band with the best of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. Then you tell your band members that they have to do this little song you've just written. I got a kick out of seeing their name on a record and they did too. And when I saw them last year, playing to a lot more people than they ever did when I was with them, they were clearly chuffed. It's nice to know that they can still be chuffed." Tosh // 10:31 PM ______________________ Comments: Post a Comment
For the past three or four years I have been fascinated with a certain gentleman by the name of Andrew Loog Oldham. He was the manager and record producer of the 'classic' Rolling Stones. In my world, Oldham along with Brian Jones (and I am sure Mr. Oldham would disagree with this) were the Rolling Stones. I can't recommend anything more highly than Oldham's two memoirs: "Stoned" and "2Stoned." The following is an article in the current Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/homeentertainment/story/0,12830,1221068,00.html r Hip hustler Andrew Loog Oldham Will Hodgkinson Friday May 21, 2004 The Guardian 'Every boy of 19 should have their own orchestra': Andrew Loog Oldham. Photo: Pete Millson In Sweet Smell of Success, Alexander Mackendrick's sleazy 1957 masterpiece, Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, an oily press agent whose livelihood depends on getting his clients into a gossip column written by Burt Lancaster's JJ Hunsecker. While Falco leaves his coat at home when he visits a nightclub to save on a tip, Hunsecker pulls up in his limousine and checks his coat in with the knowledge that someone will be there to tip for him. When the young Andrew Loog Oldham - who would go on to discover, shape and manage the Rolling Stones and have his own orchestra to play with before hitting voting age - saw the film, he knew which of the two he wanted to model himself on. "I looked at the press agent and thought that his didn't seem like a bad job," says Oldham, who has come over to London from his home in Bogotá with his wife Esther, the country's most famous model of the 1970s and 80s. "I saw no point in being JJ Hunsecker. It was Falco's willingness to shamelessly hustle that I loved. I came from a country that didn't do that unless it was hidden behind an RAF blazer, a drink and an accent, and this guy made no bones about being desperate." Oldham turned hustling into an art form. His most dramatic stunts, like hiding underneath the floorboards at early Rolling Stones concerts to scream louder than the girls, or planting the line "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" on a newspaper headline writer, are behind him, but his patter is as hip as ever. He's in town because The Rolling Stones Songbook by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, a 1966 album of lush instrumental versions of songs like Heart of Stone and Satisfaction, is getting a re-release. "It was a vanity project," says Oldham of the album, which features the version of The Last Time that the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony was built around. "This was Andrew's Folly, and I was opiatedly happy in my little orchestral heaven. Every boy of 19 should have their own orchestra." Three years before he discovered the Rolling Stones, then a rather earnest R&B covers band, at a pub in Richmond, Oldham had already staked his claim in the new era. In 1960, at the age of 16, he held down three jobs: he worked for Mary Quant by day; at Ronnie Scott's nightclub in the evenings, where American jazz musicians were playing in England for the first time; and at the Flamingo, the birthplace of mod culture and one of the only places to hear American R&B records, at weekends. "Then I orchestrated my first nervous breakdown - I even decided on the day I would have it. I left notes for my mother and Mary Quant, had the breakdown, and went to the South of France dressed as Sherlock Holmes." Oldham's early inspiration came from film - French actors like Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo showed him how to dress and move, and the British film Expresso Bongo, in which Laurence Harvey plays a fast-talking pop manager, enticed him to the world he ended up in - but it was in France that he first saw Vince Taylor, a rock'n'roll wildman whose career, having started only two years before, had pretty much dried up in England. Taylor had some hits, including the classic Brand New Cadillac, but his wild ways, which included a prodigious intake of LSD at a time when few knew of its existence, excluded longevity. "You couldn't call him an acid casualty because he looked so good on it," Oldham remembers. "You don't think of an acid casualty looking immaculate in a beautiful French suit and slicked back hair. I remember him standing outside the Ad Lib, which was the club, and laughing at the Beatles and the Stones, telling us that we were a bunch of fuck-ups. His rock'n'roll ethic was offended by our posturing, and he looked great while we were so tawdry. He was perfect." Oldham had two other role models: Pete Meaden, the Who's first manager and one of the original mods, and the teenage svengali and producer Phil Spector. "I heard Every Breath I Take by Gene Pitney, and Spector's ability to make the cellos on it sound like voices blew me away. Jackie De Shannon's Needles and Pins is the most perfectly understated record: the piano suggests the presence of horns, so you don't actually need horns to be there." Did the Rolling Stones ever match the highs of Spector? "I think with Let's Spend the Night Together, because there is nothing forced: it just sits there, which is not the case with a lot of Stones records. It has a groove and an ease, and it is unusual for English folks to hit that layer of comfort." Oldham's tastes may lie closer to the string-laden sophistication of the Andrew Oldham Orchestra than the raw R&B of the early Stones. Coming from the fashion world, Oldham was a sharp contrast to the scruffier world of his main act. He famously locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen until they came out with their first song, As Tears Go By. "Mick and Keith had to take brave strides to master the work, rather than the craft," says Oldham. "Here was a purist R&B band with the best of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. Then you tell your band members that they have to do this little song you've just written. I got a kick out of seeing their name on a record and they did too. And when I saw them last year, playing to a lot more people than they ever did when I was with them, they were clearly chuffed. It's nice to know that they can still be chuffed." Tosh // 10:31 PM
