Stoned - Softcover

Loog Oldham, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099284677 ISBN 13: 9780099284673

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

'People say I made the Stones. I didn't. They were there already. They only wanted exploiting. They were all bad boys when I found them. I just brought out the worst in them.'

Andrew Loog Oldham was nineteen years old when he discovered and became the manager and producer of an unknown band called The Rolling Stones. His radical vision transformed them from a starving south London blues combo to the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath, while the revolutionary strategies he used to get them there provoked both adulation and revulsion throughout British society and beyond.

An ultra-hip mod, flash, brash and schooled in style by Mary Quant, he was a hustler of genius, addicted to scandal, notoriety and innovation.

About this title

Review:

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 Hart

Review:

"Stoned is not a cautionary tale it's a celebration and carries the hope that any self-respecting impassioned young 19-year-old of today would do the same" (Guardian)

"A sterling work of brutal youth and brash vulgarity... a heady mix of innocence and glamour, uppers and downers, flashiness and outrage, insouciance and deceit" (Time Out)

"A dazzling overview of early 60s London life, Stoned is vastly aided by the testimony of everyone from Pete Townshend to Jimmy Greaves" (G Magazines)

"A fascinating and original perspective on that heady moment when a buttoned-up Britain finally lost its innocence and...youth culture was born" (Mail on Sunday)

"The most flash personality British pop ever had, the most anarchic and obsessive and imaginative hustler of all" (Nick Cohn)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099284677
• ISBN 13: 9780099284673
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384