"Simon Spence is like the son I never wanted" Andrew Loog Oldham, Immediate founder and legendary Rolling Stones manager.
“Small but perfectly formed… in many ways a useful and practical book” - Mark Ellen
“A fantastic read. The sheer density of what the Americans would call bold type names on every page is astonishing” David Hepworth, Word in Your Ear podcast
“Highly readable… somebody should make a screenplay” - Eamonn Forde, The Guardian
“Simon does a great contemporary take on gonzo. I can feel Hunter S, Nik Cohn, Tom Wolfe in there, but he sweetly swerves indulgence and keeps us informed all throughout.” Mark Hodkinson, The Times
“Sheer brilliance flashes from many of the interviewees” - Dave Thompson, Shindig
“I’d recommend this to anyone who cares about the ’60s music scene and the real nitty gritty of so-called Swinging London for a great evocation of a time when however briefly anything seemed possible” Den Brown, Louder Than War
“With a foreword by Andrew Loog Oldham, this is one of great tales of the 1960s that has to be read to be believed” Matt Mead, Gigslutz
“Driven by piercing accuracy, Spence’s account takes you to the dubious heart of the sixties record business. You may not wish to return there for good, but it’s a fab trip” Mick Middles, Manchester music legend.
“Exhilarating, amazing, essential reading for the sharp dresser” Lois Wilson, Mojo
Praise for the 2007 edition
“100% authentic” Tony Calder, Immediate co-founder
“One of the greatest accounts of Sixties rock ’n’ roll” - The Independent
“Spence, collaborator on Stoned, delivers the lowdown on the controversial and prestigious British Record label - Waterstones
“The sound of the Sixties” - Clash
“Spence used inside knowledge to produce this definitive book about the maverick independent label” - The Beat
“Sheer brilliance flashes from many of the interviewees” - Dave Thompson
“A story worth reading” - Spin
“Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the last chapter where Spence relates some of his experiences of working with ALO - the two of them together in Oldham’s sanctuary of Bogota, Colombia.” - Shindig
Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham was the enfant terrible of Swinging Sixties London, the man who had crafted The Beatles’ antithesis. By 1965 he was a millionaire notorious for working every publicity angle for his rising stars but he still felt frustrated by the men in grey suits who controlled the music industry. His solution to that problem was Immediate Records - the UK’s first independent label - with a mission statement to wash away those grey men.
What followed was five years of scams, chicanery, sex, drugs, violence and sensational music. Immediate’s ‘in-house’ polymath producers: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Oldham himself, Jimmy Page and Steve Marriott, attracted a crowd of daring, young British talent, forging the hippest scene in the world.
Yet, following his ousting as Stones manager in 1967, the label itself began to fray at the seams as the drugs and booze clouded Oldham's creative genius and the grey suits quietly took their revenge.
Simon Spence’s acclaimed telling of Immediate’s rise and fall was first published in 2007 but has now been augmented with explanatory footnotes and even more detail following a further decade’s research.
