Loog Oldham - Stoned

People say I made the Stones. I didnt. 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.

Andrew Loog Oldham is the author of Stoned, and 2Stoned.

Stoned

El Pimpressario by Andrew Loog Oldham

Written and Produced by
Andrew Loog Oldham

Interviews and Research by
Simon Dudfield, Edited by Ron Ross

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781446412091

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Secker & Warburg 2000

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Copyright Clear Entertainment Ltd 2000

Andrew Loog Oldham has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Secker & Warburg
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
www.randomhouse.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ALO: May 95, Im in the James Dean suite, better known as two shoe boxes at the back of the Hotel Iroquois on West 44th Street in Manhattan, and life has definitely lost its colour. You try a few things to forget that he who is not busy being born is busy dying, to block out the thought of yourself as a wingless, hurt, spineless bird of the 60s. Another grey line theyre not even white any more another grappa or Southern-anything-without-Comfort can bring you back to life for a few minutes, but its not a given. Occasionally you get up from the couch and have to check yourself out in the mirror above the fireplace to make sure you are still there, and thats an effort. One could say that when life becomes too painful, the body sickens and withers and the soul departs.

Your circulation is so shot, you have a permanent drip; you cant risk beige trousers cause you leave sir john and ten minutes later dicky boy still isnt finished. At five in the morning there are definitely animals in the soup, the hall and your mind, and the thought of them provides the only colour in this bioflick. Theres an inflamed eyesore-orange cutting through the grey death-white pallor of the door and its as bright as the people and/or animals are real and active in the corridor. You eventually open the door, the hall is empty, and as silent and as lifeless, grey and oh-so-off-white as the lifelessness inside.

My blood feels like liquid cocaine mixed with grappa, fire without the flame; problem is it feels there is less and less of it flowing through me. My heart has to beat faster to give me oxygen and to find some remaining grimy pocket of nutrition. Ive hit that point when more than half of any given day I cant answer the phone or make a call; anybody could hear the pain. I dont feel like a long-distance man any more.

I keep getting glimpses of the other side: looks okay, but I dont want to be there just yet. The seductive calm of the other side is replaced by my wife Esthers and my boys faces and they are not calm, they just dont get it. I pull back and the other side goes away for a time. I think often of the dark Christine, who right-handed Olympic Studios through the 60s and 70s. When she decided to move on to less painful pastures, she settled all the local accounts, left not a tradesman unattended, paid her milk bill up to date and left a tidy desk, with a neat left-and-right balance sheet for one last well-planned session at Olympic. And so went off to her well-planned death.

She got in her garaged car, plugged up the exhaust pipe, and pulled from her bag a bottle of vodka and a hundred or so sleepers shed hoarded. She sacrificed her sleep to a dream of relief, planning and styling this final roar of her broken engine. Just in case the vod and hundred nods were not enough, as the exhaust did its work, Christine smashed the empty bottle on the mahogany dash and slashed her wrists to final pieces.

I get some rest and thats exhausting in and of itself; I get up by noon and head down the block to Un, Deux, Trois for my staple grappa and espresso, followed by a good sweat and a line in the loo, after which I can hold down the soup of the day. The Un, Deux, Trois folk are kind, Im never rude and they never embarrass me, but its apparent Im embarrassing myself.

It was time to get my affairs in order, so this is how I didnt do it. My James Dean suite in the Iroquois was such a mess I couldnt get it together to pack and leave; I just rented a fresh abode and moved on up to Columbus Circles Mayflower Hotel, the move giving me the zap to put on a fresh and happy face, allowing my movie to return to widescreen Technicolor for a few moments more. I called room service, ordered a well-done steak, and limited my booze intake to a beer set-up chased by a line to aid my digestive tract.

I hadnt seen Thomas Doc Cavalier for quite a while, and I recalled a long-outstanding debt of quite a few grand left over from our various recording activities in the 70s. Doc still lodged in Wallingford, Connecticut, and in a nearby town lived one Al Goodin, a champion gent Id met some eight years ago on a jet bound for Vegas who told me a few truths about life. The magazine of the same name had done a piece on the vast number of great white unemployed in all the armpits of North America, and I had asked the obviously worldly and patriotic Al whether this was to be The Grapes of Wrath revisited, the beginning of an end for America. No, said Al, his N-o-o-o-o so long and a-e-i-o-u-ed that it had to be followed by a prophecy of doom. Andy, he said, the end will be when folks our age start asking for our social security and theres nothing left, and what is left over younger blood will keep for itself.

I checked out of the Mayflower, kept the Iroquois on tap, hopped in a limo and stopped on Amsterdam Avenue to buy two-fifths for the road. Soon enough we were on the Merrit Parkway heading for Connecticut and in my memories time stood still, my heart throbbing with pain and shame at travelling the same freeway twenty-five years later when all seemed to be moving forward save I, who had been drunk and stoned then, and still was. Though now I couldnt let myself drive.