Loog Oldham Goes
Garage

Former Stones manager joins
Little Steven's satellite show

Still in fashion

Andrew Loog Oldham's new gig on Sirius Satellite Radio has given him something that producing and managing the Rolling Stones couldn't: an almost-proper job that would have pleased his mum.

"She really would have been chuffed," says Oldham, recalling a confrontation with his mother at the height of his Sixties notoriety with the Stones. "She dressed me down and said, 'When are you going to stop being silly and get a real job?' Mind you, she was probably right."

But Oldham, who helped make London swing during that era, has returned to his role as tastemaker. He's now a host on Little Steven Van Zandt's Underground Garage channel on Sirius, helping spotlight raw rock & roll from the past four decades.

"Steven's got his passion, and I've got my fashion," says Oldham, now sixty-one. "It's very cool." Oldham can be heard on Sirius Channel 25 between 6 and 8 p.m. EST each weeknight, and for four hours each Saturday.

The show has an additional benefit for Oldham, who admits that after surrendering control of the Stones in 1967, he spent much of the next two decades living the self-destructive high life -- while also producing the likes of Donovan, Humble Pie and Jimmy Cliff.

"I kind of missed a lot of the Seventies and Eighties," he says, "so this is a great way of catching up." He's excited about playlist discoveries like Montreal's jangly High Dials and the naughty glam of Louis XIV.

In recent years, Oldham has become a successful author, as well. Writing his autobiography presented a goal that helped him get sober in the mid-Nineties, and the memoirs Stoned (2000) and 2Stoned (2002) recounted how he left school at sixteen to work for fashion designer Mary Quant; became a publicist who helped Brian Epstein promote the Beatles in their early days; and helmed the Stones' rise to glory.

Now he's completing On Hustling, to be published next year. Oldham's third book will spotlight some of pop's greatest impresarios -- many of them his acquaintances, including Albert Grossman, Malcolm McClaren and childhood friend Peter Meaden, a former manager of the Who. In addition, Oldham and Al Kooper recently penned the liner notes for the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan biopic, No Direction Home.

Despite his storied past, Oldham, who divides his time between Vancouver and his wife's homeland of Colombia, has no plans to dive back into production anytime soon. "If you're not in the game 24/7, you're not in the game," he says. "It's a game I used to enjoy. But I'm not twenty-three, with twenty-three-year-old ears."

Meanwhile, Oldham's old band is on tour once again. This opens him up to yet another round of Rolling Stones questions, which he professes not to mind. "Actually," he says, "I like to sound like I'm still promoting them. I know they've made a new record -- but they're not really in the record business anymore, are they? It's the road, and once they're on the road, it's theirs."

In fact, Oldham finds the Stones' continued touring inspirational. "I think it's fabulous," he says. "They remind you of your possibilities."


DAN LEROY
(Posted Oct 04, 2005)