Stoned - Billboard Review

Andrew Loog Oldham, in the course of his autobiography, Stoned, describes himself as "an all-American boy" (despite being inimitably English), "too busy recovering from my own applause," and ultimately, "el Pimpressario." Those close to Oldham—prior to, then during his tenure as the Rolling Stones' manager during their first brush with fame—concur, describing him as being "made for show business" while acknowledging that the young man-on-the-make consistently "got away with murder."

Stoned features Oldham and various friends, lovers, and business associates hold forth on the minutiae of this Londoner's very swinging life. The book's narrative describes Oldham's rapid post-adolescent transformation from private schooler to public relations man (for a host of star clients, including the Beatles at one juncture) and upward to his work with the Stones, for which he's best known.

Opening with a harrowing depiction of his recent coming to grips with drug addiction, Stoned immediately skips back in time to his wartime childhood and the bleak scenario that was 1950s Britain. From that point onward, a starstruck Oldham works his way through a brief fashion career, then the music publishers' offices and seedy bars of London's Soho, ever in pursuit of the "next big thing."

Die-hard Stones completists may find Stoned disappointing. The band doesn't really feature in Oldham's history until mid-book. While he writes much about their early days (with band members' contributions limited to quotes from a Keith Richards bio), the book approaches its conclusion well prior to Oldham's (and doomed Stones guitarist Brian Jones') eventual estrangement from the group. To read of the Stones hitting the big time in 1964 is to aware that the index lurks only a few pages ahead.

Oldham seems—like producer Phil Spector, his friend and mentor—to belong to an age governed by draconian producers and managers; neither man's career would survive the growing autonomy of the recording acts themselves.

Oldham's accounts of his own activities in the early '60s might be

politely described as picaresque. Ruthless, ever intimidating, Oldham and his immediate associates (including his legendary criminal chauffeurs-cum-henchmen) come off as entrepreneurial versions of Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Whether issuing unmusical instructions during recording sessions, thrashing journalists in their own offices, or simply doling out physical abuse to pedestrians from his car window, he lived the ultra-violent lifestyle that the Stones would later adapt as image-enhancement. The description offered by pop historian George Melly best sums up the band's manager: "Oldham was calculatedly vicious and nasty—[his] enormous talent totally devoted to whim and money."

Given Oldham's influences, this is hardly surprising. His heroes, as he avows throughout Stoned, are the managers, song pluggers, producers, talent spotters, PR men, and other shadowy figures darting about the periphery of the English entertainment world. They possessed little musical ability, surviving instead on gut instincts, coercion, and sheer nerve.

By detailing the careers of those he emulated, Oldham provides fascinating insight into the pre-Beatle era, when every manager was a Svengali and the pretty faces of English pop were manufactured goods—as much if not more than the current crop of American boy bands. He takes an objective view of the guiding lights in the early English pop scene, offering pocket biographies of the talents behind the talent: eccentric producer Joe Meek, the king-making manager Larry Parnes ("my true pop Diaghilev"), and numerous other forms of impresario associated with the bands of the British Invasion.

Oldham loves to talk; this much is obvious. His prose, overheated though it may be at times, is further evidence of his zest for life. Never one to shrink from adroit punmanship, Oldham offers several zingers on the order of "The shills were alive with the sound of music" and Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman being "the calm above the norm."

The right man for his time, Oldham was at one with the early-'60s pop world; while not the most unbiased guide to the era, it's difficult to imagine a more entertaining one.

RICHARD HENDERSON