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The legendary Andrew Loog Oldham, in interview Author: Andrew Lawless
Loog Oldham, who at the age of 16 got his first job at Ronnie Scott's Jazz club, moving on to working with Mary Quant, and then as a publicist for both the Beatles and Bob Dylan. As their manager, he introduced the Stones to the world ("Would you let a Rolling Stone marry your daughter?" - was just one of his many inspired lines to the press), and produced their first couple of albums, including such hits as The Last Time, Play With Fire, Not Fade Away, Satisfaction, Paint It, Black, Get Off Of My Cloud and Ruby Tuesday. It was Loog Oldham who, famously, forced Jagger and Richards to sit down and write their first original song, realising that the real money was to be made not by releasing blues standards, but by writing, recording and performing originals. By 1967 the Stones had become famous, worldwide, and parted company with him in favour of American accountant Allen Klein, but Loog Oldham's invovlement with the music industry didn't finish there. He had founded Immediate Records, which was an early home to acts like the Small Faces, Rod Stewart, Amen Corner, Fleetwood Mac, Humble Pie, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and the Nice. He's produced albums for Donovan, Jimmy Cliff, Bobby Womack, and Italian stars Francesco De Gregori, Lucio Dalla, and Anna Oxa. For the last twenty years he has lived in Bogotá, Colombia. Without further ado, Three Monkeys Online presents Andrew Loog Oldham in interview: You have an obvious love for Cinema, sprinkling film references throughout your two volumes of autobiography [Stoned and 2 Stoned. Did you, or would you, consider getting involved in film making seriously? For example, surely there are some movie moguls sniffing around the idea of filming your biographies? Not really. Much to painful on the ego to be considered a full time job. You are really just a matter of copyright to be tampered with and depleted as the game progresses. Not unlike a legal lethal injection of smack and coke, and we know how that one doesn't work. All too often the idea of you, or in this case my book Stoned, just provides some out of work hack with a reason to get up in the morning in L.A. to announce he's alive and has some great fresh meat to share - You. On the other hand if I sniffed the right call I'd be there in a bridal instant. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Charlie is my darlin [Editor's note: Loog Oldham produced documentary on the Stones '65 tour of Ireland] yet, so forgive me for asking – what was it like to take the Stones to what must still have been a strongly Catholic, and by all accounts prudish, country (Twenty years later you could still be prosecuted for selling condoms anywhere other than a licensed pharmacy)? I was not aware that it had changed.[it has] No wonder it's hard for Britain to get a hard-on for Africa; it's own niggers , the Irish, have been in a state of Mau-Mau suppression for so long and only a forty minute plane ride away. Too disgusting for too long. Now you've woven the usual fabric into Northern Ireland that we have here in Colombia where I live: the left becomes deaf, and become drug dealers bringing more death home. As for the Stones in Ireland in '65, it really was not that much different from a gig in Sheffield or Luton, except that the people were a bit warmer. You had a great admiration for Anthony Burgess – what was it about A Clockwork Orange in particular that you connected with? Do you have any regrets that you didn’t manage to make a movie of it? There’s a violence often associated with the Stones, implied rather than on the surface. Whether it was the establishment/Daily Mirror, or later music writers like Nik Cohn, all seemed to suggest that the Stones were somehow dangerous. How much of that was natural, and how much came from a crafted image, from you? I loved Anthony Burgess because he made sense to my way of life at the time; I think Keith Richards took a liking to it too. It gave us another wall of armor to get the message out without being spotted. Mick Jagger would have just smiled at Charlie and hoped it didn't go to far. It didn't. Our violence was very Walt Disney at the time. No one really got hurt, life only became actually violent when the public began their '60s as they were ending, and started up with drugs. I prefered it as a private club. People like Nik Cohn thought the Stones were dangerous because he may have got them for the masses, but deep down in himself he never really got a hold on them. He was always much more comfortable with something he made up. As time goes by, and more layers of the onion get peeled back - because nothing better than us has really come along, and by " us" I modestly mean the collective 60's because we did keep something back which was really not possible after the corpo-vampirism of the media system - I realize more and more that it was not a question of crafting images or being a svengali but recognizing the moment and adapting to it. That is not to say that I did not have my brilliant moments. Tell me a little bit about the Italian connection – you produced albums for both De Gregori and Lucio Dalla. Were these jouneyman projects, or did you connect with the music? How difficult is it to produce an album in another language? Is there ever the fear that you’ll misinterpret the tone of the song from a production point of view? I think one of the greatest lyics is "uh-huh-a-ah" from Abba's Knowing Me , Knowing You and that was written in their second language. I worked in Italy in 1978, '79 and 80, a wonderful experience. I simply did my homework, I asked for the Top 50 LP's and 45's and asked what got them there - you know, the combination of song, track record, icon status, other media connection, etc. RCA in Italy were a wonderful company to work for; they knew their stuff and ran a tight ship that leaked on the part of getting the art right. It also helped to be recording their version [the Italians] of Dylan and James Taylor, Francesco De Gregori, and Anna Oxa , a young girl they were determined to break. Lucio Dalla played on these records; a complete Zeffirelli type gent who knew his stuff and had a Miles Davis edge of "let's get on with it". When I finished the Anna Oxa LP I was in Rome and the RCA execs told me they loved, just loved, the work with one small problem. They could not understand her Italian. I told them that made two of us. She was from Bari, and left in my hands she must have sounded as unintelligible as Joe Cocker or Kate Bush sometimes did to me, to their Roman ears, so they sent a fellow from Rome and we did a lot of the vocals over.
I have not lived in England since 1970, so it was all rather alien to me. It's bad enough the record industry being run by lawyers, never mind the country. I come from a time when we were lucky enough to have our music and ideas accepted by the world in an overwhelming wonderful form. In truth, Oasis have meant as much to America as Billy Fury and Gary Glitter did. Not much. And sad to say, because of the decline of the ability and importance of the record companies to shape events you might say that the Police and U2 were the last two to get in under the radar in America, which shows you how long the rot has been setting. Anyway, the non-importance of music has been sped on by muzak in our bathrooms, condoms, malls and coffee bars. Is it not the biggest seller of naff crap Starbucks? With it's deathbed ode of duets to Ray Charles which sold to a bunch of folk who thought that Ray and Norah might sound as good at home as it did when they were queuing for a toxic fix. It's very hard against those odds for music to be special and important in a world of Pop Idol. Thank God for the live gig. Blur and Oasis even had the rivalry between each other that we associate with the Beatles and the Stones. Oasis, taking the strut of the Stones, had a couple of years in the limelight but then faded out. Is that a reflection on them as a band – that they’re not made of the same legendary material that the Stones were; or a reflection on the times, and changes in the industry/media etc. To put it another way, if the Stones were starting now, do you think they’d be able to establish the same longevity? From the time of MTV, the artist had the chance to grow taken away. He or she had to be brilliant NOW, and that is just not possible. Look at Steve Earle and how he grew. I saw him in a club in Vancouver the year before last and said to my wife, "Right now, my life is complete". That is what music is about. Sting did the same for me last year in Vancouver. He took the recordings you knew, made you grow with him and performed them better. Oasis did not fade out. They just puked up in public once to often and hit the room service button once too often too be able to relate with new material; but I'm sure for a 19 year old with them at their moment it was a supreme moment in life. There is nothing better than when a song or an artist explains your life. Marianne Faithfull, with similarities to yourself, has for many years been overshadowed by her relationship with the Stones. She’s now starting to come back into the critical consciousness in her own right. Have you heard her latest album, Before the Poison, and what do you think of it? Marianne is often the victim of her own press, she is often all too happy to talk about Brian, Mick and Keith. Marianne knows this. She and I discussed it last year in San Francisco. But I love her and she is a trouper and a hard-worker and her last two recordings are stellar; it's a shame she cannot stay on the road more, then she'd have the opportunity to get that glue and nail it nightly. To set the record straighter than she's been telling it, she had her first hit with me in 1964. She had three more with my partner Tony Calder between then and the end of 1965. That's a lot more hits than Jonathan King had. At the time she was married and thought about Mick Jagger in much the same way I view Jude Law: Not much substance, too much pancake, dear. She did not start dating, if I may be so coy, Mick Jagger until 1966. I should know because they first entwined in my suite at the Mayfair Hotel. Reading Graham Greene inspired you to write, you’ve said. What is it about Greene in particular that you admire? The ability to tell you a whole story in a dignified paragraph as opposed to just trolling on. Something Gabriel Garcia Marquez does too and it's something I thought I should aspire to when setting about my own biographies. It's something I thought that Terence Stamp accomplished with his three volumes of biography; he was a more recent example to adhere to. I think that the shared gift of the three I've mentioned is the ability to share their time and make it yours. Turmoil with taste. You make a long journey through time and you are just one of the characters and that, I think, is what lets the reader into the time, the circumstance and the magic. How do you feel about record companies pontificating about music downloads? It’s interesting that there are re-issue labels out there that, through legal chicanery, manage to sell product without paying a penny in royalties. Record companies pontificating about downloading is as banal as the crap about weapons of mass destruction. The big weapon of record industry self destruction is overhead and lawyers. It got started in the '60s when we got cocky and said, "Talk to my lawyer". Big mistake. They did, and, from that moment on, the game was up. I've won and lost a few cases in the past few years. Interestingly enough, the only case I won, which was against EMI with all its guns, was one in which I had written the agreement upon which the case was decided. The law allowed record companies to sell product without paying royalties. It's an awful game unless you managed to beat it or are 19, invincible and prepared to meet it. Charles Shaar Murray wrote: “Tastlessness is an arrogant
reject of the obsolete and restrictive concepts of both good and bad
taste; bad taste is an acknowledgement of the existence merely of good
taste and a conscious attempt to defy it. One would place the Stones and
all other great pulp artists in the first category”. I do not have too much time for writers like Shaar Murray when they are writing down to the art and effort that puts the food on their table. The quote above is minatory minutia. I'm not saying they should be serfs to our agenda, well, not quite, but they often forget who the real artists are. I do miss the time when criticism was more actual and less self serving to the star agenda of the writer. Martin Amis-ism can be a dangerous disease. Better that art in this quarter remain the diminutive of Arthur. In Stoned you talk about suffering from bipolar depression. Do you think there’s a stigma attached to conditions like this? Also, do you subscribe to the theory that most exceptionally creative people suffer from some form of clinical depression? I can only speak of my own which I did in my two books, to do any more would be irresponsible. We live in a time when if you've got it, someone will prescribe and sell you something for it, and that is often when a whole other set of problems set in. For starters, we are all creative if we manage to start and finish a job of work properly. Finally, most people who view themselves as both creative and depressed, usually drink and self-medicate, and in addition to other forms of analysis, ordinary or alternative medicine, should consider either AA or NA as another step on the ladder to wellness. If they've been creative and depressed for a while they should also check their liver for Hep C - the consumate rock'n roll badge of honor.
Sales, Yes. Importance, No. It Depends on the punter. I was in the US a few weeks ago and saw Paul McCartney perform at the Super Bowl. He started off with Drive My Car. I thought I knew how good it was but I did not. Lady Henna did an immaculate job that was true to himself and the Beatles version in present time. I was amazed. Even gobsmacked at how emotional, epiphanic and uplifting three true minutes of pop genius can be. And I'm a 'Lennon guy'. You spoke briefly in another interview about possibly writing fiction in the future – has the success of Stoned and 2Stoned encouraged you to pursue that? Not yet. I still have a few shots of Rythym'N Blues. My next book is called On Hustling. It's about the hustlers I admired, met, was inspired by, did not care for and a couple who let me through the door and into the game. I go from Diaghilev to McGhee. I'm enjoying the journey looking at my mentors, pals, sneers and peers who played in the world of the individual, before the corpofabric, or lack of it, ruled, and I hope that it serves all sorts but in particular those who are looking for a reminder of shine, verve and inspiration. It's the likes of Shaar Murray who make it hard for today's absolute beginners to have heroes, and we need them as we take our marks and make our bid to get into the game. I did. You grew up with an obvious love for American culture – and you’ve pointed out that one of the reasons that the Stones became so succesful is that, with you leading the way, they had America in their bones, that they were of America. What is it like then, living in Bogotá, where one encounters plenty of justified anti-American sentiment? Well, Tom Wolfe was asked recently what can we do about George Bush. He replied that you could vote for him. We have madness, outrage, disease, corruption and famine of such a degree all over the world. Bush did not start it, he reacted to it. Get over it and rejoice that there's at least someone as mad as the enemy in the White House who cannot be fathomed as to how he may react. That is a saving grace. In a world of Mel vs Michael Moore, I'd rather have my Lethal Weapon. God bless Bono for shaking hands with the presumed devil in an effort to get the voice of decency heard and hopefully, in some small way acted upon. Better that and looking to some like a cunt than the UN having to pull up its trousers in public after having buggered it's way through Africa. As for living in Colombia, Bush and America are just fine according to my son and his peers. He provided the means for our president to fight the former guerrillas, now drug dealers and kidnappers, something that a John Kerry surely would not. In my drug taking years, an Indian master dealer reminded me that cocaine was for the preservation of the red man and revenge on the pink man. In that there is not much coke in what you fellows [Outside Colombia] snort I guess you might have nothing to worry about ... With your handling of the press in the '60s, could we say that you were a proto-spin doctor, and are you then partly responsible for the media tactics of New Labour in Britain today? Oh, I wish. The press played me, we played them, then they reminded us who controlled the ink. At the time however, it was fun to clash and snarl at the system. Now it's your turn. What do you think the key requirement for a good record producer is? The ability to make sure the best songs are being recorded in the best key in an environment where the work can be done and the space filled up properly. I must be a philistine – I don’t get Pet Sounds or why, as a record, it’s so important. You’ve said a couple of times that it changed your life. Can you explain to me what I’m missing? Probably because I was as stoned as he was[Brian Wilson]. It helped, I'm sure. However from the recording point of view it was a lesson and a super example of what could be done with the technical limitations of the day, which might serve so many artists better today than the endless journey pro-tools allows. I do not know how old you are but I guess you had to be there, in the middle of these changing times of competitive spirit in which music seemed to be leading the world to a better place. The sound of Brian Wilson was one of the sounds of that better place. On another level he spoke to the underdog of love in a voice that he or she did not dare to use. He was shy and afraid and it was okay. You’ve produced plenty of legends in your time, from the Stones through Jimmy Cliff, to Donovan, Bobby Womack, De Gregori, Los Ratones Paranoicos and many others. Do you think you’ve been underestimated as a producer? No. I stopped considering that one thirty years ago. You’ve said of the Stones that “they wore the bad boy tag like a suit of armour, and drew a veil over how professional they really were”. Has that veil slipped over the last two decades? Nowadays we have two different Stones – the cool and dangerous '60s band that wrote some of the greatest songs ever, or the Stones who are lauded for still producing records, however pedestrian, every couple of years and doing personnel loaded stadium tours. We can bitch about them all we like when they are off the road but when they are on it it's theirs. As for the stadium thing, it's a fool who does not use the tools of the trade. You worked briefly as a publicist for Bob Dylan, at the start of your career. What do you make of his biography Chronicles? I loved it. Last year, in America at any rate, it was Bob Dylan's year. With Chronicles he realligned the goalposts in the game of popular music and his 60 Minutes appearence was just sheer shuck'n'jive brilliant hustle for the masses. I don't care to fathom whether fake comes into the equation, I was entertained with rythym and verve by a master of the game. Nik Cohn once wrote, “the weird thing was, Jagger on-stage wasn’t like Jagger off-stage but he was very much like Andrew Oldham” – did you recognise a glimmer of truth in that? "Nik Cohn once wrote" says it all. He was Puck at best. That's an absurd reach that in times of my unwellness I enjoyed but in my wellness I know the reality to be a far more evolved situation than Nik, as much as he led the pack at the time, was allowed to enjoy. Jagger is better than that and I hope I am as well. You’re remarkably candid about Brian Jones in your writing (both biography and interviews), and how, in a certain sense, it was inevitable that he would die young partly because of his own death wish, and partly because of the times and people’s inability to acknowledge such forces. Did it surprise you when Kurt Cobain committed suicide, that thirty years on a young, talented musician surrounded by the music industry couldn’t be protected from himself? It's the 27 club. Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix, Jones, Cobain and many more. It's always been in the interests of the recording industry to have the artist in control of his music and stage appearances and out for the count in his private life. At the time Brian started to slip I was starting my own slip so neither of us was qualified to help each other or get help. The record industry prefers the artist to be out to lunch. No time to question, no time to audit, no time to be organized. That said, you cannot stop a cunt being a cunt. Look at that kid from the Liberteens, he is almost supported by the media in his insanity. Look, even the Stones were refused permission to carry out a simple audit on Universal, when, as Allen Klein once said, "You can always find money in an audit". George Michael was right when he took Sony to task for not being a recording company, and just a food machine depleting and spitting out art. He had to lose. It's still the '60s as regards us against them, except now there's no big wins, just little victories. Record companies are a thing of the past whilst the artist, performer and writer still has an always amazing future. That, I guess, will be the final victory. If the major companies did not have the rock'n'roll catalogue business on little or no royalties they'd be out of business now. They certainly would not be getting by on the talent calls they have been making the past twenty years. Finally, what are the plans for the future? Will there be a third installment of the biography? You mentioned wishing that Phil Spector would return to making great records. There seems to be a long overdue critical recognition of Andrew Loog Oldham as a record producer – can we expect new records in the near future?
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Revisionists and romantics would have you believe that the
Rolling Stones started when Mich Jagger bumped into Keith Richards,
carrying a bunch of blues records, in Dartford railway station in 1960. It
would be, though, just as easy to say that the Stones started in 1963 when
Andrew Loog Oldham encountered Jagger, Richards, Jones, Wyman and Watts
(and the later air-brushed out Ian Stewart) in the Crawdaddy club, and
became their manager. Along with their natural talents, he introduced his
own vision of danger, style, and business savvy.