When producing my 2015 film ‘A Man in a Hurry – The Life and Times of Tubby Hayes’ I was researching the early days of the Ronnie Scott jazz club, which Tubby played on the opening night of in Chinatown’s Gerrard Street in 1959.
One day whilst chatting on Twitter about the film, Andrew Loog Oldham the one time legendary manager of The Rolling Stones contacted me on there. Not an everyday occurrence, I think you’ll agree.
Andrew went on to tell me that he was a waiter at Ronnie’s back then, working there of an evening after finishing his day job at Mary Quant’s shop ‘Bazaar’ on the Kings Road
‘We had no drinks license at the club, so if a customer ordered an alcoholic drink, I’d have to nip to a local pub and then bring back a pint or two along with a Chinese takeaway or two.’
Frankly, I was amazed to be talking to him about those days, and thanked him for the extra info. for the film and for providing an insight in the daily ‘hustle’ of his life back then.
It told all you needed to know really. Here was someone that was heading to the top back then, by putting himself in the centre of whatever was going on in London as the 1960s started to blossom.
Born in 1944, the son of Andrew Loog, a USA army air force lieutenant who died in combat in 1943, Oldham was raised by his Australian mother Celia in and around the English Home Counties.
Before long however, London was calling him and his teenage years were spent in and around the environs of Soho. He found work with clothes designer John Stephens and record producer Joe Meek, as well as the aforementioned stints with Mary Quant and Ronnie Scott.
He certainly had his hustle on early and among those who benefitted from his early days as a press agent, were Bob Dylan on his first visit to the UK, then aged just 21 in 1962 and Brian Epstein who employed him in early 1963 to look after his beloved boys’
Andrew had spotted the Rolling Stones in the spring of 1963 and immediately saw the potential of them being marketed as an alternative to the clean cut Beatles. Teaming up with veteran business partner Eric Easton, he signed the band to Decca through their A&R man Dick Rowe, who had famously previously turned down signing The Fabs.
He used his Beatles connections in snaring the Lennon and McCartney song ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ for the Stones, which hit number 12 in the charts in 1963 serving them up their first hit. Oldham then demanded that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards began writing their own songs.
His clever use of attention grabbing headlines like the classic ‘Would you let your Sister go with a Rolling Stone’ ensured the Stones bad boy image was ramped up in the tabloid newspapers.
He was also the bands producer on all recordings from 1963 to 1967, despite having no real experience in that field. He later claimed it was all learnt ‘on the job’. Later, his influence in the studio was relegated by some as ‘negligible.’
Oldham was in full flow by now, seemingly at the centre of everything London hadto offer, which included discovering Marianne Faithful at a party. Captivated by her looks, he turned her into a recording star with the Jagger and Richards’s song ‘As Tears Go By’
He also set up the ‘Andrew Oldham Orchestra, who recorded instrumental songs and covered the pop hits of the day. A loop from the Stones track ‘The Last time’ was later used on ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by the band The Verve, provoking a courtroom battle.
The fact the original record only sold something like two hundred copies on release still makes your correspondent smile.
It couldn’t last and things slowly began to unravel. The deal that he had and Easton had negotiated was very favourable to them over the members of the Stones. A combination of that, his now regular drug use and gradual loss of control over the bands business affairs, eventually led him to having to resign his position as manager, his place taken by American Allen Klein.
However he wasn’t completely done yet. He had set up Immediate Records with Tony Calder in 1965 and among those he worked with at that label, included The Small Faces, Rod Stewart, Amen Corner, Chris Farlowe, Billy Nichols and PP Arnold.
All was not good though. Despite having many hits for the label from 1967 to 1969, The Small Faces, received virtually no income and the label closed due to financial problems in 1970.
Andrew became a tax exile and relocated to the USA in 1969 and finally settled in Colombia in the mid 80s having married Esther, a local model.
His 1998 book ‘Stoned’ is a tremendous read and provides a blue print for any would be hustler out there. Two other volumes followed, ‘’2Stoned’ in 2001 and ‘Rolling Stoned’ in 2011.
All of them are worth your valuable time.
Andrew presented a radio show for Sirius FM for a few years and he continues to pop up in the media from time to time, when Rolling Stones anniversaries roll around or programmes dissect the ever giving 1960s.
The postscript to my Twitter chat, which I mentioned earlier, is that I sent Andrew a copy of our Tubby Hayes film to Colombia where he still resides and I was delighted to hear later that he thoroughly enjoyed the film.
‘Mark, cheers on the Tubby Hayes. As you may know experiencing Tubby was part of the magic of my job at the old Ronnie Scott’s ‘
Funny old world eh?
The Mumper of SE5
