Stoned

For better or for worse it was Andrew Loog Oldham who gave the world The Rolling Stones. Like it or lump it, it's the truth. He hustled in and muscled in and took half a dozen scruffy boys and made them the second most influential band of the twentieth century, even though one had to be sacrificed because his looks didn't match Oldham's master plan. But he paid the price. If he danced with the devil then the devil took his due and almost his life in a deluge of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Well actually not much sex for Andrew who comes across as a rather androgynous figure in the story of his life. Or at least the first part of it, because this section of his autobiography only runs up to the mid-sixties. Is it a conceit that his life is worth more than one volume? Actually I don't think so. This is written as a series of interviews with the movers and shakers of the time (although there is no input from the Stones themselves - which probably asks more questions than it answers), interspersed with Oldham's own comments that are sometimes worthy of pseud's corner, but mostly right on the button. He was not the most popular individual, even with those he counted as friends, and throughout the book he comes across as a nasty little snob and a vicious, unprincipled bully. But he did the business, and anyone who launched Immediate Records, the first and greatest of all independent labels, can be forgiven some unfortunate character traits. Another volume is promised soon, possibly to be entitled Too Stoned, which will bring us closer to the present, where Oldham, now clean of all stimulants for five years, happily married with a child and living in Colombia (possibly not the best place to be with his history of cocaine abuse), will reveal the demons that brought about his ultimate downfall. At least I hope it will. (Kirkus UK)