Mojo

Andrew Loog Oldham
Secker & Warburg £17.99

By Paul Trynka

Second instalment of onetime Stones manager's autobiog, encompassing the crucial period from the Stones first hits in 1964 through to his departure in1967.

The phrase "there is nothing new under the sun" is one that's apposite to perhaps the vast majority of history books, which simply rehash or re-interpret what's gone before. 2Stoned is the stunning exception: a book that takes a famous era of a more-than-famous band and throws in a huge amount of new material and revelations. Given that Oldham was a fly on the wall over some of the Stones' most crucial history, perhaps that's not a surprise. What is a surprise, though, is the authority, wit and breadth of this book, which draws on testimony from a wide range of Stones' friends and fellow-travellers to give a multi-layered, multi-faceted account of not just the Stones' life and music, but of the culture and context that inspired it.

    Above all, 2Stoned is packed with stunning imagery, particularly of the insanity that underlay their first trips to America. It was a serendipitous onslaught that might see Oldham and his charges meet Murray The K and be handed a sure-fire American hit, then have a scrap with a snotty jeweller, smoke proper marijuana for the first time, then arrive back at the Sunset Strip Motel to "slip inside" a halter-topped girl named Flo. All in a day's work.
    Yet the jump-cut intensity of Oldham's delivery doesn't preclude some profound insights. He is particularly good on the influence of people like Dave Hassinger and Jack Nitzsche - studio animals who willingly opened up the whole American bag of recording tricks to what others would have regarded as snotty English upstarts. He's refreshingly honest about his charges. Keith is depicted with love, Jagger with a scrupulous fairness that itself speaks volumes, while the long, painful decline of Brian Jones inspires no crocodile tears. There's an understandable resentment, though, in the account of how Oldham was forced to do what none of the Stones would do: walk up to a whacked-out Brian Jones slumped over his guitar in the studio, and unplug him, both literally and metaphorically. This was a dirty job Mick and Keith left to Oldham - before realising he in turn was dispensable. 
   Oldham is honest about his own mistakes, explaining his side of the notorious deal which handed the Stones to Allen Klein without seeking to whitewash himself (Klein, in fact, gives his side of the story, too). Yet overall there's little dwelling on failures, and not much reflection on those who were left injured on the hard shoulder after the Stones' constant car-crashes. That seems fitting, though, in a book that is, above all, a celebration. There's a joy and relish at being in the eye of a camp, cranked-up, uncontrollable hurricane, which any reader, Stones fan or no, will share.

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