Andrew Loog Oldham

good to be with you again a second round. Right, Well, as I say, I went to bo Guitar in September of thirteen and I knew that Andrew was there and we connected. That was the best place certainly I've been to this century, maybe ever in that you really feel vibrantly alive in Bogata. Tell the audience how you ended up in bo Gutar. I went in at the end of nineteen seventy four in London to Saister that was showing a musical comedy called John Paul, George Ringo and

Bert written by a guy called William Willie Russell. I had no idea what it was about. One probably because the condition I arrived in at the theater, and too that the condition was accelerated by they're being this lady in front of me in the theater who had now been married to forty one years. But I was just all I can tell you about that show was her neck and we spent time together. I was living in New York at the time, and she came to visit me in New York. She went back to Columbia and

I followed her. Okay, and since we're on Columbia, what is the situation with the fark. Supposedly peace was made in Colombia? Is it really peace? But those don't know. There's been decades of a revolutionary army terrorizing, closing her unrest in Colombia, but supposedly piece has been made. I wouldn't call them revolutionary. They're basically businessmen and fatigues because their main business over the last thirty years was drugs.

They took over the drug business once Escobar really was killed and the other towns couldn't stand up to the pressure of the FARC and the e l N, the other ones who they've still no peace with, and kidnapping and drug expectation was their main business for the last thirty years. The president that we that we have Santos once he got his Nobel Prize. Man, you know he's just left Columbia. He will just leave Columbia to sort it out. So you've got um anywhere from twelve to

twenty thousand men or kids. I would think the kids are more the danger because if you've just been raised that you don't know much more about life than to rape and pillage. What are you going to be an uber driver? So they've got that that's going to take and the amount of money that has been put aside in a country that is just it's the fifth world now, Bob, It's as simple as that. It's not the third world anymore. So it's gotten worse where the rest of us have

pulled ahead. You think you've pulled ahead, Well, this is another conversation. I'd be glad to have another podcast what's going on in our country. But my point is for those most people have not been to Columbia, never might have been to South America. You know, we're Americans. We're gonna have passports. So the question would become is now, in the last twenty years and now with peace with the FARC, generally speaking, is the economy better or worse?

I think that's the one thing that's common with the rest of the world is the the middle classes being suppressed out of any remaining pesto or dollar they've got, which is going on everywhere. So it's got better for those who had it better anyway. So it's literally just like the rest of the world exactly. I mean, we looked better because you know, we we were for a while until your recent change, Donny, Donny, um it, we were the only friend that North America had with I mean,

we were the only everything else was, you know. I mean, but Better's waiter at one time changed his clock half an hour, so it wasn't But they're all we we were the one that America was going to because you can all spend so much money and give us so much money for supposed to be eradicating drugs. I've never voted, so I'm pretty cynical about the whole system. Well, then I have to ask this, as they said, we're talking all these political things, but what is your view of

Brexit in the European Union. Um again, you've got David Cameron behaved exactly the way that our president. Okay, I've done it, I got my Nobel Prize. I'm off he did the Brexit thing. He left and isn't that to two years ago at least? Um, it's uh, it's a trrendous mess. I think it would be better if they didn't do it. And I think that could that could happen. It would be interesting. I was actually heying with Billy Bragg, who's very political. He thought, might I want to read

his book? Full book? Yeah exactly, he sent it to me. Um, But before our audience, I don't want to know who you are, okay, okay, your most legendary for the Rolling Stones immediate records, and it goes on for Tony Calder recently. Yes he did. He was your partner in the media, Yes he was. Okay, But as I say, you are born in what yearto so through the fifties whereas music your focus or did you? Were you an opportunist? How did you end up getting into the music scene in

the early sixties through fashion? Because I mean, I mean I left school to sixteen. The first job was at sixteen. Um, and I wish Sony more kids could leave school to sixteen. You know, education as a crime. But we won't go there. Oh I would like to go there. I think you know, education is basically to keep people in line as opposed to be creative exactly exactly, you know, to go it's not going to work at six is criminal. But then not all as blessed as we who were kicked out

and had to get on with right. But when I did that in the first place, I wanted to work where the carpets were thick and the teacups were thin. And I landed up with a lady called Mary Quant, legendary fashion designer who had a sort of karmas such or redbird records of fashion that worked in that her husband was the hustler. She cut and did the clothes, the husband hustled and sold. And they also had an old school friend who made surely utpaid old school interesting euphemism. Anyway,

it worked, and I had a great education. The pop that the fashion business was the book what was your gig with? And you just showed up and say I'll do anything that you hired you. I mean, I just that's the place. I don't want to knock on one door. I don't like this committee business even now. I think you've got to pick where you want to go and go there. Okay, Well, what was your spiel. That's such

that she hired you. You know, I can never remember the actual moments of because I'm so fucking nervous going in like that. I know it works, but I can't. Somebody else in the room would have to tell you what my picture. Okay, you go into a zone when the whole situations. In any event, she does hire, she hires me. I last there for eight or nine months because uh, and we're in what year? This is sixty one?

And I then start taking a job in the nights working at the original Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, and my job there was hanged. Was that another thing where you said I have to work at Ronnie Scott's. Oh, yes, because I've been given a great education of music when I was about eleven by a guy next door. During the years where you could sit for a guy next door and not get molested. Is that because the it is because they didn't molest you, or the cops weren't there.

You didn't have the we're all stars, even though we're a star molester or we'll start you know, the rights of entitlement, where you think you've got the right to intrude on somebody else. There was less of that. Although the other thing, of course is I mean, we know that's against the law, but being gay was against the law anyway, right, but you can't even touch another kid if you put it, you know, it's it's amazing world we live in, but any even you're with your next

door neighbor. And I and so when I was eleven, he ran me through everything from U uh a'ma jamal to Bob Crosby and the you know, the Brother of Being Crossed, the Bobcats, the the Red Novo Um. The one thing that really made a dent on my mind and on Lou Adler because he used it as the prototype for Carol King was George Sharing with Peggy Lee live in Chicago. It's really I mean, I don't know that record. I certainly know those people, beauty and the beat. Okay.

If I tracked that record down, I'm gonna hear Tapestry. Okay, sound it's there, Okay, it's there. Um great, especially with the instrumental Sat and Sat and Doll on it, which I think it's George Sharing, Quintant and Peggy. Um. So I went to work for Ronnie Scott's on the Coats, I got the Pakistani food from over the road as

they didn't have a food license. Uh. Then I kind of got greedy and I went to work the midnight to five am shift at the Flamingo Club, which was owned by a guy called Jeff Krueger who had Amberg records, but he rented the place out that night to the Gunnell brothers, who might have heard of from Chris Farlows money and all those kind of pis And I served the whiskey and the coat bottles because if the cops came in and he looked innocent and looked like he

wouldn't be serving scotch um, And so I did that. Then basically I had my first nervous breakdown. Um, the others don't count. The first one is the most important. Okay, So your how old when you have your first nervous breakdown? Sixty one? I'm seventeen. And how do you know you're having a nervous break Were you've taken on too much? Too much? Three jobs in a week is And do you feel building you're building up to it or you just freak out it point building up? Then I wouldn't

call it freak out. Then you decide travel will be the cure. So I went to the south of France and it's interesting, kind of like the Rod Stewart's song, you know, every picture tells the story. Oh yeah, yeah, and I kind of I ended up there, and it's interesting being back in this location because in a restaurant up there this past spring, I was able to say hello for the first time to Johnny Halldy really before

he passed. Yes, because when I was seventeen it was a very good year and I worked in Jouan Lapin at an English tea room, serving tea of course um and at the end of the block he was already in a white tux playing the casino and he was only nine months or eight eight months older than me, and I went, wow, ye first you go you don't go something's wrong, but you go, well, there's hope man, you know. I mean, the other rockers like Eddie Mitchell and Dick Rivers were playing cafes and I was attracted

to all. As bad as French rock is, I was attracted to it because it wasn't as personally bad as English rock was at the time. Cliff Cliff, Richard, Billy Fury right, you know, they were only they only had an American accent when they sung um, and so I preferred the French New Wave in the movies, I preferred their new rook you know, and all that with Johnny Hallity, and I'd seen him a couple of times in the two thousand's in Marseille, which was a town that when

I was seventeen I couldn't go to. It was too rough. Then well, in my job, I didn't have a job, I was begging off English tourists literally begging, oh yeah, begging in that the pitch went into okay. Mainly the ones who ended up in those areas and south of France were the Jewish world to do out of London, who knew how to get money out for the holiday because you're only allowed to take fifty pounds away. And so you remember when News to pay As or magazine

used to arrive rolled up. Of course, well the money would go in there and it would actually turn up at your hotel. Wow, okay, and I would put on an accent that appealed to them, which I'm moving into now. And I would excuse me, but my allowance hasn't arrived from my mother. And I wonder if you could lend me if I could borrow ten or twenty francs, and if you tell me which hotel you're in, And I did, depended on whether I thought they were worth paying back,

but the rest of it went to my water skiing lessons. Okay, so you're in the south of France and you meet Johnny Holiday. No, I don't meet him. I saw him from Afar and you got inspired. And then how long are you in France before you return to the island

until the season runs up? And I'm now I got involved in a slight Mickey Mouse type of kidnapping there where I ran into a photographer who recently passed a great guy called Philip Town's End, and he said, look ah, if you will keep this heiress locked up, she's still around. I can't remember his lady something right. We can sell the stories to the stringers of the newspapers like the Daily Mail stringer and the Express stringer and things like that.

And the girl was willing, so it wasn't really It's all scared, of course, but unfortunately her father had the powers to install a scheduled d notice on the newspapers, which was is the English way of of Uh, a newspaper can't print something it's against the public interest. At that time it was used for government thing, but he used it so we couldn't say let the girl go

or she We said it's over. And by November with the season, I'm going around knocking on the doors of the stringers who didn't buy the stories, getting cash from them, and then from an English vicar, I let the English take my passport away pay for me to go back home, and I started again. Mary quant said I can't give you your job back and drew, but I'll tell you

where you can get a job. And she sent me to a guy called Peter Hope Lumley, whose mother had been a lady in waiting for the queen, and he represented doing pr all of the guy who made the shoes for the Queen, Edward Rain, Norman Hartnell, who made

the dresses, Hardy Amy's who made prince and stuff. So I had a very good education there and then fell into pr It was not something you said, um well, the sweet smell of success helped me right, and then pop was I got my first I was I got to how to get a job to please my mother. That was real pr as opposed to the pansy royal type of stuff that very I mean, that was her opinion. So I took a job at a regular place to please my mother, who did things like the British as were.

Guild hated it, and I started taking pop clients on the first were like Mark Winter who covered the venus and blue jeans and go with a little girl, Kenny Lynch who covered up on the roof. Um. And then in the way, how did you get connected with them? You just knock on the door man, you know, I mean, um, and yeah, I mean it's time. It was a simpler time.

You find out that Bob Dylan is staying in the Cumberland Hotel in January, either December of sixty January brought to England and the freakish or circumstances the television director nobody really knew who he was. Then goes on holiday to New York, sees him in the village is doing a Jack London play for for the BBC. The BBC and says, look, there's this folks singer I saw. I'd like him to be doing the Mad House of Carroll

Street or something like that. Um and says, I think he would be good in the background, um singing in the background. The tapes are wiped. They don't exist anymore. Wow, I don't even know this story, okay. And so he turns up in England with Albert Grossman, and that's the manager for the listeners, for the listeners who were not steeped in sixties history. Okay, Well he's the manager, right, And well, I mean, you know the genius of it, the that without Peter, I mean Peter, Paul and Mary. Well,

let's go back to the thing without Albert Grossman. Does Bob Dylan make it? No? Right? Of course, not, no, no. And I threw a guy at the Melody Maker, which was one of our four musical papers which came out every week. Yes it did, but it was the most jazz and folk of the elders were basically pop, right, And I went knocked on the door and I got the gig. I got the gig for ten the ten days they were there, probably I got You were the pr guy for Bob Dylan? Now was he? So he

was in that musical? Well, it's a television play. And and while the plays it's a Jack London thing. And while the play is going on at certain parts during it, he's playing the guitar in the background, so the actors got you know, where you and I are talking, he's at the corner playing the time. But he's not doing any independent gigs or is he? No, not took him around London. He got to places like the jazz stores, the record stores, Dobell's Jazz and things like that. But

the only gig was the television show. And you one has to ask was he is enigmatic or was he you know, wet behind the years at that point they never are man Otherwise he wouldn't have been with Albert Gross, right, I mean the the I spent twenty minutes with him in the hotel um and that Bob Dylan is the

Bob Dylan you got now fully formed, fully formed. Okay, so you do the gig with Dylan and yeah, But the point is that when I'm in the room with them and I'm watching this celestial marriage between the two of them, you know, you've you know, when you've been there, when it's worked, and I'm going for whatever this is, I want it, okay, because there's no don't don't come out and go. I've got to find an act that

never came into it. I just carried on what I was doing, and in that beginning of sixty three, so I had Bob Dylan for ten days. Then through one of my more pop clients, I was in a television show with Mark Winter and he was promoting Go with a Little Girl, his second single, the Steve Lawrence Thing here and the Beatles were doing their second record Please Please Me, and so um I walked up to John

Lennam and said who handles you? And he said, oh, the guy at the Paisley Scarf and the corn and I went over and got the gig to do their pr in London because the Beatles or Brian Epstein's operation was still based in Liverpool, and in the beginning of ninety three you didn't make long distance phone calls selling a crew. I still remember that when you used to pay by the minute, right, so you might over a funeral, a birth would be a letter. And I got the gig.

Somebody else had a guy called Tony Barrow. Have you heard of him. Yeah, he had a very oppressive version of the gig because he worked at Decca, which is you know that, not the Beatles record company. And when Decca closed at five o'clock. He would use the printers, the stamps and the envelopes to mail out Beatles stuff to people. He never got on the blower, never got

on the phone. I did all of that. And in fact, when Paul McCartney was in Guitar about four years ago, and I was in the room with him, and he introduced me to his wife as this is Andrew, our first press agent. And I thought it might be a trick British question, and I said, well, what about Tony Barry? He said, well, that's another story, and that I was the first one who was able to go on the street for them. I would have them during the four months I was with them. I would have them like

for a day every ten days. And because of the roller decks of fashion that I had walked away with from Mary Quant and Peter Hope Lumley, I could get them in a wider range of places than exactly. So one has to ask is you know, of course, because

it was literally an invasion in America. When you're working with the Beatles, do you sense that this is a turning point for them and it's going to be a revolution or it's just another popular there's a night in the in those days the same way as you had the Dick Clark, and that what we had was different promoters, including the Fire the Rosharon Osborne and other people like Garth House and Tito Burns put on um shows that

were touring England. The cinemas would close for the night and you as they were all old theaters who have been considered have been converted to cinemas. They do two shows a night. And the Beatles started out on a bill in February of nine six, three of which top of the bill was Chris Montez, Tommy Row and a British singer of the straight version of Amy Winehouse Helen Shapiro.

Same thing comes, same town of town, mustache, you know, nice Jewish girl from North London but without the smack right, and had hits like six huge top ten records walking back to Happiness in the sixty two that were huge, and the beginning of the tour, the Beatles were bottom of the bill and by the time and it moved north to the tour, and by the time he got north over the top of the bill that with because of the span and the effect of please please Me

and in answer to your question. There was one night in the Granada, Bedford where the fans were starting to break the windows from the outside. And that didn't even really go on for even Johnny Ray, who was a huge influence. I mean he was before Elvis for all of us. But that night I stood at the back of the theater with Brian Epstein and Okay, there may have been kids or eight hundred whatever it was, but we both heard the whole world. You knew that was

the moment. Yeah, okay, so you work with them for a number of months until the Rolling Stones. Okay, so very slowly. How do you end up connecting with the Rolling Stars? Very slowly? Um? I used to go and to hustle journalists at the Record Mirror at a pub called d MS Offshore Spree Avenue. That was a great guy, and he recently passed called Peter Jones, and he said to me, when I'm trying to house Slim and christ

I did. I was doing Chris Montez as well, American who came through Sam Cooke, Little Richard all this right, Um, I just didn't want a regular job. You wanted to continue My mother was wrong, right, and I, um, uh, listen, he says. Andrew said, you know our musical papers called Record Mirror, which means we only write about people who

have records. But there's this young R and B fan writer who works for us called Norman Joplin, and he's so enthusiastic about this band in Richmond that we're actually going to publish a piece in a couple of weeks, a small piece, but nonetheless a piece or a group that doesn't have a record, called the Rolling Stones. He said, I think should go and see him. And I thought, is he trying to get rid of me? Or does

he have my best interest? And even though I'd been in the room with Dylan and Grossman, I didn't actually want to be a manager. I was fine. And I then thought, and then on Sunday nights we would have our equivalent of the At Sullivan show, the Sunday night of the London Palladium. And Sunday was stay at home. You know my mother on my shirts better than I did.

And so you paid lip service while that process, and the trousers and your Chelsea boots got polished, and you eet and then you watched the Yeah right, And that was Sunday right, And I was. I thought, well, if I don't go, how can I turn up the next Tuesday and hustle him? Right? So manners it was that had me and I found out I could. I didn't have to step all the way into town. I could go out on the override trains to Richmond and I

got to Richmond station. It was Georgia Gamelski who promoted these gigs, also died just a couple of years ago, and he thought he managed them. Um. But then in the world where you know, there are no accidents, um, his father died in Switzerland, and so he nobody was mining the shot at the store. These gigs he put on in the back of the station hotel. So I went in and I kind of, um fell in love. Um. One of the great ah parts of it was that I really had no real affinity for your actual rhythm

and blues. I mean, libra and stella was my you know, the drifters was my. UM. So I didn't walk in there as others might have and go, oh god, they don't do that Willie Dixson thing. Very well, it was all fucking magic to you know. This wave came over me and I knew that that's why coming up with an expression they are a way of life was It was easy because they had already been saturated with it,

um and you know they were sitting down really performing. Yeah, they were all but because it gave you if you've got the sweater with the holes in it and you're that left wing that you're left slightly socialist for you're lining yourselves up with sharecroppers, which I've always found a little difficult for white middle class boys going to art

school or university. Um. But nonetheless, so to make it look more authentic, didn't have enough movements to to go through an actual show standing up as yet, but there was on stools like rhythm and blues people and and or jazz's or whatever, and so you had that which people forget as the revisionism changes or time changes everything.

You had a front line of Brian, Mick and Keith and it was just so visually, which was always top of my list anyway, because coming out of fashion, and I mean when we started this conversation, he said, clothes went with the music. What's the point of listening to the music if, um, somebody doesn't know what you like? I mean, you must have had your own equivalent of that.

What you liked and how you look, told everybody who you were, of course, I mean in the early sixties it was Ganondeine and the Beach Boys, no matter where you lived. I mean, you have the striped shirts and the blue sneakers, and before these English bands hit the shores and then we all grew are here. Happened in Europe too, I mean they were like every country except France had its own version of the South America too,

his own version of the Stones and the Beatles. It became It's finished in sixty when nobody had rolls royces or six months in every road to make a record. But while they were like banging out studio records, in fact, the people who were the local, to say, the Swedish Stones would be on the shows with us. Would they be basically imitating your material? Yes, that's very strange. Let's

go back to his club. So you're in the club, you go to see him the first time, you have the epiphany the first time, Yes, and you go and talk to the bank. Yes, I do, And what do you say, um again, I don't remember. Well, did you pitch him as a pr person? And I pitched him as a manager. I know I pitched them without stating what I was pitching them about. They say, I want

to work with you. And were they receptive? Why do you think they were receptive because of you or because no one had approached him or Gomeshi was all of those reasons. And I'm good at you know, I mean I was younger than them somewhat. Um uh, you know did they think at the time this was it? Was this a lark? Was this a lifetime employment? Nothing was a lifetime then, man, Nothing was a lifetime Until February the eighth, or whatever the day is, the Beatles appeared

on it sell of them. So now you're also talking about to the era certainly pre internet, but also pre calling. So they're not playing again to the following Sunday night, right, No, they would play in on Wednesday nights and another at a different place. Um. I didn't see them again though, till the next Sunday. And at that stage I had a huge dilemma. I mean, a week was a wonderful amount of time. You know. Then right now he's just

waiting for somebody to call you back, right. Um. In that manners decreed that I would offer them to Brian Epstein because I was still working for him, and I was not only the Beatles, I was doing the beginning of Billy J. Kramer still a blank was going to be in a month I've done. I had been up to um another Paul and met his next find who he has short told me, and this was true, they

would have a number one record during the Placemakers. And I looked at these scruffs man, you know, like the coats looked like they were made out of lino um. And he was right because of the song that the song that the Beatles had to central, We're not doing it right, the Mitch Murray song how do You? So I went, you know, I knew it wouldn't work with Brian Epstein because he was already getting a bit right

um obsessed. So I probably went like, well, Brian not like Mick doing much and he passed and a guy who Ago. But you actually got to the point where you said, I have this if you're interested, can we share it? Right? Yeah? Oh yeah, you do wonder sold it so much you said I'm not interested. I don't know if he was listening, but I still did what I would go about yourself. You said, I gave was shot. I wouldn't use those words. I did the right thing, right, okay, um.

And though that then the editor of the Melody Maker, guy called Jack Hutton, said, had already said to me about a month afloat when you need an office. Andrew, I know this, uh failed organist didn't say that. If a guy used to be play organ and the Blackpool Tower and then you know it changed his name to Eric Easton. He was another actually another Epstein east one

of those the names. Because you're now dealing with the wonderful as with my mother's boy with the last generation of Jews in England who manicured up and became British, you know, so they didn't there, you know, you wanted to belong. So he was now Eric Easton. He was an agent and he managed a guitarist called Bert Weeden, a disc jockey. It was very level c but I got an office from him for four pounds a week

and all no Andrew the long distance ohn calls. All of the country was all about the long distance phone calls. And because he was an agent and I just did mouth um. I actually probably would not have got the rolling stones if I hadn't made him. The first partner I had in it before the Towers of Babel in America, and he was became their agent. He became the co manager with me and the Age Soult when they were playing.

The club didn't have an agent, Okay, somebody was. You've got those two structures of England trad jazz is poor relative skiffle. I mean, you know from the Billy Brag book, the history of how the Lonnie Donegan records came out of all of that stuff, and how the people who controlled the club circuits. I mean, either the promoters like Harold Pendleton Georgia with his sort of left wing oasis that he would run um frowned on rhythm and blues.

It was a poor relative. It did seem to be attracting younger people than the traditional jazz bands like Humphrey Littleton and Chris barber Head. So it's a week later and you show up with at the gig and you tell the Stones what I now, show up with Eric Houston, and then we signed them and because of mine, and when you sign them you literally have a piece of paper. No, they came in the office. Brian was the leader and so Brian would come in for the negotiations, and Charlie

and Bill had jobs. Um McKeith didn't good and they would sit at Lyon's corner house on the corner of a couple of black teas and wait for what Brian had determined with Eric and me. And and because of my knowledge of America through mainly Jim Lee who had Chris Montez, but then Bob Crew and my knowledge of Phil Specter, we signed them for the management and the records. Okay for those people who don't know, And this is becomes very important, especially in the history of the Role Stones.

It was licensed to the label, you owned the records. Anybody else in the UK have that deal at that time? They did so it was not incredibly uncommon. No, but because it was incredibly uncommon, but because I was younger than all the rest, it would get noticed. All the rest. You had a pecking order of Joe Meek, who did tellstar Um who you could call, and he cut acts for Robert Stigwood like John Layton and things like that.

They did it, but they had actually learned it from a guy called Dennis Preston who had He'll be in that book Landsdown Studios, who did Chris Barbera, therefore Lonnie Donegan. They were all independent records. So once again you became a student of the business. How did you know this When I would be doing pr for anybody from like Johnny Tillottson or Brian Highland or Ah Sam Cook and little Richard. I wanted him the managers man, because they would travel with the acts and you just you know,

I mean America was it for me? From soul Bass the posters for those awful out of Parmager films. The posters were better than the films. And you know, I mean anything ammunition and the knowledge that comes in or the instinct that gets developed by studying these things. You don't don't actually have to look at a book and read it and get what's in the book. You just have to hold it and well, this is very well articulated. This is what people don't understand. They go to music schools,

they think they can learn it. It's more about your sensibility matched with a passion and eyes wide open you can feel something. Especially all the greats in the music business are not educated people. There are people who operate on field. So in any event, you make a deal with the Stones, Yes, and how long is that deal is supposed to run? Oh? Three or five years? Three? Two three or thing? You have a lawyer who are

or murky? Didn't It just takes out the usual piece of take out a piece of paper, man, and they say they're in okay, and you say you're gonna make them, and what is the next step. The next step is that the pub called the weather be Arms. They used to rehearse and I just said to me, listen, pick out the five things that you think are the most commercial. Play them to me, and then we'll pick three and

we'll go and record them. And so there was Come On, which was a Chuck Berry b side Willie Dixon thing I want to be Loved And I can't remember the third thing. And so we went to Olympic Studios, which at that time was near Marble Arch and it was a four track studio with whose money? Eric's yeah, okay, you don't have any money. I don't have any money, dare And if I did it, I'd be wearing it.

But but let's be clear. You were the producer, for want of a better word, Okay, Well, what would you consider your role to be at those No, I do concern I am the only one if they had gone through the system. Where As you know from the pictures you've seen from Abbey Row, you everybody gets what they deserved. The Beatles got what they should have. In other words, they've got a very competent George Martin who had a

musical experience as well. The engineer Norman Smith knew about another kind of music, so all those elements could come into the Beatles when they needed it. What we had to get away from was the fact that acts before us, the English Rockers and things like that, you'd have a three hour session. They wouldn't even let them listen back to what they've done. You know. It was just run like a shop steward, like a union thing um. And the engineer was a guy called Roger's Avage. They give

me the kid an olympic um. We had the forty quid three hours five three hours, were up at five to six and got no more money. Right. Recordings weren't that good? Right? I mean, but they weren't. They were less terrified with me than they would have been with a guy who might have been seven years older, who would have felt like fifty years old. Did you give them any direction? No? Interestingly, when I eventually listened to

the Chuck Berry record, the vocals a spot on. I mean you know, I mean they you think almost think that Mick was on the Chuck Berry record sing in the backup right five six. I went, all right, that's it. Engineers says, well, we got to mix it, and I said, what's that? And he explained to me about the four channels or the four tracks it was on. And my attitude was if I'm not here, I don't have to pay for it. So I said, you do it. I'll come back in the morning. Um the and that was

the first single. Then then Decker tried to put me okay, well, well, well a little bit slower. So you cut these three tracks and then how does it become a single? What's the deal? Okay? We had gone to Decca because they turned down the Beatles. An actual fact, one of the A and R men, as you know, picked Brian Paul and the Trammelers because it was nearer. It was Daggingham, it was it was nearer than the Beatles being in Liverpool. But anyway, Dick Roe was a very bright man. Then R. Man.

There was no no, He just said, yeah, I'll take it right on the least deal. But they tried, as you know what I mean, for the sake of your viewers. The least deal is, you know, you've got to get ten points or eight points to play with us, opposed to three or four or two or three. And but he wanted to try and get them signed as a direct act, so he said, yeah, yeah, but the recording is not that good. We want to let one of

our producers have a crank at it. And they picked a guy who they were giving the gold Watch two because he delivered a couple of pop things to them from sixty two. Guy called Michael Barker, you've done Eden Cane, and oh god, I was I'm going, I mean you. I couldn't turn around to the stones and say play badly. But my version was marginally better enough that they then accepted the least deal and we were off to the races.

In the first track, does how well in the marketplace, it would have only gone to thirty eight, But I bought it from thirty eight to eighteen because you had forty five shops. It wasn't as company, it wasn't a simple and complicated as American Paola, you had forty five You don't you weren't greasing DJs. You had forty five shops that reported to the four musical newspapers, and all you had to do was go in and buy three to five singles at five shillings and sevenpence each um

in those shops on a Friday or Saturday. You know, it's basically the trick is making the record company fall in love with you once when you signed with them, and twice when they shipped the record, and so the factories would go wow. We sold three records in Wellingborough, we sold three records in nor Willing Garden City and the Rolling the Rolling Stones fans, the small volume that they were at the time, was still so devoted that they knew we didn't have the money anyway to beat.

Don't worry about and we'll send you a postluder. No, don't worry about it. We'll buy the records. And so a record it going to got to eighteen for one week. But that was the first dent. That was the beginning, and DECA was happy, yeah, and so then what what

happens after that? Then we have to find a follow up, and the R and B basket of potential songs is getting smaller as people like the Searchers are doing Sweets for My Sweet or the B side of the Orance thing, which was amazing, you know, I mean in where you're

finding your songs, Don't throw your Love Away. It was a B side by the Orans, and we had nothing to record, and one song that I suggested to them, which they never got to actually working on, was the James Ray thing if you've got to make a fool of somebody, but somebody said no. Andrew Freddie and the Dreamers did that last week, right, So that was gone and it was getting and we were at a rehearsal studio in Great Newport Street off Leicester Square, and I

just kind of think, if you're not contributing to the energy of the room, leave and go to the bathroom and you're gonna cup of tea do something like that. So I leave, I turn right as opposed to the left, and I end up outside Leicester Square tube station and getting out of a cab is John and Paul John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and as they knew me slightly from the months that we've been together. It was like, what's wrong, Andy? And I said, I'm gonna fucking side

to record with the Rolling Stones. Oh, no problem. They were great hustlers. And in those early, very early days, let's go backstop for a second with the Beatles have made it without Brian Epstein. Okay, I mean look at the pattern? What will They were backing Johnny Gentle for the guy called Larry Pans who was the gay Colonel Tom Parker, with Billy Fury, Marty Wild, Joe Brown and all these acts. How would they've made it? If if I mean what would if Ed Sullivan hadn't been on

holiday in Europe? Would he have known what anybody was talking about when he was offered the Beatles for the Ed Sullivan Show. But he had experienced it because on a holiday with his wife, they'd stopped in an airport and what is this pandemonium? Oh it's a group called the Beatles who are playing there. So these things are all destiny, right, So in any event you're seeing they're

great hustlers. Yeah, but hustlers for what it's like. As we were still getting out of the trap that had set for us by losing or winning World War two, the future if you're not if you weren't part of the elite anyway, right, um, you're any day you stay you know, oh this is still working, and it was right. You know, America changed it. But to see then because

of our we all idolized America. And you know, I could sit and look at a forty five record and the credits or the nat hntoff notes for Dylan or whatever, and just this could this would just go on forever. You know, it would just inspire you. So they hustled to see their names on records as writers that of records that wouldn't They weren't necessarily going to pay the rent. That was not the point. I mean, as you know and have said often, if you come in into this

for the money, right, that's not quite enough. If you turn out to be good at money, God bless you, right. And so they come down I the moment I Brian Jones play the bottleneck on this. I want to be a man. I just fucking died when we got to hit right, Okay, a little bit slour. You run into them at the Lusts. So they're getting out of a cab.

They have just won their first songwriting on it. So they're clairvoyant, lely tipsy, okay, and they literally come straight to the straight to the studio, not oh, I'll be there and tomorrow. No, no, then and then they got an Iva Novello Award, which is yours. They demonstrate the song and they pretend that, ah, they're finishing it in

front of us. Ringo had recorded it ten days before, right, um, and I, oh, lordy, you know, I mean it was the next apparition after having heard them for the first time. So I didn't even bother to produce the record. I led Eric. I went to Paris. This is my second nervous breakdown because I wanted a pair of forty pound utter leather boots from Pierre Cardin. That would solve my problem. I had had. You see, when I worked from Mary quant I had had a photographer who was about fifteen

years older than me. When I was seventeen at Mary quants say you know, Andrew, you're an alcoholic, right, And I said, Terry, I don't even don't know them. The photographer, I said, I don't even drink. He said no, but you've got the isms, okay, um, and forty five pound boots are part of the isms. Okay, but you disappear just when the record is being made. Yeah, there's gonna be no problem, man, you know, I mean Eric could

hear the Feliciano could have done it. Oh, he could have done He could have done Feliciano could have done the video. It was that much of a breeze. I mean I heard it in the rehearsal room, um, and it was just magic. And how long did you go to France for four days? Okay? So you come back ready to work, ready to work, and Decca, here's the tracks.

Excited they put it out and what Decca. The same way as when they tried to shaft me out of the licensing deal, they would have meetings at ten thirty every Tuesday morning where they would decide what they were taking, what they were putting out. So even it's still, you couldn't call something I got a hit. No, you would submit it and it would go into the Tuesday morning A and R meeting and then they would call you back.

It was all very corporate. I didn't see Recau still, I saw the boot of Sonny Bono's car, or Red or Buddha. Those people not put are the ones with Conversutra, but and then they would say we're releasing it on November. It was all very but just because this is interesting, how long afterwards cut did it come out? See cut in August? Six weeks? So it comes out? You buy a hit or is it an immediate hit? Um? We buy it. He goes to douneb the ten. You're on

the way from eighteen to ten. Let's right, Yes, indeed, Hi everyone, this is Bob left Sets. If you stumbled upon this podcast on iTunes or tune in, you may be wondering who is this guy. Well, my story of the story of my blog, The Left Sets Letter was told in episode one. Please check it out. If you like what you hear, subscribe to the podcast today and you'll hear my interviews with songwriters, performers, music industry and tech executives. First, also, I'm a what a feedback? What

do you like? What do you hate? Email me at Bob and left sets dot com and now more with Andrew lou Goldham. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets Podcast. My guest today is literally the legendary. They say legendary about a lot of people, but this guy is legendary Andrew Luke Oldham. I remember getting email the first time about the turn of the century, said Andrew Luke Goldham, saw him on the back of all those Stones album covers. It's like great to have you here here,

Thank you, Bob. Good to be with you again our second round. Right. Well, as I say, I went to bow Guitar in September often and I knew that Andrew was there and we connected. That was the best place, certainly I've been to this century, maybe ever, in that you really feel vibrantly alive in bo guitar. Tell the

audience how you ended up in bow guitar. I went in at the end of nineteen four in London to a theater that was showing a musical comedy called John Paul, George, Ringo and Bert, written by a guy called William Willie Russell. I had no idea what it was about. One probably because the condition I arrived in at the theater, and two that the condition was accelerated by there being this lady m in front of me in the theater who

had now been married to forty one years. But I was just all I can tell you about that show was her neck and we spent time together. I was living in New York at the time, and she came to visit me in New York. She went back to Columbia and I followed her. Okay, and since we're on Columbia, what is the situation with the fark. Supposedly peace was made in Colombia. Is it really peace? For those don't know, there's been decades of a revolutionary army terrorizing clausing her

unrest in Columbia, but supposedly piece has been made. I wouldn't call them revolutionary. They're basically businessmen and fatigues because their main business over the last thirty years was drugs. They took over the drug business once Escobar was killed and the other towns couldn't stand up to the pressure of the FARC and the e l N, the other ones who they've still no peace with. UM and kidnapping and drug expectation was their main business for the last

thirty years. The president that we that we have Santos once he got his Nobel prize. Man, you know he's just left Columbia. He will just leave Columbia to sort it out. So you've got UM anywhere from twelve to twenty thousand men or kids. I would think the kids are more the danger because if you've just been raised that you don't know much more about life than to rape and pillage. What are you going to be an

uber driver? So they've got that that's going to take the amount of money that has been put aside in a country that is just it's the fifth world now, Bob, It's as simple as that. It's not the third world anymore. So it's gotten worse where the rest of us have pulled ahead. You think you've pulled ahead. Oh well, this is another conversation. I'd be glad to have another podcast, but what's going on in our country? But my point is for those most people have not been to Columbia,

never might have been to South America. We're Americans, have passports. So the question would become is now, in the last twenty years and now with peace with the farc generally speaking, is the economy better or worse? I think that's the one thing that's common with the rest of the world is the the middle class is being suppressed out of any remaining pesto or dollar they've got, which is going on everywhere. So it's got better for those who had

it better anyway. So it's literally just like the rest of the world exactly. I mean, we looked better because you know, we we were for a while until your recent change, Donny, Donny it we were the only friend that North America had with I mean, we were the only everything else was, you know. I mean, but Venezuela at one time changed his clock half an hour, so

it wasn't. But they're all we we were the one that America was going to because you can all spend so much money and give us so much money for supposedly eradicating drugs. I've never voted, so I'm pretty cynical about the whole um system. Well, then I have to ask his as they said, we're talking all these political things, but what is your view of Brexit in the European Union. Um, again, you've got David Cameron behaved exactly the way that our president. Okay,

I've done it, I got my Nobel Prize. I'm off he did the Brexit thing. He left and isn't that too to two years ago at least? Um, it's uh, it's a horrendous mess. I think it would be better if they didn't do it. And I think that could that could happen. It'd be interesting. I was actually was hanging with Billy Bragg, who's very political. He thought it might I want to read his book, right, skiffle book?

Yeah exactly, he sent it to me. Um, but before our audience, I don't want to know who you are, okay, okay, your most legendary for the Rolling Stones Immediate records. And it goes on for Tony Calder recently, Yes he did, he was a partner in the media, and yes he was. Okay, but as I say, you are born in what year? So through the fifties, whereas music your focus or did you? Were you an opportunist? How did you end up getting into the music scene in the early sixties through fashion?

Because I mean, I mean I left school at sixteen. The first job was at sixteen. Um, and I wish so many more kids could leave school of sixteen. You know, education as a crime, but we won't go there. I would like to go there. I think. You know, education is basically to keep people in line as supposed to be creative exactly exactly. You know, to it's not going to work at six is criminal? But um, then on all was blessed as we who were kicked out and

had to get on with it right. But when I did that in the first place, I wanted to work where the carpets were thick and the teacups were thin. I landed up with a lady called Mary Kwant, legendary fashion design who had a sort of karma such or redbird records of fashion that worked in that her husband was the hustler. She cut and did the clothes, the husband hustled and sold. And they also had an old school friend who made sure they got paid school interesting euphemism. Anyway,

it worked and I had a great education. The pop that the fashion business was THEO what was your gig with? And you just showed up and say I'll do anything that you hired you? I mean, I just that's the place. I don't want to knock on one door. I don't like this committee business even now. I think you've got to pick where you want to go and go there. Okay, well, what was your spiel? There's such that she hired you. You know, I can never remember the actual moments of

because I'm so fucking nervous going in like that. I know it works, but I can't somebody else in the room would have to tell you what my picture. Okay, you go into a zone when the whole situation exactly In any event, she does hire, she has me. I last there for eight or nine months because uh, and we're in what year? This is sixty one, And I then start taking a job in the nights working at the original Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, and my job there was hanged. Was that another thing where you said I

have to work at Ronnie Scott's. Oh, yes, because I've been given a great education of music when I was about eleven by a guy next door. During the years where you could sit for a guy next door and not get molested. Is that because the it's because they didn't molest you, or the cops weren't there. You didn't have the we're all stars even though we're a star molester or were start you know, the rights of entitlement where you think you've got the right to intrude on

somebody else. There was less of that. Although the other thing, of course is I mean, we know that's against the law, but being gay was against the law anyway, right, But you can't even touch another kid if you put it. You know, it's it's amazing world we live in, but any even you're with your next door neighbor. And so when I was eleven, he ran me through everything from uh Anna Jamal to Bob Crosby and the you know, the Brother of Being Crossed, the Bobcats, the the Red

Novo Um. The one thing that really made a dent on my mind and on Lou Adler because he used it as the prototype for Carol King was George Sharing with Peggy Lee live in Chicago. It's really I mean, I don't know that record. I certainly know those people, beauty and the beat. Okay, if I track that record down, I'm gonna hear Tapestry. Okay, sound it's there. It's there. Um great, especially with the instrumental Sat and Sat and Doll on it, which I think it's George Sharing Quintint

and Peggy. Um. So I went to work for Ronnie Scott's. I hung the coats, I got the Pakistani food from

over the road as they didn't have a food license. Uh. Then I kind of got greedy and I went to work the midnight to five am shift at the Flamingo Club, which was owned by a guy called Jeff Krueger who had Amberg records, but he rented the place out that night to the Gunnell brothers, who might have heard of from Chris Farlows money and all this kind of And I served the whiskey and the coat bottles because if the cops came in and he looked innocent and looked

like he wouldn't be serving scotch um. And so I did that. Then basically I had my first nervous breakdown. Um, the others don't count. The first one is the most important. Okay, So your how old when you have your first nervous break sixty one? I'm seventeen. And how do you know you're having a nervous break Were you've taken on too much? Too much? Three jobs in a week is And do you feel building you're building up to it or you just freak out at one point building up? Then I

wouldn't call it freak out. Then you decide travel will be the cure. So I went to the south of France. And it's interesting, kind of like the Rod Stewart's song. You know, every picture tells the story, Oh yeah, yeah, and I kind of, Um, I ended up there and It's interesting being back in this location because in a restaurant up there this past spring, I was able to say hello for the first time to Johnny Hallity really

before he passed. Yes, Because when I was seventeen, it was a very good year and I worked in Joan Lapin at an English tea room, serving tea of course um. And at the end of the block he was already in a white tux playing the casino and he was only nine months or eight eight months older than me, and I went, wow, yeah, first of you go, you don't go something's wrong, but you go, well, there's hope, man,

you know. I mean the other rockers like Eddie Mitchell and Dick Rivers were playing cafes, and I was attracted to all. As bad as French rock is, I was attracted to it because it wasn't as personally bad as English rock was at the time. Cliff Cliff, Richard, Billy Fury right, you know, they were only they only had an American accent when they sung um. And so I preferred the French New Wave in the movies. I preferred

their rook you know, and all that. With Johnny Hallity, and I'd seen him a couple of times in the two thousands in Marseilles, which was a town that when I was seventeen I couldn't go to it was too rough. Then well, in my job, I didn't have a job, I was begging off English tourists literally begging, oh yeah,

begging in that the pitch went into Okay. Mainly the ones who ended up in those areas of south of France were the Jewish world to do out of London, who knew how to get money out for the holiday because you're only allowed to take fifty pounds away. And so you remember when newspapers or magazine used to arrive rolled up, of course the money would go in there

and it would actually turn up at your hotel. Wow, okay, and I would put on an accent that appealed to them, which I'm moving into now, and I would excuse me, but my allowance hasn't arrived from my mother, and I wonder if you could lend me, if I could borrow ten or twenty francs, and if you tell me which hotel you're in, And I did, depended on whether I thought they were worth paying back. But the rest of

it went to my water skiing lessons. Okay, so you're in the south of France and you meet Johnny Holliday. No I don't meet him. I saw him from Afar and you got inspired. And then how long are you in France before you return to the island until the season runs up? And I'm now I got involved in slight Mickey mouse type of kidnapping there where I ran into a photographer who recently passed, a great guy called Philip Town's End and he said, look, if you will

keep this heiress locked up, she's still around. I can't remember his lady something right. We can sell the stories to the stringers of the newspapers like the Daily Mail stringer, the Express string and things like that. And the girl was willing, so it wasn't really it's alway scared, of course, but unfortunately her father had the powers to install a scheduled de notice on the newspapers, which was is the English way of of a newspaper, can't print something it's

against the public interest. At that time it was used for government thing, but he used it so we couldn't say let the girl go or she We said it's over. And by November, with the season, I'm going around knocking on the doors of the stringers who didn't buy the stories, getting cash from them, and then from an English vicar. I let the English take my passport away pay for

me to go home. When I started again, Mary quant said I can't give you your job back and drew, but I'll tell you where you can get a job. And she sent me to a guy called Peter Hope Lumley, whose mother had been a lady in waiting for the Queen, and he represented doing pr all of the guy who made the shoes for the Queen, Edward Rain Norman Hartnell, who made the dresses, hardy amies who made prince and stuff.

So I had a very good education there and then fell into pr It was not something you said, um well, the sweet smell of success helped me, you know, right, And then pop was I got my first I was I gotta. I had to get a job to please my mother that was real pr as opposed to the pansy royal type of stuff that very I mean, that

was her opinion. So I took a job at a regular place to please my mother, who did things like the British Men's Work Guild hated it, and I started taking pop. Clients on the first were like Mark Wynter who covered the venus and blue jeans and go with a little girl, Kenny Lynch who covered up on the roof. Um. And then in the way, how did you get connected with them? You just knock on the door man, you know, I mean, um, and yeah, I mean it's it was

a simpler time. You find out that Bob Dylan is staying in the Cumberland hotel in January, either December of sixty January brought to England and the freakish or circumstances. The television director nobody really knew who he was. Then goes on holiday to New York, sees him in the village is doing a Jack London play for for the BBC. The BBC and says, look, there's this folks singer I saw.

I'd like him to be doing the Mad House of Carroll Street or something like that, right, Um, and says I think he would be good in the background, singing in the background. The tapes are wiped, they don't exist anymore. Wow, I don't even know this story, okay. And so he turns up in England with Albert Grossman and that's the manager for the listeners, for the listeners who were not steeped in sixties history. Okay, well he's the manager, right, and well, I mean, you know the genius of it,

the that without Peter, I mean Peter Paul and Mary. Well, let's go back to the thing without Albert Grossman. Does Bob Dylan make it? No? Right? Of course? Not, no, no. And I threw a guy at the Melody Maker, which was one of our four musical papers which came out every week. Yes it did, but it was the most jazz and folk of the elders were basically pop, right, And I went and knocked on the door, and I got the gig. I got the gig for ten the ten days they were there, probably I got You were

the pr guy for Bob Don't now? Was he? So he was in that musical? Well, it's a television play, and and while the plays it's a Jack London thing. And while the play is going on at certain parts during yet he's playing the guitar in the background. So the actors got you know, where you and I are talking, he's at the corner playing. But he's not doing any independent gigs or is He took him around London. He got to places like the jazz stores, the record stores,

Dobell's Jazz and things like that. But the only gig was the television show. And one has to ask was he is enigmatic or was he you know, wet behind the years at that point they never are man Otherwise he wouldn't have been with Albert Gross, right, I mean the the I spent twenty minutes with him in the hotel. Um, and that Bob Dylan is the Bob Dylan you've got now fully formed, fully formed, Okay, so you do the

gig with Dylan and yeah. But the point is that when I'm in the room with them and I'm watching this celestial marriage between the two of them, you know, you've you know, when you've been there, when it's worked. Um, and I'm going for whatever this is, I want it, okay, because there's no don't don't come out and go. I've got to find an act that never came into it. I just carried on what I was doing and at that beginning of sixty three, so I had Bob Dylan

for ten days. Then through one of my more pop clients, I was in a television show with Mark Winter and he was promoting go Away a Little Girl, his second single, the Steve Lawrence Thing here and the Beatles were doing their second record Please Please Me, and so um I walked up to John Lennam and said who handles you? And he said, oh, the guy at the Paisley Scarf

in the corner. And I went over and got the gig to do their pr in London because the Beatles or Brian Epstein's operation was still based in Liverpool and in the beginning of three you didn't make long distance phone calls selling a crew. I still remember that when you used to pay by the minute, right, so you might over a funeral. A bus would be a letter, you know. And I got the gig. Somebody else had a guy called Tony Barrow. Have you heard of him. Yeah.

He had a very oppressive version of the gig because he worked at Decca, which is you know, was that not the Beatles record prompody? And when Decca closed at five o'clock he would use the printers, the stamps and the envelopes to mail out Beatles stuff to people. He never got on the blower, never got on the phone.

I did all of that, and in fact, when Paul McCartney was in Boguitar about four years ago and I was in the room with him and he introduced me to his wife as this is Andrew, our first press agent. And I thought it might be a trick British question, and I said, well, what about Tony Barry? He said, well, that's another story, and that I was the first one who was able to go on the street for them. I would have them during the four months I was with them. I would have them like for a day

every ten days. And because of the roller decks of fashion that I had walked away with from Mary Quant and Peter Hope Lumley, I could get them in a

wider range of places than exactly. So one has to ask is you know, of course, because it was literally an invasion in America, when you're working with the Beatles, do you sense that this is a turning point for them and it's going to be a revolution or it's just another popular there's a night in the in those days, the same way as you had the Dick Clark and that what we had was different promoters, including the father of Sharon Osborne and other people like other House and

Tito Burns, put On um shows that were touring England, the cinemas would close for the night and you as they were all old theaters who have been considered to being converted to cinemas. Ah, they do two shows a night.

And the Beatles started out on a bill in February of nine, three of which top of the bill was Chris Montez, Tommy Row and a British singer the straight version of Amy Winehouse Helen Shapiro, Same thing comes, same town of town, mustache, you know, nice Jewish girl from North London but without the smack right, and had hits like six huge top ten records walking back to Happiness in the sixty that were huge, and the beginning of the tour, the Beatles were bottom of the bill and

by the time and it moved north to the tour, and by the time he got north, they the top of the bill that with because of the span and the effect of please please me. And in answer to your question, there was one night in the Granada, Bedford where the fans were starting to break the windows from the outside and that didn't even really go on. For even Johnny Ray, who was a huge influence, I mean

he was before Elvis for all of us. But that night I stood at the back of the theater with Brian Epstein and Okay, there may have been hundred kids or eight hundred, whatever it was, but we both heard the whole world. You knew that was the moment. Okay. So you work with them for a number of months until the Rolling Stones. Okay, so very slowly. How do you end up connecting with the Rolling Stones? Very slowly? Um?

I used to go to hustle journalists at the Record Mirror at a pub called d MS off Shaftesbury Avenue. That was a great guy, and he recently passed, called Peter Jones, and he said to me, when I'm joying hustling, and christ I did was doing Chris Montez as well. Americans came through, Sam Cooke, little Richard, all this right, Um, I just didn't want a regular job. He wanted to continue. My mother was wrong, you know, right? And I um, uh, listen,

he says. Andrew said, you know our musical papers called Record Mirror, which means we only write about people who have records. But there's this young R and B fan writer who works for us called Norman Jopling, and he's so enthusiastic about this band in Richmond, that we're actually going to publish a piece in a couple of weeks, a small piece, but nonetheless a piece or a group that doesn't have a record, called the Rolling Stones. He said, I think you should go and see him, And I thought,

is he trying to get rid of me? Or does he have my best interests? And I, even though I'd been in the room with Dylan and Grossman, I didn't actually want to be a manager. I was fine. And I then thought, and then on Sunday nights we would have our equivalent of the At Sullivan Show, the Sunday night of the London Palladium. And Sunday was staying at home.

You know, my mother on my shirts better than I did, and so you paid lip service while that process of the trousers and your Chelsea boots got polished, and you at and then you watched the Yeah right, And that was Sunday right, and I was I thought, well, if I don't go, how can I turn up the next Tuesday and hustling? Right? So manners it was that had me and I found out I could. I didn't have to step all the way into town. I could go out on the override trains to Richmond, and I got

to Richmond station. It was Georgia Gamelski who promoted these gigs, who also died just a couple of years ago, that's right, and he thought he managed them. Um. But then in the world where you know, there are no accidents. Um, his father died in Switzerland and so he nobody was minding the short at the store. These gigs he put on in the back of the station hotel. So I

went in and I kind of um fell in love. Um. One of the great ah parts of it was that I really had no real affinity for your actual rhythm and blues. I mean, Libra and Stollar was my you know, the drifters was my you know. Um. So I didn't walk in there as others might have and go, oh god, they don't do that Willie Dixson thing. Very well, it was all fucking magic to you know. This wave came over me and I knew that. That's why coming up with an ext pressure there a way of life was

it was easy because they had already been saturated with it. Um, and you know they were sitting down really performing. Yeah, they were, but welcome because it gave you if you've got the sweater with the holes in it and you're that left wing that you're left slightly socialist for you're lining yourselves up with sharecroppers, which I've always found a little difficult for white middle class boys going to art

school or university. Um. But nonetheless, so to make it look more authentic, didn't have enough movements to lot to go through that Actu's show standing up as yet, but there was on stools like rhythm and blues people and and or jazzes or whatever, and so you had that which people forget as the revisionism changes or time changes everything.

You had a front line of Brian, Mick and Keith and it was just so visually, which was always top of my list anyway, because coming out of fashion, and I mean when we started this conversation, he said, clothes went with the music. What's the point of listening to the music if, um, somebody doesn't know what you like? I mean, you must have had your own equivalent of that. What you liked and how you looked told everybody who

you were, of course. I mean in the early sixties was gen indeed, and the Beach Boys, no matter where you lived. I mean you have the striped shirts and the blue sneakers, and before these English bands hit the shores and then we all grew are here. Happened in Europe too, I mean there were like every country except France had its own version of the South America to

his own version of the Stones and the Beatles. It became It's finished in sixty when nobody had rolls Royces or six months in Ebbey Road to make a record. But while they were like banging out studio records, in fact, the people who were the locals, say the Wehedish Stones would be on the shows with us, would they be basically imitating your material? Yes, that's very strange. Let's go back to his club. So you're in the club, you go to see him the first time, you have the

epiphany the first time. Yes, and you go and talk to the band. Yes, I do, And what do you say? Um again? I don't remember. Well, did you pitch him as a pr person and I pitched him as a manager. I know I pitched them without stating what I was pitching them about, to say I want to work with you. And were they receptive? Why do you think they were receptive because of you, or because no one had approached him,

or Gomeshi was right all of those reasons. And I'm gonna you know, I mean I was younger than them somewhat. Um uh. You know, did they think at the time this was it? Was this a lark? Or was this a lifetime employment? Nothing was a lifetime? Then, nothing was a lifetime until February the eighth or whatever the day is. The beat was a beard on that sell of them. Right. So now you're also talking about to the era certainly

pre internet but also pre calling. So they're not playing again to the following Sunday night, right, No, they would play in on Wednesday nights and another at a different place. Um. I didn't see them again though, until the next Sunday. And at that stage I had a huge dilemma. I mean, a week was a wonderful amount of time. You know. Then right now, he's just waiting for somebody to call

you back, right. Um. In that manners decreed that I would offer them to Brian Epstein because I was still working for him, and I was not only the Beatles. I was doing the beginning of Billy J. Kramer Stilla Black was going to be in a month I've done.

I had been up to um Liverpool and met his next find who he is sure told me, and this was true, They're gonna have a number one record during the placemakers And I looked at these scrafts, man, you know, the coats looked like they were made out of liner um. And he was right because of the song that the song that the Beatles had to central We're not doing it right, the Mitch Murray's song how do you? How do you do it? So I went, you know, I knew it wouldn't work with Ryan Empstein because he was

already getting a bit right um obsessed. So I probably went like, well, Bron not like Mick doing much and he passed and a guy who Ago. But you actually got to the point where you said, I have this, if you're interested, can we share it? Right? Yeah? Oh yeah, you do. Wonder sold it so much you said I'm not interested. I don't know if he was listening, but I still did what I wouldn't about yourself, he said, I gave him a shot. I wouldn't use those words.

I did the right thing, right, okay? Um? And that then the editor of the melody maker. Guy called Jack Hutton said, had already said to me about am before when you need an office, Andrew, I know this, uh failed organist didn't say that. The guy used to be play organ and the Blackpool tre and then you know it changed his name to Eric Easton. He was another

actually another Epstein Eastman, one of those the names. Because you're now dealing with the wonderful as with my mother's boy with the last generation of Jews in England who manicured up and became British, you know, so they didn't there were you know, you wanted to belong. So he was now Eric Easton. He was an agent and he managed a guitarist called Bert Weeden, a disc jockey. It was very level c but I got an office from him for four pounds a week and all no Andrew

the long distance phone calls. All of the country was all about the long distance phone calls. And because he was an agent and I just did mouth um, I actually probably would not have got the Rolling Stones if I hadn't made him the first partner I had in it before the Towers of Babel in America. Um, and he was became their agent. He became the co manager with me and the age. So when they were playing the club, they didn't have an agent. Okay, somebody was.

You've got those two structures of England trad jazz is poor relative skiffle. I mean, you know from the Billy Brag book, the history of how the Lonnie Donegan records came out of all of that stuff, and how the people who controlled the club circuits. I mean either the promoters like Harold Pendleton Georgia with his sort of left wing oasis that he would run um frowned on rhythm and blues. It was a poor relative, but it did seem to be attracting younger people than the traditional jazz

bands like Humphrey Littleton and Chris barber Head. So it's a week later and you show up with at the gig and you tell the Stones what I now, show up with Eric Houston, and then we signed them and because of mine, and when you signed them, you literally have a piece of paper. No, they came in the office. Brian was the leader, and so Brian would come in

for the negotiations and Charlie and Bill had jobs. Um Mcinkeith didn't good and they would sit at Lion's Corner house on the corner of a couple of black teas, and wait for what Brian had determined with Eric and me, and and because of my knowledge of America through mainly Jim Lee who had Chris Montez, but then Bob Crew and my knowledge of Phil Specter, we signed them for the management and the records. Okay for those people who don't know, And this is becomes very important, especially in

the history of the Rolling Stones. It was licensed to the label. You owned the records. Anybody else in the UK have that deal at that time they did, so it was not incredibly uncommon. No, but because it was incredibly uncommon, but because I was younger than all the rest, it would get noticed. All the rest. You had a pecking order of Joe Meek, who did tell star Um who you could call, and he cut acts for Robert

Stigwood like John Layton and things like that. They did it, but they had actually learned it from a guy called Dennis Preston who had He'll be in that book Landsdown Studios, who did Chris Barber. Therefore Lonnie Donegan. They were all independent records. So once again you became a student of the business. How did you know this? When I would be doing pr for anybody from like Johnny Tillottson or

Brian Highland or ah Sam Cook and little Richard. I wanted to meet the managers man because they would travel with the acts and you just you know, I mean America was it for me from Saul Bass? The posters for those awful out of Parmeger films. The posters were better than the films. And you know, I mean anything ammunition and the knowledge that comes in all the instinct that gets developed by studying these things. You don't don't actually have to look at a book and read it

and get what's in the book. You just have to hold it and well, this is very well articulated. This is what people don't understand. They go to music schools, they think they can learn it. It's more about your sensibility. Match with a passion and eyes wide open, you can feel something. Especially all the greats in the music business are not educated people. There are people who operate on field. So in any event, you make a deal with the stones, and how long is that deal is supposed to run? Oh,

three or five years? Three to three? You have a lawyer who are or Easton just takes out the usual piece of and they say they're in okay, and you say you're gonna make them and what is the next step. The next step is the pub called the weather be Arms. They used to rehearse. And I just said to me, listen, pick out five things that you think of the most commercial. Plays them to me, and then we'll pick three and

we'll go and record them. And so there was Come On, which was a Chuck Berry b side Willie Dixon thing I want to be Loved. I can't remember the third thing. And so we went to Olympic Studios, which at that time was near Marble Arch and it was a four track studio with whose money? Eric's, yeah, you don't have any I don't have any money, Dar, And if I did it, I'd be wearing it. But let's be clear.

You were the producer, for want of a better word, Okay, Well, what would you consider your role to be at those No, I do concern I am the only one if they had gone through the system. Where As you know from the pictures you've seen from Abbey Row, you everybody gets what they deserved. The Beatles got what they should have In other words, they've got a very competent George Martin,

who had a musical experience as well. The engineer, Norman Smith knew about another kind of music, so all those elements could come into the Beatles when they needed it. What we had to get away from was the fact that acts before us, the English rockers and things like that, you'd have a three hour session. They wouldn't even let him listen back to what they've done. You know. It was just run like a shop steward, like a union thing um. And the engineer was a guy called Roger Savage.

They give me the kid an olympic um. We had the forty quid three hours, three hours are up at five to six, and I got no more money. Right? Recordings weren't that good? Right? I mean, but they weren't. They were less terrified with me than they would have been with a guy who might have been seven years older, who would have felt like fifty years old. Did you

give them any direction? No? Interestingly, when I eventually listened to the chuck Berry record, the vocals a spot, I mean, you know, I mean they you think, almost think that Mick was on the chuck Berry record sing in the backup right five six. I went, all right, that's it. Engineers says, well, we got to mix it, and I said, what's that And he explained to me about the four channels or the four tracks it was on. And my attitude was if I'm not here, I don't have to

pay for it. So I said, you do it. I'll come back in the morning. Um the and that was the first single. Then then Decker tried to fund me. Okay, well, well, well a little bit slower. So you cut these three tracks and then how does it become a single? What's the deal? Okay, we had gone to Decca because they turned down the Beatles and actually fact one of the A and R men, as you know, picked brian Pool

and the Trammelas because it was nearer. It was Daggingham, it was it was nearer than the Beatles being in Liverpool. But anyway, Dick Roe was a very bright man, the R man. There was no no He just said, yeah, I'll take it right on the least deal. But they tried, as you know what I mean, for the sake of

your viewers. The least deal is you know, you're got to get ten points or eight points to play with us opposed to three or four or two or three, and but he wanted to try and get them signed as a direct act, so he said, yeah, yeah, but the recording is not that good. We want to let one of our producers have a crank at it. And they picked a guy who they were giving the gold Watch two because he delivered a couple of pop things

to them from sixty two. Guy called Michael Barkley, who done Eden Kane, and oh god, I was at I'm going, I mean you. I couldn't turn around to the Stones and say play badly. But my version was marginally better enough that they then accepted the least deal and we were off to the races. In the first track, does how well? In the marketplace, it would have only gone to thirty eight, But I bought it from thirty eight to eighteen because you had forty five shops. It wasn't

as company. It wasn't a simple and complicated as American Paola. You had forty five. You didn't you weren't greasing DJs. You had forty five shops that reported to the four musical newspapers, and all you had to do was go in and buy three to five singles at five shillings and sevenpence each um in those shops on a Friday or Saturday. You know, it's basically the trick is making the record company fall in love with you once when you signed with them, and twice when they shipped the record,

and so the factories would go wow. We sold three records in Wellingborough, we sold three records in nor Willing Garden City and the Rolling the Rolling Stones fans, the small volume that they were at the time, were still so devoted that they knew we didn't have the money anyway to beat. They don't worry about and we'll send you a postluder, No, don't worry about it. We'll buy the records and so um a record. It goingly got to eighteen for one week. But that was the first dent.

That was the beginning and DECA was happy, yeah, and so then what what happens after that? Then we have to find a follow up, And the R and B basket of potential songs is getting smaller as people like the Searchers are doing sweets for My Sweet or the B side of the or once thing, which was amazing, you know, I mean in where you're finding your songs,

Don't throw your Love Away. It was a b side by the or once and we had nothing to record, and one song that I suggested to them, which they never got to actually working on, was the James Ray thing if you've got to make a fool of somebody, but somebody said no. Andrew Freddie and the Dreamers did that last week, so that was gone and it was getting and we were at a rehearsal studio in Great Newport Street off Leicester Square, and I just kind of think,

if you're not contributing to the energy of the room, leave and go to the bathroom and you're gonna cup of tea, do something like that. So I leave, I turn right as opposed to left, and I end up outside Leicester Square Tube station and getting out of a cab is John and Paul, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and as they knew me slightly from the months that we've been together, it was what's wrong, Andy, And I said, I haven't got a fucking song too record. With the

Rolling Stones, Oh no problem. They were great hustlers and in those early, very early days, let's go backstop for a second. With the Beatles, have made it without Brian Epstein. No, I mean, look at the pattern. What will they be? They were backing Johnny Gentle for the guy called Larry Pans who was the gay Colonel Tom Parker, with Billy Fury, Marty Wild, Joe Brown and all these acts. How would they've made it? If? I mean, what would if Ed

Sullivan hadn't been on holiday in Europe? Would he have known what anybody was talking about when he was offered the Beatles for the Ed Sullivan Show. But he had experienced it because on a holiday with his wife, they'd stopped in an airport and what is this pandemonium? Oh it's a group called the Beatles who are playing there.

So these things are all destiny, right, So in anything you're saying they're greed hustlers, Yeah, but hustlers for what it's like as we were still getting out of the trap that had been set for us by losing or winning World War two. The future if you're not if you weren't part of the elite anyway, right, um, you're any day you stay you know, Oh this is still working and it was right in America changed it. But to see then, because of our we all idolized America.

And you know, I could sit and look at a forty five record and the credits or the nat ntoff notes for Dylan or whatever, and just this could this would just go on forever. You know, it would just inspire you. So they hustled to see their names on records as writers of records. That wouldn't They weren't necessarily going to pay the rent. That was not the point. I mean, as you know and have said often, if you come in into this for the money, right, that's

not quite enough. If you turn out to be good at money, God bless you, right. And so they come down. I the moment I heard Brian Jones play the Bottleneck on this, I want to be a man. I just fucking died when we got to hit right, Okay, A little bit slo You run into them at the Lusts.

So they're getting out of a cab. They have just won their first song writing so they're clairvoyantly tipsy, okay, and they literally come straight to the straight to the studio, not oh I'll be there and tomorrow, No, no, then, and then they got a Nivea Novello Award, which is yours. They demonstrate the song and they pretend that, ah, they're

finishing it in front of us. Ringo had recorded it ten days before, right, um, and I, oh, lordy, you know, I mean it was the next apparition after having heard them for the first time. So I didn't even bother to produce the record. I led Eric, I went to Paris. This is my second nervous breakdown because I wanted a pair of forty five pound butter leather boots from Pierre Cardin. That would solve my problem. I had had. You see, when I worked from Mary quant I had had a

photographer who was about fifteen years older than me. When I was seventeen at Mary quants say you know, Andrew, you're an acoholic, right, And I said, Terry, I don't even don't know them. The photographer, I said, I don't even drink. He said no, but you've got the isms. Okay, um, and forty five pound boots are part of the isms. Okay, but you disappear just when the record is being made. Yeah, there's gonna be no problem, man, you know, I mean,

Eric could heard Feliciano could have done it. Oh, he could have done he could have done Feliciano could have done the video. It was that much of a breeze. I mean I heard it in the rehearsal room, um, and it was just magic. And how long did you go to France for four days? Okay, so you come back ready to work, ready to work, and Decca, here's the tracks. Excited they put it out and what Decca.

The same way as when they tried to shaft me out of the licensing deal, they would have meetings at ten thirty every Tuesday morning where they would decide what they were taking, what they were putting out. So even it's still you couldn't call something I got a hit. No, you would submit it and it would go into the Tuesday morning A and R meeting and then they would call you back. It was all very corporate. I didn't see record untill I saw the boot of Sonny Bono's

car or Red or Buddha. Those people not put it the ones with Comma Sutra. But and then they would say we're releasing it on November. It was all very but just because this is interesting, how long afterwards cut did it come out? See cut in um August six weeks so it comes out you buy a hit? Or is it an immediate hit. Um, we buy it. It goes to number ten. You're on the way from eighteen to ten. That's right, Yes, indeed, Hi everyone, this is Bob Lefts. If you stumbled upon this podcast on iTunes

or tune in, you may be wondering who is this guy. Well, my story of the story of my blog, The left Sets Letter, was told in episode one. Please check it out. If you like what you hear, subscribe to the podcast today and you'll hear my interviews with songwriters, performers, music industry and tech executives. First, also, I'm over the feedback. What do you like? What do you het? Email me at Bob at left sets dot com. And now more with Andrew lou Goldham. Now, in today's business, it's all

about the live business. So as a result of selling those records, does that increase the gigs? Does that change nothing? It's all about the record back then, it's all about Remember we have only ten twelve years out of where the big sales thing of them is still sheet music. Wow, yeah, I got you right. I mean, you know we're only fifteen years from the Moses with a piano on the back.

Not I was raised, but where some of our other friends, whether Who the Who and people like that, where the guys would go down the street with an upright piano on the back of the truck and be selling sheet music because the family entertainment we hadn't reached the time. What we were reaching the time of the home entertainment with the record player with that dropped the records and was like a piece of furniture exactly living room of consol.

But that was only middle class people who could afford those. Um. Poor people were still the pubs, the pianos and let's get drunk singing this. So but in answer to the sheet music was the one way to increase your gig money in that as as you know in England, there was an American hit like Unchained Melody, there would be the American L. L. Hibbler version, then there will be probably two English cover versions. And it's the one who got on the sheet music who could probably get five

pounds more for a gig. Okay, okay, So I want to be your man is out It has a level of success. Yes, do you know where you're going from there? No idea? So what do you end up doing? I by then, by that time um sharing rooms with the Mecan Keith and living with them, and um he Keith one day, Oh, now I know we need songs, right,

so you know you have to write. And my attitude was, well, if Mick Jagger can write postcards to his girlfriend and his mother when they're doing the book because they burned out to playing ballrooms as opposed to just R and B clubs and ballrooms are on your way to being

booked on a cinema tour. And the first cinema tour that they actually did was in October November as I want to be a man went up the charts for Don Arden, for Sharon's father, with the Evely Brothers, Bo Diddley and bottom of a Bill with the Rolling Sterns, Mackey Most And how was reception on that tour? It was, Keith says it was university. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't go to the places where I knew they wouldn't do well. Yeah, um, you don't need to see that, Okay,

they can learn their jobs exactly. And you know you're on the road with Boa Didley, with the Jerome and the Duchess, the Evely brothers who have basically got the semblance of the crickets back in them. And that's almost the first time we've ever heard somebody about to duplicate the records on stage. So it's it is university and it um in in the place that we were living in Wilston Um. I would tell them I've got to write a song. And now, of course the constitute of

time goes. I locked him up. I didn't lock him up. I just would take gather my laundry and go. I was going to walk back to my mother's house. Was still doing my elning right, you know, And then I would slam the front door and pretend I've left, and I would creep back up the stairs at thirty three makes free road to see if they were actually writing. Oh yeah, and they were all it was awful, you know, because the first stuff you write is suppy. It's always awful.

And so what is the first thing they write that you decide is worthy of recording, Well, it's something they didn't write. I'm such a believer that when I heard Keith just with the acoustic doing what was the B side again? Not fade away to me? Written it? Okay,

then how does it tell me? Come about around the same time, and you've got this wonderful process of where as they start to write, it's also got to pass muster with the rest of the band, even when we'd already got to hear to l a like with some of the songs like I'm Free or the singer not the song when they run it down in front of the other three stones, you don't know what I'm just gonna say. Oh fuck, you know you don't think we're gonna play that piece of ship, do you? But you know?

But staying with tell me for a second, that was the song that closed me, not fatal great, right? I remember them being on some New York TV show. Yes, that's exactly before uh with Bill Wyman. You know with the guitar they based almost vertical, etcetera. So you know why he did that. So he could stand on stage as he wasn't moving, call out his room numbers, mouths his room number. I'm just done for those people don't know.

He has almost a photographic memory and supposedly has had it, slept with more women than Mick and Keith could even dream. And what do you think his magic was? You know, it didn't affect me, So the other thing we would we were miss assistance. That's why question. You know, there's certain people you ask enough times, you know the door opens. You did take Ian Stewart, Austine, can you walk us through what your flaw process was there? That? How do

you know any of the Hurricanes apart from Johnny? Okay? Um four with the Beatles and the Shadows, because then the prototype of all this is the cliff Ridges back in group in terms of electric bass, in terms of the lead guitar, Hank B. Marvin, that's the benchmark cliff Ridge and the Shadows, the Shadows. Okay, therefore why were the Beatles in suits? Because the Shadows were the example. I didn't believe the public could count to five, but

you already had five. Six thinks that thank you correcting me? Yes, six was now putting you in Johnny in the Hurricanes territory. And apart from that, he looked like William Bendicks or Neville Brand, which was not acceptable. Ironically, you know, twenty years later if you put a picture of ste and Morrissey up, it's the same thing. But when you tell the band this, what do they say, Well, you've got this wonderful thing with time that I can now say.

I mean, for example, when I want to be your Man came out, there was no oh, this group was against the beat or so you know, I think there was none of that. That's part of Keith's rotation of Andrew knew that you know, we were going to be the opposite of the beat. Was no, I didn't look at this way. Can you imagine if I was having to talk to the Rolling Stones and I said, your greatest ability is that you unlike another group? I mean,

what is that saying? That's a negative? Exactly? And within Stewart, all I can say is the Stones didn't stop me because they were that hungry for success. That's their identity. Um I think the real hunger came after America, but probably as a result of Alan Klein. But we can get to that. Um it. I don't know, you know,

it's like, remember, kids are cruel. It's Lord of the flies, and so I don't even think you're gonna apply Were they that ambitious or were they you know that It's just you don't think when you're that age that I could be like, you know, destroying somebody that you weren't. Because they needed the van which he drove, which he drove, and Brian was the only one who's the idiot of the day when he's you know, don't worry, Stu will take care of you for the rest of your life.

You'll be an equal partner with us, was he No, of course no, of course not. But but he lasted longer than me. I mean I did have a moment in the eighties because his wife used to work for me, and I was staying at their house and I'm in the house by myself and he comes in after having played golf with Glynn Jones, and I thought, well, if there's ever going to be a moment, this is it. But he knew how it had worked. He played piano on the you know it was he played all the

blues pianos. He had the van that he had a wonderful run in the eighties tour when it was him and he and McLagan as the things. And he also was one of the few people who picked satisfaction. Okay, let's not jump too far ahead, so not fate away comes out? How far does that go on the chart? Number four? Number four? And then okay, now we're over, now we're over buying. We don't have to buy it up the charts anymore. We also in the interim and had an EP, which is do you want to explain

to them? Shall I think today they know what an EP is because EPs are down coming. Then an EP. There's only two acts in the world that had five songs instead of four on an EP, and it's US and Elvis Um Jail House Rock was and we um d P. We did a version of you Better Move On the Arthur Alexander thing and that went between um, in between yeah, or we'll tell me's on the album,

right um. So it's either after Not Fade Away or before Not Fade Away, probably after I think it's like April six that went to number eleven and the sixth in the singles charts, so they're paying a level double the price and it still goes to number eleven. And you better move on with Killer I mean him on a TV show with the French sweater and that to die for, right um. And next I'm in a panic. I don't know what to do except I decide maybe I can hold it back. That's while I've got to

give yourself thinking time. So I decided to release Little Red Rooster I figured that will hold it, you know, I mean after you know what what we doing next, slow it down, have a difficult record. It was too late. There were a hundred orders of a hundred eighty thousand, and it went straight to number one the first week. Little Red Rooster flies right up the charts, contrary to your expectation, and you're panicking again. No, got used to it. Okay,

exposure therapy. So what was the move after a Little Red Rooster? Uh? Where? Now starting to deal with America? Now? Are you pushing to get in the door. Are they clamoring to have you come? No, nobody's clamoring at all. I mean we were worse than the sex pistols, you know. I mean you had a core following, most of whom are following you because nobody else is well articulated. And in some instances the promoters didn't show. I mean, we're

playing in Sacramento. The prom that doesn't show. I don't know whether they went off with the money. We played about ten dates in Texas. We're playing with Bobby V and Diane Renee and some performing seals at a state fair. When you see that the promoter doesn't sure, I mean you get to the gig and there's nobody there, well that the actual promoter, your local Bill Graham has decided

it's not to turn up. So we left in the hands of assistance or what a lot of the gigs I mean we did okay in say Chicago, or okay with said Bernstein in New York. But once you got to the b places, nobody knew, nobody cared, nobody showed up, including the promoter. So there was no infrastructure today. And how do you get the television gigs through? We were with g c M. That's an agency's an agency and they so we would do Clay Cole. I'd rather done

Joe Pine. You know, I don't think what's my audiences, Joel Pie? But keep going well okay? Um? And because of I had done PR, made a point of doing PR for Phil Specter in around the time of Not Fade Away. So that's like he came to England like February of sixty four, right and went back on the plane with the Beatles. He arrived on the plane with them in jfk or than Kennedy idle world what it was right right? And um he was at the Not Fade Away session he was your note, did he weigh in?

He played the miracles? And did he tell you how to record it? No? I mean it's a mono. Studios have to ask interacting with Phil at that time it was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. Is this This is the defining time for Phil Specter's life? Is the article that Tom Wolfe wrote about And he then decided that's who he was, and that was the beginning of everything else. I don't really think River Deep, Mountain High not going to you know, he's he was already nuts,

you know. I mean it went to number one in England. You grab what you can so and he went to number ninety in America. Fuck it, Um, he was just a pleasure. He had a gleam in his eye that I didn't see again until the last prison picture in that whatever the medication he's on now it's working. And there was a picture out of him. Remember we weren't there, you mean, in his so called castle. We weren't there when it happened. And you're saying, you're implying what I'm

implying that the same as armad Urgin. As a certain age, you stopped going out and you can all right, Well, when you go out at that age, what you're going to end up with is troubled to start with. Well armed still went out to a good degree. Okay, yes, he certainly did went and he shouldn't have gone down those final steps at the Beacon and into a room with Keith. Well, okay, we can rewrite history. I mean, we could try to change history, but let's go on.

That's what I meant. I'm trying to say myself. No, no, that that's not that I misspoke. What I mean is, you know, it would be great if he didn't go down those stairs, but he did. He did. Is my point, Not that I'm saying that the facts are not correct. What I'm saying though, Okay, Okay, he was giving um he hadn't closed up. Now, when the stones are on tour in America, is that also when they go into chess studios? James was not fight away too? Really, yeah,

I called James j Pittney was in Paris. We had done we making Keith wrote the follow up to twenty four US to tell Usa, which was only really a hit, only went to fifty six here in England. It went just went top ten. So that was their first top ten song as writers. Then came Mary and Faithful and Pittney was in Paris and the Not Fadeaway session was

going very, very badly. Because when you've heard something in a room, like in the room that I lived with Keith, when you've heard a song someone play your room, play play to you in a room and you hear the whole thing. Now you've got to go and get it right, um. And it was not going well. And in this time, this time, for once, an audience helped get it to the point. Normally, an audience in the studio fucking kills

it right. So you got Pittney come in with Brandy Prospect to come in in a red corduroy coat and he played the maracas. Two of the Hollies were there, and Peter Meaden, who, as you know for five minutes, was the first manager of the Who before Cat Lamber and Christa. So there was a cheerleading section in this little room that's about the size. So it's room sound that makes the record. How long did it like? Tell Me Free you Love tell Me? The reason the guitar

sounds so great is because he's leaking into Charlie's bass. Drum. How long did it take you to get in our feet away? Two else? Which is a long time? Right, And there was so relieved that making seriously, Mick and Specter go outside and sit on the staircase and they come up with a little by little. So you tour America, you mentioned satisfaction. How do satisfaction come to be? He wrote it? Actually, Keith wrote it in the Scientology building

in clear Water. Now the rumor is that he woke up in the middle of the night and sung it into his tape recorders. He did, that is true. Yeah, And the scientologists supposedly had the room, the whole floor exercised too, to get rid of that whatever, so that we never had another satisfaction. So but the one amazing thing about Satisfaction is brilliant as that record is with the iconic sound. He cannot play it live. And I will tell you why. Okay, to start with, we'd attempted. Okay,

at the end of the first tour. The first tour was basically so fucking disastrous, right because we'd ended up in Texas. You know you don't we're ending on a bummer with bby V and the Seals, right, um, and I called Phil and I mean, I don't know why I didn't do it myself, but I asked him to do it. Get us into Chess studios because I need them going back to England with a smile on their faces. Can't have this. It was all your idea. And we go into Chess and they do thirteen things in two days,

including it's all over now. Because Murray the k had at a party of Bob Cruz had put the Valentino's record in my hand and said, Andy, if you cut with the boys, because he was the sixth Stone as well as the fifth beatle Um, you'll have a hit. And he was right right, and thirteen other things in case of the Highway, all those kind of things. And we did try satisfaction. Oh really, yeah, don't ask me where the tapes are. Abco don't have them, The Stones

don't have them. They're gone, right um. And it sounds like to me it sounded like the rooftop Singers, which of course is not satisfaction. But it's got that thing. So we get to l a but and very this is the only time that in my history, in my time with them, that we tried to cut something again. There was no nothing else. Everything else was done, done,

no more, you know, no returning to anything. And Jack Nisim whom we knew through Sonny Bernard, how did you know Sonny Berna through Phil Specter and Aspector sent Sonny Bono to meet us at the airport. Okay, it's wonderful the car the first time we saw records, the Caesar and clear records in the trunk. You didn't see records in England, right, What do you mean you didn't see records. Well, you know they could have been a Decca if you went had to go to Decca. You never saw the factory.

You know, they could have been doing baked beans, right, Um, and uh, we're in the middle. You know, most songs got twenty minutes, forty minutes to take the shape they were going to take. And Jack Nichi, well I communicated with you about this. Um took Keith down on one of the shops on sunset because we're recording it on sunset neither and he comes back to the first box

just in time. Serendipitous. Yeah, and as you as you know, this was not New sixty two sixty three Hodges and Frankie Lane with Jack when jack NISI mean doing arrangements and either they couldn't afford the horn section or whatever. He comes to fuss right, sounding more like muted trumbones and things, and Keate, of course, since then has gone own. Man. You know, like the record wasn't finished. I was going

to do horns with what Keith. We weren't even meant to be recording in America, let alone bringing union horn sections in. Okay, So he comes back with the fuzz box and plugging, and the record just comes together that it gets made. Okay, But to your point of why it's not good live, it's a difficult song to sing. And so what I did was with Brian and Keith put in a huge bed of acoustics that gave the voice somewhere to land that once it had landed, I

then took them down from ten volume down to three. Wow. I mean so he in other words, is you know he's singing the verses like a ballad. I can't do that on stage because there's no there's no acoustic guitars underlining it. Okay, you cut satisfaction, do you immediately know you have a worldwide yes? And how long until it comes out? It comes out in America first, which was slightly offensive at the time to England, but it did. Um, you just knew. I mean, it's like, but that's what

I tell people. People say, you know that when you achieve excellence, you know there's a smile on your face. That's it. Well, because it's actually having the appeal to you that a record you've loved that you've had nothing to do with, you know what I mean, it's it's on that level pretty previously records, whether it's Cathy's Clown or whatever it is, or it's records that have changed your life, and then suddenly you're in the studio and

part of whatever has made it. That's it. So the record comes out, does it totally change the landscape of the band in the business? Yeah? Goes by then we're already seven or eight five no winners September August, September, already four or five months in with Alan Klein. So tell us how you hook up with a um. Alan Klein represented Mickey Most in England and you've got Mickey Most with uh, he's a millionaire, okay, sir? Right for a week at least, and I want I don't want

to talk to Alan about the Stones. I want to talk to about I want about the media. I need money for it. Okay, just for those don't know. So the Stones are going and you decide to start Immediate how Immediate Records? Because I was fed up dealing with the record companies. I was probably smoking too much. I rather wanted to control my aunt destiny without having to leave the office. I didn't want to have to keep

going and I was basically keep pitching. So you go to Alan looking for money, No, I go ask wanting to get distribution. That should I start the record company? Obviously, in the back of my mind, I had what else can we do? But I'm not going to walk in and say I need help. But he smelled it. Um. He actually thought Eric Easton controlled everything, um because he'd

done his homework, had been doing his homework already. I was saying I need um the same way as he placed Mickey Most so well, and they were well, you know, he didn't just do a deal for Mickey Most. They were placed hermis hermes was on MGM the Animals. He was stuck on that one because that had to end up on wherever it was originally, and then the other one he had three hits at once national teams. Yeah, okay, um, and I just wanted help that way. Eventually he started

pitching me. I said, you better pitch making keys. If they say yes, we'll get into bed. And what was the goal of getting to bed? What was his sales pitch? Um, I don't remember what his sales pitch was. I know what I want it and what I wanted is I was already in trouble with Eric Euston. The two or three years was nearly up with Decca. Eric Easton wanted out.

He wanted to do a deal where they were going to get six hundred thousand dollars of their own money and the money that was going to come because as you know, we sold records in England by now, in a very short period of time, we built up a lot of royalties abroad, not America, but in Europe that don't have to be paid for another twelve months. So we're very famous. But no petrol, right, And um, I

kind of knew by instinct. I mean, obviously I'm articulating it better today, but the street instinct told me if I don't get Eric Easton handled, I could be in trouble because he had the same way as Allan once said to me, you know how I managed to take advantage of you, which years later was an incredible sentence to say to say, of course, And the real thing was that because he was thirteen years older than me. Now is that all there is? You know? No, right?

But and we were And so you've got this wonderful destiny of time where we've met Alan. Then we cut satisfaction. Then he's got that to run with in terms of the advantage factor of him of things that had nothing to do with the money that there was nothing to do with. Is that London Records was really epistle. It was run by an old war buddy of Sir Robert Lewis. He was down on st and tenth and they had Willie Mitchell. But so what and how do we get

rise above? When the Beatles wrong? Capital a man for man or whatever, you know, they're on a division of that or Ascot whatever the label was. And so and we're not even down in the boondocks. But it's so the energy of Alan and Alan repeating the same tricks that we didn't know he'd done with Sam Cook, by taking billboards in Times Square and things like that, add um erasmutas and flashed to it that we couldn't I

mean I as you know the first album. One of the selling points of the first album was that it had no title on it in England because of communication and they fucked me. They put England's Newest Hit Makers of course, right, so you know um and that. But of course the key then was now we need to follow up. Okay. So Alan's goal was to get enough cash and a better deal so you could squeeze. I don't know what his goal was, Okay. He wanted what he wanted. I wanted what I wanted. Eric Easton was

settled five years later. You know, Um, he wanted the stunts. You had any idea you were getting in bed of the devil. No, you can remember we're only, um, twenty years after the war. Americans are still terrific, okay, So you get in bed with that. He was American because one of the one of the right. The point is, Bob that when we got to America and sixty four, suddenly we're in a country where we're not in a

dirty business. I have to digest that. Well, Um, all of them included Dick Rowe, who was good because he's not the man who turned down the Beatles. To me, he's the man who signed the Rolling Stones. But they were all hoping we'd go away like that, would go back to Manta Varney and Davy Crockett hats and knacking cold, just like people robbing to get back to rock from hip hop. They were, so let's breathe heavily. Well, did it go well with Alan for a while? Okay? And

then when do you start to realize there out for you? Oh? No, it where to start with? There is a point of realization where we haven't got what Alan promised, but we haven't got the time to do anything about it because well, um, we supposedly we're going to continue to own our own records. Um. It's the greatest three card Monty trick of all time. If you say to somebody that, um, yeah, you're gonna own your own masters. It's going into this company and

it's the same name as your British publishing company. If it's got limited stuck on the end of it, you say, oh limited, you know that's English. Like we we had everything we wanted for three days, and what happened after those three days? The Stones were advised by Alan that they couldn't own it or even the money without horrendous tax consequences, so he would and he'd pay them out over the next twenty years. They and you did not understand, of course not. This is where do you know how

I managed to take advantage of you comes in? Although I heard from his nephew that you had positive words to say about Alan at his funeral. Always, man, if you're stuck with somebody for fifty years and responsible for them putting the food on your table, he'll kill you if you hate them. He was always a very attractive person. How does the sun set on your relationship with the Stones? Um?

Me taking too much drugs? Me? As Keith put in his book, while we and Andrew liked the same music what and wanted the same goals in other words, singles I'm still not into money wars. I'd rather watch Lionel Richie. I mean, I want hits. So when it came to that stage where suddenly the public taking drugs, which was here you've got the underbelly of Vietnam in England, we had the unrest that was coming up in Europe. Whether suddenly the equivalent on FM market and suddenly you can

make albums I was making up. I mean one of the great things through Between the Buttons Aftermath, and that is the Stones are completely seamless. One of the things that places them above forget the Beatles, they're in the league of their own right, but all the other stuff where that's the animals Man from Man is the other bands were daiging to be commercial for one cut like for Your Love by the others, they were not seamless in that we all our stuff EPs or LPs was

all as good as the singles. So the last album you were involved with word Between the Buttons. Many people consider that to be the best Stones record. That isn't necessarily my opinion, but people people see that as a great record in an era that was sixty six right, thank Ray Davis for it. Think well, it's it's gotta it's it's a strange thing where mcinkeith are right thing about England when they're not in England, and it has some of that flippancy. Flowers was the last one I

put together. Um I left in the middle of Satanic match just um. Basically I mean the same way as I got to the Stones say forty eight hours ahead of the rest of the world. I left before I was asked to, and I thought, you realize this was self indulgent. You thought it was going off the deep end,

and you said, I'm done. I couldn't. This was the first time that we were recording back in England apart from overdubs, and that they were arriving in the studio and cutting the tracks and then writing the songs on top of the tracks. And I couldn't get behind that. I wasn't. I do dreams, not money. I didn't sit there and think, oh, I better negotiate my way out of this. I just was. It was three weeks of hell. If you can't contribute, if you want to be a vegetable, okay,

or you're gonna sit there. So there was no cart just this of I want to stay in this but from base for my bank account. No. But what was the status of immediate at that point was small faces were just coming together. That we had one hit with hang On Sloopy that we got from Burt Burns. Um. We had a very expensive number one that they could

produce with Chris Farlow about of time. Um. It was draining blood, but and so it was getting to the end because I couldn't keep financing it with my Stones money, because that was coming to an end, or sort of coming to an end, you know. I mean We're still here, but it and we hadn't got the Small Faces. That was very expensive too, because that kind of involved twenty five grand of a paper bag for Don Arden to find a way out of breaking the deal they had

with Decca and and the Small Face as well. You know, Um, they were great in the studio, but they were not a band. They were a group you could never there was no reliableity with them on stage. They were children always Keith like when he said about Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy's great, but the kids he plays with, right? And did you put Humble Pie together? Yes? Well, no, I had a choice. Steve Mary was had had enough of Ronnie Lane and

the Small Faces and the other three. Um, he wanted Peter Frampton, so he knew Frampton and Frampton as a hot guitar, and so we couldn't have gone with whatever the Faces were going to become. And humble Pie. Humble Pie was definitely an adventure man, you know what I mean? You okay, they it became realized after media went down with the Anthony and A and M. But I thought, here's another great shot. You can't get in the way of these people, except when Steve Mary got in the

way of himself. So what year do you basically close up shop op and immediate okay? And then you're thinking, what are you so high on drug? Because you don't even know what you're thinking. Oh, I know what I'm thinking. I have the same now economic problems as the Rolling Stones do. And we've all got to leave England and they go to France and I go to Connecticut Wilson of course, very close to where I grew up, six

or five Ridge Raild Road. And you continue to produce records and make deals, and you do that for about another ten years um on that more than I do. Had this interesting segue with Rare Earth Records, right produced stuff with them because well after they had get ready, they thought they're gonna have a white label, and so all the old white people who had had the like Bob Crew and it was there. I was there, Bobby

Darren was there all producing stuff for Rare Earth. So now fifty years later, with this perspective, what do we learn have fun getting it done. I had fun getting done. If you you know this is a cliche question, I'll ask it anyway, if you had to do it over again, would you do anything differently? Absolutely nothing. I mean to me, the life is simply that comes out of Uterus and location. Where you know who drops you and where they dropped you, right,

I mean, it's simple. You can't you you're the worst thing you can do is think you were responsible and in the time you have left. What anything you want to say any autumn, Bob, it's an I'm not saying it's over, okay, but any goals, any achievements, any dreams yet unfulfilled. I'm very lucky that, with all due respect to the Stones, once I got over the drug and alcoholism thing, every day is just as exciting as any day was with them, because life brings you that if

you fucking embrace it and kiss it. I mean, Pulaski could have been the most depressing, depressed guy who I mean what he went through, But the thing I learned from him was my guard he went through. I mean, you know, Narny dead at eleven Poland and as you couldn't meet a more positive fucker in your life, and it's your choice. And so you wake up every day and you say, let's see what the world brings me. No, let's see what I can take from the world for me.

If I don't take care of myself, there's absolutely no way I can take care of anybody else. And so a little bit more concretely, what might you take for yourself? I'd be grateful, Um, I would pace myself. I would make sure I got enough sleep, and I wouldn't kill mysel I'll trying to get anything done because it's going to get done, or it's not going to get done. You're just watching yourself do it. Do you think that the landscape of both culture and politics always maintains the same,

or are we in a worse position better position? You've got the brainwashing of technology that if you actually are one of the unemployed or the underemployed or self employed, and you got time to watch this crap on television, you will notice, like vance packet and the hidden persuade us, that you're getting the same loop of information every thirty seconds,

and you're being brainwashed. It's suppressed into absolutely nothing. For those who care to remember, the year we came to America, you had Lyndon Johnson, you know, I mean, come on, you just haven't got the barrage of it going out. But he did his press conference from the bathroom when we arrived in America. Uh. One of the many possibilities was that he could have killed Kennedy. Yes, I mean it was a different arab because we didn't know that much.

I mean, now we know where everybody is and everybody's reachable seven. You know, we didn't know that f DR basically could walk. And you know, it's a very interesting time. Of course, you know, you live through We've We've lived long enough to see a couple of revolutions where music drove the culture, then technology drove the culture. And it's interesting is these changes occur that people believe that things

don't change. Music will always survive. It's important. But just like you talk about Mary Kwan and Carnabie Street and all that other stuff, they have these peaks and then the peak becomes something else. It I agree with you, but it also has something to do with your age and where you're coming from. I made a point in April this year last year to go and see Justin Bieber in Bogata. I knew he would be great. You cannot. I hate to say this because it's gonna come out

of the time by but Justin Bieber is great. Thank you. I mean, II the way I do this and the way I uh, you know the recent tracks which you are now two years old. I was listening on Spotify. I'm hiking in the mountains and I'm just clicking through the tracks. I have a little click around my Santahiser headphones and also like I go, what is this? And I gotta pull out my phone. You know, those happen to be great tracks. I mean, it's Justin Bieber. What

can you say so great? It's like a great movie. Well, you see when he was in Colombia, that's where he picked up this next record, this panamz that he just picked it up. I know the people he went into the studio in Colombia. He did it in twenty four hours, he got so he did it when he was there on tour. Yeah, okay, so this is someone in a And also the other gift, which I didn't allow for because I had not seen him live, is when he

and you can't rehearse this. I mean, you're born, You're born with this and it goes with the rest and everything. When he spoke to that audience, it was like Doobe Gillis meets Elvis. Okay, it was magic. It had as much volume and intensity as all the records of the songs and what he was doing on stage. So if you have a few we have four hours now, would you read a book, would you go for a walk, would you watch a movie? Would you watch television show?

Would you listen to you know, listen to music? What? What? What? You don't listen to what? I go to see it and you don't listen because I will listen if I'm not choosing because you think music is best performed live, or you get an um. Uh. You know, look when I got here two days ago, we're in Los Angeles. Okay,

it's weird. Uh in that my place, you know, I mean coming here six four and it's our c A and it's Liberty Records, and it's sunset, it's this um And now all that used to be inside a building. You were creating music, you were making it, you were still outsiders. Now it's wall to wool, restaurants, everything, and invariably in some music that I've made, or music that I'm familiar with that was made at the time. If I can hear in a supermarket, I'm gonna play it

at home. I'm gonna be at Rock Hudson showing his old movies. What I come across, I will let in. But the reward is seeing stuff live. And that's a gentleman who lived through it and is still alive. Andrew, so great to have you. We could go out for hours. I mean, we'll have to do it the next time you're in Los Angeles because we have so much more to talk about a little deeper into those Stones albums

and immediate and your era in Connecticut. Never mind, we didn't even get into the scientology thing, which but thanks so much for being Thank you for being so well. Until next time, It's Bob left Sex with Andrew lou Goldham on the Bob Left Sets Podcast. That wraps up another episode of the Bob Left Sets Podcast. I know there are a lot of podcasts out there. Hell, you can do so many other things with your time, so

I really appreciate you joining me. Be sure to check out previous episodes if you missed them, and don't forget to subscribe on tune in, Apple podcast, or where where you get your podcast