felicitaciones . que pena no se aviso a foristas que viven en buenos aIres o cerca como cris stone .
seguro todo salio muy rapido .
me hubiera encantado preguntarle TEMAS NO STONES como dylan desconocido en UK , steve marriot y el juicio con los verve .
felicitaciones otra vez .
SALUDOS
entrevista a andrew en el 2003
'What would we talk about?' Oldham says of the Stones Why has the musical maverick who discovered the Rolling Stones succumbed to the siren song of Vancouver? ALEXANDRA GILL tells all
By ALEXANDRA GILL
Tuesday, July 8, 2003 - Page R1
Andrew Loog Oldham strides into the room, his head tossed back in a regal rock-star pose that still commands attention. The music maverick who discovered the Rolling Stones at a dingy little club in 1963 and taught them how to turn their errant ways into an empire, has arrived once again.
At a restaurant, this time, in Vancouver -- the city he and his Colombian film-star wife now call home. For nearly 30 years, Oldham has lived off Rolling Stones' royalty cheques in Bogota, Columbia. But earlier this year, he and Esther decided that the country's political situation was getting a little too hairy. So they nailed the carpets in their penthouse down to the floor and hightailed it to, of all places, Vancouver.
Where else would a legend from London's Swinging Sixties, now purified by the Church of Scientology and as obsessive about his health as he once was about drugs, choose to go?
Even before he began managing and producing what would become one of the world's greatest rock bands at the age of 19, Oldham epitomized London's Swinging Sixties. By the time he "found" the Rolling Stones at the Crawdaddy Club in the London suburbs, the charming bon vivant had already dressed boutique windows, worked for fashion designer Mary Quant and been run out of France for his involvement in what he now calls "a tawdry, but innocent kidnapping."
Oldham spent less than five years shaping the Rolling Stones into bad-boy superstars, but it's still acknowledged far and wide that the golden-era soundtrack they made together laid the groundwork for the group's enduring popularity.
You can check out his story for yourself, in the first episode of The Rolling Stones -- Just for the Record, a five-part documentary series that begins airing on Bravo! tonight. But just in case anyone forgets to mention that it was he who locked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a small room until they had co-written their first song (As Tears Go By), Oldham has already published the first two parts of his autobiography (Stoned and 2Stoned ). He plans to begin writing the third, and final, volume in Vancouver.
At 59, Oldham still looks the part of a classic Svengali. He has arrived at West Restaurant with his blue shades pulled down, wearing a khaki safari shirt, crisply pressed, unbuttoned and casually tossed over a T-shirt and faded blue jeans. He walks towards the table, head held high, his beautiful wife at his side, a frantic photographer in hot pursuit.
Oldham seems positively chipper, having just been to see the Yard Birds at a local club the night before.
"It was fabulous," he enthuses. "The sound was impeccable. They had little tricks that enhanced already good vocals. And what was most endearing was the singer, who wasn't an original Yard Bird, but when he introduced an old song, he talked as if it were his, as if he were in the original group."
As with all the entertaining stories this natural raconteur tells, this one does have a Rolling Stones subtext -- but the punch line entirely belongs to him.
"When I found the Rolling Stones, they were playing at this club in Richmond. And when they departed from that gig, the Yard Birds became the band that took over. Cut to the guy who ran the club. He, not having got to manage the Stones, ended up managing them."
Club land, continues Oldham in his distinctive stream-of-consciousness storytelling style, has definitely changed. "People were coming up to me last night and handing me vials of ginseng, saying 'Here you go, mate. Thank you for your records. We thank you for what you've done.'
"Vials of ginseng! Which is a much healthier change than what I would have been looking for a couple of dozen years ago. And nice that everyone was walking around with vials of ginseng."
Hmm. Makes you wonder what they're mixing it with, I say.
His peers over his sunglasses, eyes open wide, as if to say 'Exactly!' "After I did one, I went, 'Hey wait, you're on the West Coast of the Americas, never mind Canada. What are you doing?' " Exactly! What the heck is Oldham doing here?
Vancouver apparently "called" him for a number of reasons, one of which gets lost in a meandering story about being pulled over for speeding by a Colombian police officer who didn't read his Colombian driver's license very closely and assumed the pale-skinned gentleman with a British accent and graying red hair must have been on vacation from British Columbia.
Then there's the fact that Vancouver is only 2½ hours from Los Angeles, where their son is going to college. "One would never insult one's son by living in the same postal code," he explains.
From Vancouver, he can still continue his long-distance relationship with a Scottish band called V-Twin (he's going to Glasgow to record their third album in August). And of course, Vancouver seems to be an ideal place for Oldham to work full-time on an obsessive health regime that began with the Church of Scientology's gruelling 40-day purification cleanse back in 1995. Oldham says he couldn't care less about Scientology's bad rap. "Most successful things get a bad rap. I mean, the Rolling Stones get a bad rap, don't they?"
Work, he explains later, is the real villain of modern life.
Oldham and Esther kicked their cocaine and alcohol addictions together. They now jump-start their bodies with Contact Reflex Analysis ("the Rolls-Royce version of reflexology"), daily Pilates, eating according to their blood type, the Hay Diet and the baggie of vitamins that includes Liver Plex, garlic, ginger, Omega 3s and rhiadola -- "new to the charts, very good for the nervous system."
Despite their flight, Oldham says they are as committed to Colombia as they are to their health. "I can't speak highly enough of that country. When I got there in 1975, I thought I was in heaven. It gave me a second chance here on Earth to repair the fabric of my cloth. For the first 12 years, until MTV arrived and the world changed everywhere, I lived there anonymously in Columbia. Nobody knew who I was, except for the fact that I was married to Esther. Maybe a few rich people from Miami knew who the Rolling Stones were. But it wasn't making an impact on the kids."
That anonymity didn't help his lifestyle much for the first 20 years. It only helped him sustain his habits in seclusion.
"When you're bombed, you don't really object to real bombs," he explains. "You see a tank on a corner, and what impresses you is how big the wheels are -- not the real issue of why the tank is on the corner."
His Colombian memories will be included in his third book. Yes, he knew some shady folks. "It was impossible not to. I wouldn't call them criminals. They were just people who had an adventurous sense of retail."
The Stones have not officially co-operated with Oldham's books, and he hasn't had much contact with them since he left them in 1967. "What would we talk about?" he asks. But he doesn't hold any grudges, or so he claims. And he certainly doesn't find it at all odd that they're still chugging along after all these years.
"A musician is entitled to work. It's his way of life. I mean, before they tour, all the questions are: Are they too old to tour? Once they're on the road, that goes out the window. They're selling tickets. It's not like nobody wants to see them.
"When you're 21 or 25, you're invincible. You laughed at people over 50. So the reality is, why should I stop? One can sometimes question the circumstances under which they play, but that's their choice."
The stadium thing, is a bit of a "spectacle."
"They do clubs, occasionally, as warm-ups, but it's Christians and lions, isn't it? Look at Toronto. The world is going to be very satisfied -- they're going to get the Rolling Stones and Justin Timberlake on one bill," he says, grinning slyly.
"He didn't make it over the border with Christine Aguilera, now Toronto can have the pleasure. Maybe he can do David Bowie's part in Dancing in the Street."
