2Stoned

'Playing God was just my sideline, actually. Getting records cut was my principal business.' In 1963, in a south London hotel, Andrew Loog Oldham discovered an unknown blues band called the Rolling Stones and became their manager and producer. 2Stoned is the remarkable story of how his radical strategies transformed them into the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath. An utter original, a svengali figure and a hustler of genius, Andrew Loog Oldham had, by the age of twenty-one, made the Stones, made a million and revolutionised the music business. Reveted and reviled in equal measure, he had a flair for outrage, manipulation, and success. Working with the Stones, he had the vision to insist that they write their own songs. Working the media, he engineered a permanent storm of publicity around the band and ensured that their notoriety preceded them wherever they went. With one eye on making records in the studio and the other on fanning the flames of hysteria that greeted their appearances, Andrew Loog Oldham masterminded the ceaseless recording and touring that produced a string of seminal tracks and propelled them, within three years, to global fame.
In his first book, Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham recorded his early years and the meeting with the Stones that changed all their fares; by 1967 the Stones would have achieved worldwide celebrity, been arrested in a drugs raid and split with the manager that made them. 2Stoned is the story of this adventure in the words of the man who led it and those of a number of his contemporaries. Nik Cohn, Marianne Faithfull, David Bailey, and Pete Townshend are among those who contribute to this compelling portrait of the golden period when Andrew Loog Oldham and the Rolling Stones were invincible.