Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Andrew Loog Oldham

Transcript

Andrew Loog Oldham · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: guest today is literally the legendary. They say legendary about
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, but this guy is legendary. Andrew
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Luke Oldham. I remember getting email the first time about
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the turn of the century, said Andrew Luke Oldham. Saw
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: him on the back of all those Stones album covers.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It's like, great to have you here, you a thank you,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: good to be with you again a second round. Right, Well,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: as I say, I went to bo Guitar in September
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of thirteen and I knew that Andrew was there and
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: we connected. That was the best place certainly I've been
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to this century, maybe ever in that you really feel
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: vibrantly alive in Bogata. Tell the audience how you ended
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: up in bo Gutar. I went in at the end
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy four in London to Saister that was
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: showing a musical comedy called John Paul, George Ringo and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Bert written by a guy called William Willie Russell. I
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: had no idea what it was about. One probably because
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the condition I arrived in at the theater, and too
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: that the condition was accelerated by they're being this lady
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: in front of me in the theater who had now
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: been married to forty one years. But I was just
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: all I can tell you about that show was her
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: neck and we spent time together. I was living in
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: New York at the time, and she came to visit
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: me in New York. She went back to Columbia and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I followed her. Okay, and since we're on Columbia, what
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: is the situation with the fark. Supposedly peace was made
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: in Colombia? Is it really peace? But those don't know.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: There's been decades of a revolutionary army terrorizing, closing her
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: unrest in Colombia, but supposedly piece has been made. I
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: wouldn't call them revolutionary. They're basically businessmen and fatigues because
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: their main business over the last thirty years was drugs.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: They took over the drug business once Escobar really was
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: killed and the other towns couldn't stand up to the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: pressure of the FARC and the e l N, the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: other ones who they've still no peace with, and kidnapping
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and drug expectation was their main business for the last
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: thirty years. The president that we that we have Santos
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: once he got his Nobel Prize. Man, you know he's
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: just left Columbia. He will just leave Columbia to sort
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: it out. So you've got um anywhere from twelve to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand men or kids. I would think the kids
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: are more the danger because if you've just been raised
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that you don't know much more about life than to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: rape and pillage. What are you going to be an
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: uber driver? So they've got that that's going to take
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and the amount of money that has been put aside
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: in a country that is just it's the fifth world now, Bob,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. It's not the third world anymore.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So it's gotten worse where the rest of us have
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: pulled ahead. You think you've pulled ahead, Well, this is
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: another conversation. I'd be glad to have another podcast what's
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: going on in our country. But my point is for
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: those most people have not been to Columbia, never might
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: have been to South America. You know, we're Americans. We're
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: gonna have passports. So the question would become is now,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in the last twenty years and now with peace with
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the FARC, generally speaking, is the economy better or worse?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's the one thing that's common with the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: rest of the world is the the middle classes being
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: suppressed out of any remaining pesto or dollar they've got,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: which is going on everywhere. So it's got better for
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: those who had it better anyway. So it's literally just
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: like the rest of the world exactly. I mean, we
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: looked better because you know, we we were for a
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: while until your recent change, Donny, Donny, um it, we
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: were the only friend that North America had with I mean,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we were the only everything else was, you know. I mean,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: but Better's waiter at one time changed his clock half
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: an hour, so it wasn't But they're all we we
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: were the one that America was going to because you
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: can all spend so much money and give us so
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: much money for supposed to be eradicating drugs. I've never voted,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: so I'm pretty cynical about the whole system. Well, then
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I have to ask this, as they said, we're talking
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: all these political things, but what is your view of
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Brexit in the European Union. Um again, you've got David
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Cameron behaved exactly the way that our president. Okay, I've
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: done it, I got my Nobel Prize. I'm off he
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: did the Brexit thing. He left and isn't that to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: two years ago at least? Um, it's uh, it's a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: trrendous mess. I think it would be better if they
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: didn't do it. And I think that could that could happen.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: It would be interesting. I was actually heying with Billy Bragg,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: who's very political. He thought, might I want to read
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: his book? Full book? Yeah exactly, he sent it to me. Um,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: But before our audience, I don't want to know who
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: you are, okay, okay, your most legendary for the Rolling
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Stones immediate records, and it goes on for Tony Calder recently.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Yes he did. He was your partner in the media,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Yes he was. Okay, But as I say, you are
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: born in what yearto so through the fifties whereas music
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: your focus or did you? Were you an opportunist? How
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: did you end up getting into the music scene in
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the early sixties through fashion? Because I mean, I mean
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I left school to sixteen. The first job was at sixteen. Um,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and I wish Sony more kids could leave school to sixteen.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You know, education as a crime. But we won't go there.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Oh I would like to go there. I think you know,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: education is basically to keep people in line as opposed
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: to be creative exactly exactly, you know, to go it's
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: not going to work at six is criminal. But then
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: not all as blessed as we who were kicked out
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: and had to get on with right. But when I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: did that in the first place, I wanted to work
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: where the carpets were thick and the teacups were thin.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And I landed up with a lady called Mary Quant,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: legendary fashion designer who had a sort of karmas such
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: or redbird records of fashion that worked in that her
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: husband was the hustler. She cut and did the clothes,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the husband hustled and sold. And they also had an
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: old school friend who made surely utpaid old school interesting euphemism. Anyway,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: it worked, and I had a great education. The pop
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: that the fashion business was the book what was your
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: gig with? And you just showed up and say I'll
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: do anything that you hired you. I mean, I just
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that's the place. I don't want to knock on one door.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I don't like this committee business even now. I think
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: you've got to pick where you want to go and
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: go there. Okay, Well, what was your spiel. That's such
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: that she hired you. You know, I can never remember
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the actual moments of because I'm so fucking nervous going
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: in like that. I know it works, but I can't.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Somebody else in the room would have to tell you
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: what my picture. Okay, you go into a zone when
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the whole situations. In any event, she does hire, she
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: hires me. I last there for eight or nine months
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: because uh, and we're in what year? This is sixty one?
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: And I then start taking a job in the nights
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: working at the original Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, and my
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: job there was hanged. Was that another thing where you
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: said I have to work at Ronnie Scott's. Oh, yes,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: because I've been given a great education of music when
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I was about eleven by a guy next door. During
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the years where you could sit for a guy next
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: door and not get molested. Is that because the it
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: is because they didn't molest you, or the cops weren't there.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: You didn't have the we're all stars, even though we're
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a star molester or we'll start you know, the rights
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: of entitlement, where you think you've got the right to
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: intrude on somebody else. There was less of that. Although
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the other thing, of course is I mean, we know
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that's against the law, but being gay was against the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: law anyway, right, but you can't even touch another kid
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: if you put it, you know, it's it's amazing world
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: we live in, but any even you're with your next
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: door neighbor. And I and so when I was eleven,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: he ran me through everything from U uh a'ma jamal
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: to Bob Crosby and the you know, the Brother of
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Being Crossed, the Bobcats, the the Red Novo Um. The
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: one thing that really made a dent on my mind
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and on Lou Adler because he used it as the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: prototype for Carol King was George Sharing with Peggy Lee
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: live in Chicago. It's really I mean, I don't know
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: that record. I certainly know those people, beauty and the beat. Okay.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: If I tracked that record down, I'm gonna hear Tapestry. Okay,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: sound it's there, Okay, it's there. Um great, especially with
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the instrumental Sat and Sat and Doll on it, which
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I think it's George Sharing, Quintant and Peggy. Um. So
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I went to work for Ronnie Scott's on the Coats,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I got the Pakistani food from over the road as
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: they didn't have a food license. Uh. Then I kind
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of got greedy and I went to work the midnight
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to five am shift at the Flamingo Club, which was
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: owned by a guy called Jeff Krueger who had Amberg records,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: but he rented the place out that night to the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Gunnell brothers, who might have heard of from Chris Farlows
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: money and all those kind of pis And I served
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the whiskey and the coat bottles because if the cops
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: came in and he looked innocent and looked like he
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be serving scotch um, And so I did that.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Then basically I had my first nervous breakdown. Um, the
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: others don't count. The first one is the most important. Okay,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: So your how old when you have your first nervous breakdown?
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Sixty one? I'm seventeen. And how do you know you're
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: having a nervous break Were you've taken on too much?
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Too much? Three jobs in a week is And do
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: you feel building you're building up to it or you
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: just freak out it point building up? Then I wouldn't
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: call it freak out. Then you decide travel will be
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the cure. So I went to the south of France
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and it's interesting, kind of like the Rod Stewart's song,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: you know, every picture tells the story. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and I kind of I ended up there, and it's
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: interesting being back in this location because in a restaurant
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: up there this past spring, I was able to say
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: hello for the first time to Johnny Halldy really before
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: he passed. Yes, because when I was seventeen it was
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: a very good year and I worked in Jouan Lapin
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: at an English tea room, serving tea of course um
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: and at the end of the block he was already
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: in a white tux playing the casino and he was
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: only nine months or eight eight months older than me,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: and I went, wow, ye first you go you don't
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: go something's wrong, but you go, well, there's hope man,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, the other rockers like Eddie Mitchell
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and Dick Rivers were playing cafes and I was attracted
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: to all. As bad as French rock is, I was
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: attracted to it because it wasn't as personally bad as
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: English rock was at the time. Cliff Cliff, Richard, Billy
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Fury right, you know, they were only they only had
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: an American accent when they sung um, and so I
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: preferred the French New Wave in the movies, I preferred
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: their new rook you know, and all that with Johnny Hallity,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and I'd seen him a couple of times in the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: two thousand's in Marseille, which was a town that when
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I was seventeen I couldn't go to. It was too rough.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Then well, in my job, I didn't have a job,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I was begging off English tourists literally begging, oh yeah,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: begging in that the pitch went into okay. Mainly the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: ones who ended up in those areas and south of
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: France were the Jewish world to do out of London,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: who knew how to get money out for the holiday
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: because you're only allowed to take fifty pounds away. And
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: so you remember when News to pay As or magazine
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: used to arrive rolled up. Of course, well the money
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: would go in there and it would actually turn up
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: at your hotel. Wow, okay, and I would put on
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: an accent that appealed to them, which I'm moving into now.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And I would excuse me, but my allowance hasn't arrived
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: from my mother. And I wonder if you could lend
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: me if I could borrow ten or twenty francs, and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: if you tell me which hotel you're in, And I did,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: depended on whether I thought they were worth paying back,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: but the rest of it went to my water skiing lessons. Okay,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: so you're in the south of France and you meet
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Johnny Holiday. No, I don't meet him. I saw him
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: from Afar and you got inspired. And then how long
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: are you in France before you return to the island
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: until the season runs up? And I'm now I got
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: involved in a slight Mickey Mouse type of kidnapping there
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: where I ran into a photographer who recently passed a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: great guy called Philip Town's End, and he said, look ah,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: if you will keep this heiress locked up, she's still around.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I can't remember his lady something right. We can sell
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the stories to the stringers of the newspapers like the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Daily Mail stringer and the Express stringer and things like that.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: And the girl was willing, so it wasn't really It's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: all scared, of course, but unfortunately her father had the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: powers to install a scheduled d notice on the newspapers,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: which was is the English way of of Uh, a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: newspaper can't print something it's against the public interest. At
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: that time it was used for government thing, but he
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: used it so we couldn't say let the girl go
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: or she We said it's over. And by November with
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the season, I'm going around knocking on the doors of
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the stringers who didn't buy the stories, getting cash from them,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and then from an English vicar, I let the English
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: take my passport away pay for me to go back home,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and I started again. Mary quant said I can't give
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: you your job back and drew, but I'll tell you
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: where you can get a job. And she sent me
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to a guy called Peter Hope Lumley, whose mother had
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: been a lady in waiting for the queen, and he
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: represented doing pr all of the guy who made the
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: shoes for the Queen, Edward Rain, Norman Hartnell, who made
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the dresses, Hardy Amy's who made prince and stuff. So
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I had a very good education there and then fell
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: into pr It was not something you said, um well,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the sweet smell of success helped me right, and then
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: pop was I got my first I was I got
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: to how to get a job to please my mother.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: That was real pr as opposed to the pansy royal
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: type of stuff that very I mean, that was her opinion.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: So I took a job at a regular place to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: please my mother, who did things like the British as were.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Guild hated it, and I started taking pop clients on
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the first were like Mark Winter who covered the venus
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and blue jeans and go with a little girl, Kenny
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Lynch who covered up on the roof. Um. And then
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: in the way, how did you get connected with them?
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You just knock on the door man, you know, I mean, um,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean it's time. It was a simpler time.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: You find out that Bob Dylan is staying in the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Cumberland Hotel in January, either December of sixty January brought
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to England and the freakish or circumstances the television director
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: nobody really knew who he was. Then goes on holiday
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to New York, sees him in the village is doing
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: a Jack London play for for the BBC. The BBC
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and says, look, there's this folks singer I saw. I'd
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: like him to be doing the Mad House of Carroll
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Street or something like that. Um and says, I think
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: he would be good in the background, um singing in
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: the background. The tapes are wiped. They don't exist anymore. Wow,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I don't even know this story, okay. And so he
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: turns up in England with Albert Grossman, and that's the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: manager for the listeners, for the listeners who were not
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: steeped in sixties history. Okay, Well he's the manager, right,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And well, I mean, you know the genius of it,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the that without Peter, I mean Peter, Paul and Mary. Well,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: let's go back to the thing without Albert Grossman. Does
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan make it? No? Right? Of course, not, no, no.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: And I threw a guy at the Melody Maker, which
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: was one of our four musical papers which came out
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: every week. Yes it did, but it was the most
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: jazz and folk of the elders were basically pop, right,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And I went knocked on the door and I got
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the gig. I got the gig for ten the ten
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: days they were there, probably I got You were the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: pr guy for Bob Dylan? Now was he? So he
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: was in that musical? Well, it's a television play. And
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and while the plays it's a Jack London thing. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: while the play is going on at certain parts during it,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: he's playing the guitar in the background, so the actors
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: got you know, where you and I are talking, he's
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: at the corner playing the time. But he's not doing
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: any independent gigs or is he? No, not took him
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: around London. He got to places like the jazz stores,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the record stores, Dobell's Jazz and things like that. But
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the only gig was the television show. And you one
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: has to ask was he is enigmatic or was he
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you know, wet behind the years at that point they
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: never are man Otherwise he wouldn't have been with Albert Gross, right,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I mean the the I spent twenty minutes with him
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: in the hotel um and that Bob Dylan is the
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan you got now fully formed, fully formed. Okay,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: so you do the gig with Dylan and yeah, But
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the point is that when I'm in the room with
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: them and I'm watching this celestial marriage between the two
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of them, you know, you've you know, when you've been there,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: when it's worked, and I'm going for whatever this is,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I want it, okay, because there's no don't don't come
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: out and go. I've got to find an act that
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: never came into it. I just carried on what I
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: was doing, and in that beginning of sixty three, so
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I had Bob Dylan for ten days. Then through one
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: of my more pop clients, I was in a television
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: show with Mark Winter and he was promoting Go with
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: a Little Girl, his second single, the Steve Lawrence Thing
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: here and the Beatles were doing their second record Please
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Please Me, and so um I walked up to John
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Lennam and said who handles you? And he said, oh,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the guy at the Paisley Scarf and the corn and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I went over and got the gig to do their
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: pr in London because the Beatles or Brian Epstein's operation
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: was still based in Liverpool, and in the beginning of
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: ninety three you didn't make long distance phone calls selling
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: a crew. I still remember that when you used to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: pay by the minute, right, so you might over a funeral,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: a birth would be a letter. And I got the gig.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Somebody else had a guy called Tony Barrow. Have you
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: heard of him. Yeah, he had a very oppressive version
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of the gig because he worked at Decca, which is
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: you know that, not the Beatles record company. And when
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Decca closed at five o'clock. He would use the printers,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the stamps and the envelopes to mail out Beatles stuff
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: to people. He never got on the blower, never got
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: on the phone. I did all of that. And in fact,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: when Paul McCartney was in Guitar about four years ago,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and I was in the room with him, and he
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: introduced me to his wife as this is Andrew, our
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: first press agent. And I thought it might be a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: trick British question, and I said, well, what about Tony Barry?
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: He said, well, that's another story, and that I was
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: the first one who was able to go on the
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: street for them. I would have them during the four
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: months I was with them. I would have them like
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: for a day every ten days. And because of the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: roller decks of fashion that I had walked away with
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: from Mary Quant and Peter Hope Lumley, I could get
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: them in a wider range of places than exactly. So
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: one has to ask is you know, of course, because
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: it was literally an invasion in America. When you're working
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: with the Beatles, do you sense that this is a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: turning point for them and it's going to be a
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: revolution or it's just another popular there's a night in
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the in those days the same way as you had
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the Dick Clark, and that what we had was different promoters,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: including the Fire the Rosharon Osborne and other people like
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Garth House and Tito Burns put on um shows that
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: were touring England. The cinemas would close for the night
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and you as they were all old theaters who have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: been considered have been converted to cinemas. They do two
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: shows a night. And the Beatles started out on a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: bill in February of nine six, three of which top
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of the bill was Chris Montez, Tommy Row and a
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: British singer of the straight version of Amy Winehouse Helen Shapiro.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Same thing comes, same town of town, mustache, you know,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: nice Jewish girl from North London but without the smack right,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and had hits like six huge top ten records walking
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: back to Happiness in the sixty two that were huge,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and the beginning of the tour, the Beatles were bottom
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: of the bill and by the time and it moved
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: north to the tour, and by the time he got
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: north over the top of the bill that with because
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of the span and the effect of please please Me
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and in answer to your question. There was one night
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in the Granada, Bedford where the fans were starting to
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: break the windows from the outside. And that didn't even
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: really go on for even Johnny Ray, who was a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: huge influence. I mean he was before Elvis for all
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of us. But that night I stood at the back
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: of the theater with Brian Epstein and Okay, there may
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: have been kids or eight hundred whatever it was, but
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: we both heard the whole world. You knew that was
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the moment. Yeah, okay, so you work with them for
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a number of months until the Rolling Stones. Okay, so
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: very slowly. How do you end up connecting with the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Rolling Stars? Very slowly? Um? I used to go and
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: to hustle journalists at the Record Mirror at a pub
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: called d MS Offshore Spree Avenue. That was a great guy,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and he recently passed called Peter Jones, and he said
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: to me, when I'm trying to house Slim and christ
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I did. I was doing Chris Montez as well, American
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: who came through Sam Cooke, Little Richard all this right, Um,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I just didn't want a regular job. You wanted to
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: continue My mother was wrong, right, and I, um, uh, listen,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: he says. Andrew said, you know our musical papers called
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Record Mirror, which means we only write about people who
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: have records. But there's this young R and B fan
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: writer who works for us called Norman Joplin, and he's
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: so enthusiastic about this band in Richmond that we're actually
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: going to publish a piece in a couple of weeks,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: a small piece, but nonetheless a piece or a group
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have a record, called the Rolling Stones. He said,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I think should go and see him. And I thought,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: is he trying to get rid of me? Or does
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: he have my best interest? And even though I'd been
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: in the room with Dylan and Grossman, I didn't actually
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: want to be a manager. I was fine. And I
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: then thought, and then on Sunday nights we would have
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: our equivalent of the At Sullivan show, the Sunday night
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: of the London Palladium. And Sunday was stay at home.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: You know my mother on my shirts better than I did.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And so you paid lip service while that process, and
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the trousers and your Chelsea boots got polished, and you
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: eet and then you watched the Yeah right, And that
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: was Sunday right, And I was. I thought, well, if
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I don't go, how can I turn up the next
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Tuesday and hustle him? Right? So manners it was that
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: had me and I found out I could. I didn't
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: have to step all the way into town. I could
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: go out on the override trains to Richmond and I
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: got to Richmond station. It was Georgia Gamelski who promoted
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: these gigs, also died just a couple of years ago,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and he thought he managed them. Um. But then in
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the world where you know, there are no accidents, um,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: his father died in Switzerland, and so he nobody was
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: mining the shot at the store. These gigs he put
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: on in the back of the station hotel. So I
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: went in and I kind of, um fell in love. Um.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: One of the great ah parts of it was that
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I really had no real affinity for your actual rhythm
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and blues. I mean, libra and stella was my you know,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the drifters was my. UM. So I didn't walk in
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: there as others might have and go, oh god, they
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: don't do that Willie Dixson thing. Very well, it was
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: all fucking magic to you know. This wave came over
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: me and I knew that that's why coming up with
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: an expression they are a way of life was It
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: was easy because they had already been saturated with it,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: um and you know they were sitting down really performing. Yeah,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: they were all but because it gave you if you've
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: got the sweater with the holes in it and you're
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: that left wing that you're left slightly socialist for you're
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: lining yourselves up with sharecroppers, which I've always found a
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: little difficult for white middle class boys going to art
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: school or university. Um. But nonetheless, so to make it
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: look more authentic, didn't have enough movements to to go
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: through an actual show standing up as yet, but there
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: was on stools like rhythm and blues people and and
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: or jazz's or whatever, and so you had that which
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: people forget as the revisionism changes or time changes everything.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: You had a front line of Brian, Mick and Keith
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and it was just so visually, which was always top
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: of my list anyway, because coming out of fashion, and
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I mean when we started this conversation, he said, clothes
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: went with the music. What's the point of listening to
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the music if, um, somebody doesn't know what you like?
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, you must have had your own equivalent of that.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: What you liked and how you look, told everybody who
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: you were, of course, I mean in the early sixties
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: it was Ganondeine and the Beach Boys, no matter where
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: you lived. I mean, you have the striped shirts and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the blue sneakers, and before these English bands hit the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: shores and then we all grew are here. Happened in
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Europe too, I mean they were like every country except
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: France had its own version of the South America too,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: his own version of the Stones and the Beatles. It
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: became It's finished in sixty when nobody had rolls royces
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: or six months in every road to make a record.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: But while they were like banging out studio records, in fact,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the people who were the local, to say, the Swedish
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Stones would be on the shows with us. Would they
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: be basically imitating your material? Yes, that's very strange. Let's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: go back to his club. So you're in the club,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you go to see him the first time, you have
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the epiphany the first time, Yes, and you go and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: talk to the bank. Yes, I do, And what do
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: you say, um again, I don't remember. Well, did you
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: pitch him as a pr person? And I pitched him
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: as a manager. I know I pitched them without stating
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: what I was pitching them about. They say, I want
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: to work with you. And were they receptive? Why do
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: you think they were receptive because of you or because
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: no one had approached him or Gomeshi was all of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: those reasons. And I'm good at you know, I mean
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I was younger than them somewhat. Um uh, you know
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: did they think at the time this was it? Was
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: this a lark? Was this a lifetime employment? Nothing was
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a lifetime then, man, Nothing was a lifetime Until February
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the eighth, or whatever the day is, the Beatles appeared
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: on it sell of them. So now you're also talking
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: about to the era certainly pre internet, but also pre calling.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: So they're not playing again to the following Sunday night, right, No,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: they would play in on Wednesday nights and another at
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: a different place. Um. I didn't see them again though,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: till the next Sunday. And at that stage I had
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: a huge dilemma. I mean, a week was a wonderful
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: amount of time. You know. Then right now he's just
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: waiting for somebody to call you back, right. Um. In
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: that manners decreed that I would offer them to Brian
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Epstein because I was still working for him, and I
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: was not only the Beatles, I was doing the beginning
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: of Billy J. Kramer still a blank was going to
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: be in a month I've done. I had been up
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: to um another Paul and met his next find who
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: he has short told me, and this was true, they
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: would have a number one record during the Placemakers. And
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I looked at these scruffs man, you know, like the
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: coats looked like they were made out of lino um.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: And he was right because of the song that the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: song that the Beatles had to central, We're not doing
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: it right, the Mitch Murray song how do You? So
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I went, you know, I knew it wouldn't work with
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Brian Epstein because he was already getting a bit right
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: um obsessed. So I probably went like, well, Brian not
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: like Mick doing much and he passed and a guy
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: who Ago. But you actually got to the point where
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: you said, I have this if you're interested, can we
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: share it? Right? Yeah? Oh yeah, you do wonder sold
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: it so much you said I'm not interested. I don't
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: know if he was listening, but I still did what
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I would go about yourself. You said, I gave was shot.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't use those words. I did the right thing, right, okay, um.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: And though that then the editor of the Melody Maker,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: guy called Jack Hutton, said, had already said to me
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: about a month afloat when you need an office. Andrew,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I know this, uh failed organist didn't say that. If
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: a guy used to be play organ and the Blackpool
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Tower and then you know it changed his name to
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Eric Easton. He was another actually another Epstein east one
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: of those the names. Because you're now dealing with the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: wonderful as with my mother's boy with the last generation
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: of Jews in England who manicured up and became British,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: you know, so they didn't there, you know, you wanted
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to belong. So he was now Eric Easton. He was
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: an agent and he managed a guitarist called Bert Weeden,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: a disc jockey. It was very level c but I
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: got an office from him for four pounds a week
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and all no Andrew the long distance ohn calls. All
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of the country was all about the long distance phone calls.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And because he was an agent and I just did
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: mouth um. I actually probably would not have got the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: rolling stones if I hadn't made him. The first partner
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I had in it before the Towers of Babel in America,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and he was became their agent. He became the co
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: manager with me and the Age Soult when they were playing.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: The club didn't have an agent, Okay, somebody was. You've
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: got those two structures of England trad jazz is poor
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: relative skiffle. I mean, you know from the Billy Brag book,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the history of how the Lonnie Donegan records came out
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of all of that stuff, and how the people who
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: controlled the club circuits. I mean, either the promoters like
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Harold Pendleton Georgia with his sort of left wing oasis
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: that he would run um frowned on rhythm and blues.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: It was a poor relative. It did seem to be
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: attracting younger people than the traditional jazz bands like Humphrey
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Littleton and Chris barber Head. So it's a week later
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and you show up with at the gig and you
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: tell the Stones what I now, show up with Eric Houston,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and then we signed them and because of mine, and
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: when you sign them you literally have a piece of paper. No,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: they came in the office. Brian was the leader and
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: so Brian would come in for the negotiations, and Charlie
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and Bill had jobs. Um McKeith didn't good and they
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: would sit at Lyon's corner house on the corner of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: a couple of black teas and wait for what Brian
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: had determined with Eric and me. And and because of
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: my knowledge of America through mainly Jim Lee who had
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Chris Montez, but then Bob Crew and my knowledge of
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Phil Specter, we signed them for the management and the records.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Okay for those people who don't know, And this is
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: becomes very important, especially in the history of the Role Stones.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: It was licensed to the label, you owned the records.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Anybody else in the UK have that deal at that time?
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: They did so it was not incredibly uncommon. No, but
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: because it was incredibly uncommon, but because I was younger
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: than all the rest, it would get noticed. All the rest.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: You had a pecking order of Joe Meek, who did
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: tellstar Um who you could call, and he cut acts
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: for Robert Stigwood like John Layton and things like that.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: They did it, but they had actually learned it from
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a guy called Dennis Preston who had He'll be in
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: that book Landsdown Studios, who did Chris Barbera, therefore Lonnie Donegan.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: They were all independent records. So once again you became
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a student of the business. How did you know this
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: When I would be doing pr for anybody from like
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Johnny Tillottson or Brian Highland or Ah Sam Cook and
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: little Richard. I wanted him the managers man, because they
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: would travel with the acts and you just you know,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I mean America was it for me? From soul Bass
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: the posters for those awful out of Parmager films. The
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: posters were better than the films. And you know, I
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: mean anything ammunition and the knowledge that comes in or
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the instinct that gets developed by studying these things. You
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: don't don't actually have to look at a book and
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: read it and get what's in the book. You just
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: have to hold it and well, this is very well articulated.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: This is what people don't understand. They go to music schools,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: they think they can learn it. It's more about your
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: sensibility matched with a passion and eyes wide open you
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: can feel something. Especially all the greats in the music
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: business are not educated people. There are people who operate
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: on field. So in any event, you make a deal
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: with the Stones, Yes, and how long is that deal
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: is supposed to run? Oh? Three or five years? Three?
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Two three or thing? You have a lawyer who are
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: or murky? Didn't It just takes out the usual piece
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: of take out a piece of paper, man, and they
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: say they're in okay, and you say you're gonna make them,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and what is the next step. The next step is
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: that the pub called the weather be Arms. They used
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: to rehearse and I just said to me, listen, pick
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: out the five things that you think are the most commercial.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Play them to me, and then we'll pick three and
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: we'll go and record them. And so there was Come On,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: which was a Chuck Berry b side Willie Dixon thing
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I want to be Loved And I can't remember the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: third thing. And so we went to Olympic Studios, which
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: at that time was near Marble Arch and it was
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: a four track studio with whose money? Eric's yeah, okay,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you don't have any money. I don't have any money,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: dare And if I did it, I'd be wearing it.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: But but let's be clear. You were the producer, for
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: want of a better word, Okay, Well, what would you
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: consider your role to be at those No, I do
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: concern I am the only one if they had gone
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: through the system. Where As you know from the pictures
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you've seen from Abbey Row, you everybody gets what they deserved.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: The Beatles got what they should have. In other words,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: they've got a very competent George Martin who had a
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: musical experience as well. The engineer Norman Smith knew about
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: another kind of music, so all those elements could come
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: into the Beatles when they needed it. What we had
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: to get away from was the fact that acts before us,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the English Rockers and things like that, you'd have a
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: three hour session. They wouldn't even let them listen back
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to what they've done. You know. It was just run
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: like a shop steward, like a union thing um. And
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: the engineer was a guy called Roger's Avage. They give
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: me the kid an olympic um. We had the forty
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: quid three hours five three hours, were up at five
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: to six and got no more money. Right. Recordings weren't
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: that good? Right? I mean, but they weren't. They were
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: less terrified with me than they would have been with
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a guy who might have been seven years older, who
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: would have felt like fifty years old. Did you give
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: them any direction? No? Interestingly, when I eventually listened to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the Chuck Berry record, the vocals a spot on. I
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: mean you know, I mean they you think almost think
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: that Mick was on the Chuck Berry record sing in
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the backup right five six. I went, all right, that's it.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Engineers says, well, we got to mix it, and I said,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: what's that? And he explained to me about the four
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: channels or the four tracks it was on. And my
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: attitude was if I'm not here, I don't have to
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: pay for it. So I said, you do it. I'll
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: come back in the morning. Um the and that was
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: the first single. Then then Decker tried to put me okay, well, well,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: well a little bit slower. So you cut these three
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: tracks and then how does it become a single? What's
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the deal? Okay? We had gone to Decca because they
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: turned down the Beatles. An actual fact, one of the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: A and R men, as you know, picked Brian Paul
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and the Trammelers because it was nearer. It was Daggingham,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: it was it was nearer than the Beatles being in Liverpool.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: But anyway, Dick Roe was a very bright man. Then R. Man.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: There was no no, He just said, yeah, I'll take
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it right on the least deal. But they tried, as
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, for the sake of your viewers.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: The least deal is, you know, you've got to get
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: ten points or eight points to play with us, opposed
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: to three or four or two or three. And but
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: he wanted to try and get them signed as a
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: direct act, so he said, yeah, yeah, but the recording
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: is not that good. We want to let one of
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: our producers have a crank at it. And they picked
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: a guy who they were giving the gold Watch two
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: because he delivered a couple of pop things to them
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: from sixty two. Guy called Michael Barker, you've done Eden Cane,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and oh god, I was I'm going, I mean you.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: I couldn't turn around to the stones and say play badly.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: But my version was marginally better enough that they then
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: accepted the least deal and we were off to the races.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: In the first track, does how well in the marketplace,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: it would have only gone to thirty eight, But I
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: bought it from thirty eight to eighteen because you had
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: forty five shops. It wasn't as company, it wasn't a
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: simple and complicated as American Paola, you had forty five
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: You don't you weren't greasing DJs. You had forty five
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: shops that reported to the four musical newspapers, and all
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: you had to do was go in and buy three
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: to five singles at five shillings and sevenpence each um
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: in those shops on a Friday or Saturday. You know,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: it's basically the trick is making the record company fall
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: in love with you once when you signed with them,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and twice when they shipped the record, and so the
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: factories would go wow. We sold three records in Wellingborough,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: we sold three records in nor Willing Garden City and
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the Rolling the Rolling Stones fans, the small volume that
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: they were at the time, was still so devoted that
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: they knew we didn't have the money anyway to beat.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Don't worry about and we'll send you a postluder. No,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: don't worry about it. We'll buy the records. And so
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: a record it going to got to eighteen for one week.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: But that was the first dent. That was the beginning,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: and DECA was happy, yeah, and so then what what
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: happens after that? Then we have to find a follow up,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: and the R and B basket of potential songs is
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: getting smaller as people like the Searchers are doing Sweets
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: for My Sweet or the B side of the Orance thing,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: which was amazing, you know, I mean in where you're
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: finding your songs, Don't throw your Love Away. It was
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: a B side by the Orans, and we had nothing
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: to record, and one song that I suggested to them,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: which they never got to actually working on, was the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: James Ray thing if you've got to make a fool
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: of somebody, but somebody said no. Andrew Freddie and the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Dreamers did that last week, right, So that was gone
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: and it was getting and we were at a rehearsal
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: studio in Great Newport Street off Leicester Square, and I
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: just kind of think, if you're not contributing to the
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: energy of the room, leave and go to the bathroom
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna cup of tea do something like that.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: So I leave, I turn right as opposed to the left,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and I end up outside Leicester Square tube station and
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: getting out of a cab is John and Paul John
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Lennon and Paul McCartney, and as they knew me slightly
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: from the months that we've been together. It was like,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: what's wrong, Andy? And I said, I'm gonna fucking side
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: to record with the Rolling Stones. Oh, no problem. They
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: were great hustlers. And in those early, very early days,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: let's go backstop for a second with the Beatles have
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: made it without Brian Epstein. Okay, I mean look at
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the pattern? What will They were backing Johnny Gentle for
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: the guy called Larry Pans who was the gay Colonel
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Tom Parker, with Billy Fury, Marty Wild, Joe Brown and
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: all these acts. How would they've made it? If if
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I mean what would if Ed Sullivan hadn't been on
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: holiday in Europe? Would he have known what anybody was
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: talking about when he was offered the Beatles for the
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Ed Sullivan Show. But he had experienced it because on
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: a holiday with his wife, they'd stopped in an airport
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: and what is this pandemonium? Oh it's a group called
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: the Beatles who are playing there. So these things are
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: all destiny, right, So in any event you're seeing they're
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: great hustlers. Yeah, but hustlers for what it's like. As
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: we were still getting out of the trap that had
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: set for us by losing or winning World War two,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the future if you're not if you weren't part of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the elite anyway, right, um, you're any day you stay
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: you know, oh this is still working, and it was right.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: You know, America changed it. But to see then because
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: of our we all idolized America. And you know, I
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: could sit and look at a forty five record and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the credits or the nat hntoff notes for Dylan or whatever,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: and just this could this would just go on forever.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: You know, it would just inspire you. So they hustled
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: to see their names on records as writers that of
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: records that wouldn't They weren't necessarily going to pay the rent.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: That was not the point. I mean, as you know
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: and have said often, if you come in into this
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: for the money, right, that's not quite enough. If you
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: turn out to be good at money, God bless you, right.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And so they come down I the moment I Brian
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Jones play the bottleneck on this. I want to be
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: a man. I just fucking died when we got to
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: hit right, Okay, a little bit slour. You run into
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: them at the Lusts. So they're getting out of a cab.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: They have just won their first songwriting on it. So
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: they're clairvoyant, lely tipsy, okay, and they literally come straight
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: to the straight to the studio, not oh, I'll be
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: there and tomorrow. No, no, then and then they got
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: an Iva Novello Award, which is yours. They demonstrate the
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: song and they pretend that, ah, they're finishing it in
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: front of us. Ringo had recorded it ten days before, right, um,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and I, oh, lordy, you know, I mean it was
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: the next apparition after having heard them for the first time.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: So I didn't even bother to produce the record. I
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: led Eric. I went to Paris. This is my second
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: nervous breakdown because I wanted a pair of forty pound
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: utter leather boots from Pierre Cardin. That would solve my problem.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I had had. You see, when I worked from Mary
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: quant I had had a photographer who was about fifteen
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: years older than me. When I was seventeen at Mary
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: quants say you know, Andrew, you're an alcoholic, right, And
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: I said, Terry, I don't even don't know them. The photographer,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I said, I don't even drink. He said no, but
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you've got the isms, okay, um, and forty five pound
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: boots are part of the isms. Okay, but you disappear
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: just when the record is being made. Yeah, there's gonna
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: be no problem, man, you know, I mean Eric could
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: hear the Feliciano could have done it. Oh, he could
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: have done He could have done Feliciano could have done
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: the video. It was that much of a breeze. I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: mean I heard it in the rehearsal room, um, and
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: it was just magic. And how long did you go
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: to France for four days? Okay? So you come back
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: ready to work, ready to work, and Decca, here's the tracks.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Excited they put it out and what Decca. The same
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: way as when they tried to shaft me out of
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the licensing deal, they would have meetings at ten thirty
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: every Tuesday morning where they would decide what they were taking,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: what they were putting out. So even it's still, you
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: couldn't call something I got a hit. No, you would
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: submit it and it would go into the Tuesday morning
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: A and R meeting and then they would call you back.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: It was all very corporate. I didn't see Recau still,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: I saw the boot of Sonny Bono's car, or Red
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: or Buddha. Those people not put are the ones with Conversutra,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: but and then they would say we're releasing it on November.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: It was all very but just because this is interesting,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: how long afterwards cut did it come out? See cut
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: in August? Six weeks? So it comes out? You buy
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a hit or is it an immediate hit? Um? We
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: buy it. He goes to douneb the ten. You're on
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the way from eighteen to ten. Let's right, Yes, indeed,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Hi everyone, this is Bob left Sets. If you stumbled
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: upon this podcast on iTunes or tune in, you may
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: be wondering who is this guy. Well, my story of
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the story of my blog, The Left Sets Letter was
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: told in episode one. Please check it out. If you
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: like what you hear, subscribe to the podcast today and
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: you'll hear my interviews with songwriters, performers, music industry and
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: tech executives. First, also, I'm a what a feedback? What
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: do you like? What do you hate? Email me at
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Bob and left sets dot com and now more with
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Andrew lou Goldham. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Sets Podcast. My guest today is literally the legendary. They
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: say legendary about a lot of people, but this guy
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: is legendary Andrew Luke Oldham. I remember getting email the
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: first time about the turn of the century, said Andrew
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Luke Goldham, saw him on the back of all those
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Stones album covers. It's like great to have you here here,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Bob. Good to be with you again our
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: second round. Right. Well, as I say, I went to
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: bow Guitar in September often and I knew that Andrew
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: was there and we connected. That was the best place,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: certainly I've been to this century, maybe ever, in that
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you really feel vibrantly alive in bo guitar. Tell the
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: audience how you ended up in bow guitar. I went
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: in at the end of nineteen four in London to
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: a theater that was showing a musical comedy called John Paul, George,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Ringo and Bert, written by a guy called William Willie Russell.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I had no idea what it was about. One probably
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: because the condition I arrived in at the theater, and
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: two that the condition was accelerated by there being this
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: lady m in front of me in the theater who
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: had now been married to forty one years. But I
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: was just all I can tell you about that show
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: was her neck and we spent time together. I was
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: living in New York at the time, and she came
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: to visit me in New York. She went back to
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Columbia and I followed her. Okay, and since we're on Columbia,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: what is the situation with the fark. Supposedly peace was
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: made in Colombia. Is it really peace? For those don't know,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: there's been decades of a revolutionary army terrorizing clausing her
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: unrest in Columbia, but supposedly piece has been made. I
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: wouldn't call them revolutionary. They're basically businessmen and fatigues because
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: their main business over the last thirty years was drugs.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: They took over the drug business once Escobar was killed
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: and the other towns couldn't stand up to the pressure
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: of the FARC and the e l N, the other
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: ones who they've still no peace with. UM and kidnapping
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: and drug expectation was their main business for the last
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: thirty years. The president that we that we have Santos
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: once he got his Nobel prize. Man, you know he's
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: just left Columbia. He will just leave Columbia to sort
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: it out. So you've got UM anywhere from twelve to
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand men or kids. I would think the kids
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: are more the danger because if you've just been raised
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: that you don't know much more about life than to
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: rape and pillage. What are you going to be an
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: uber driver? So they've got that that's going to take
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the amount of money that has been put aside in
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: a country that is just it's the fifth world now, Bob,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. It's not the third world anymore.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: So it's gotten worse where the rest of us have
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: pulled ahead. You think you've pulled ahead. Oh well, this
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: is another conversation. I'd be glad to have another podcast,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: but what's going on in our country? But my point
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: is for those most people have not been to Columbia,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: never might have been to South America. We're Americans, have passports.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: So the question would become is now, in the last
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: twenty years and now with peace with the farc generally speaking,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: is the economy better or worse? I think that's the
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: one thing that's common with the rest of the world
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: is the the middle class is being suppressed out of
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: any remaining pesto or dollar they've got, which is going
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: on everywhere. So it's got better for those who had
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: it better anyway. So it's literally just like the rest
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: of the world exactly. I mean, we looked better because
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we we were for a while until your
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: recent change, Donny, Donny it we were the only friend
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: that North America had with I mean, we were the
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: only everything else was, you know. I mean, but Venezuela
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: at one time changed his clock half an hour, so
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. But they're all we we were the one
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: that America was going to because you can all spend
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: so much money and give us so much money for
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: supposedly eradicating drugs. I've never voted, so I'm pretty cynical
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: about the whole um system. Well, then I have to
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: ask his as they said, we're talking all these political things,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: but what is your view of Brexit in the European Union. Um, again,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: you've got David Cameron behaved exactly the way that our president. Okay,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: I've done it, I got my Nobel Prize. I'm off
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: he did the Brexit thing. He left and isn't that
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: too to two years ago at least? Um, it's uh,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: it's a horrendous mess. I think it would be better
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: if they didn't do it. And I think that could
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: that could happen. It'd be interesting. I was actually was
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: hanging with Billy Bragg, who's very political. He thought it
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: might I want to read his book, right, skiffle book?
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, he sent it to me. Um, but before
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: our audience, I don't want to know who you are, okay, okay,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: your most legendary for the Rolling Stones Immediate records. And
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: it goes on for Tony Calder recently, Yes he did,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: he was a partner in the media, and yes he was. Okay,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: but as I say, you are born in what year?
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: So through the fifties, whereas music your focus or did you?
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Were you an opportunist? How did you end up getting
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: into the music scene in the early sixties through fashion?
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Because I mean, I mean I left school at sixteen.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: The first job was at sixteen. Um, and I wish
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: so many more kids could leave school of sixteen. You know,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: education as a crime, but we won't go there. I
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: would like to go there. I think. You know, education
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: is basically to keep people in line as supposed to
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: be creative exactly exactly. You know, to it's not going
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: to work at six is criminal? But um, then on
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: all was blessed as we who were kicked out and
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: had to get on with it right. But when I
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: did that in the first place, I wanted to work
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: where the carpets were thick and the teacups were thin.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I landed up with a lady called Mary Kwant, legendary
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: fashion design who had a sort of karma such or
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: redbird records of fashion that worked in that her husband
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: was the hustler. She cut and did the clothes, the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: husband hustled and sold. And they also had an old
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: school friend who made sure they got paid school interesting euphemism. Anyway,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: it worked and I had a great education. The pop
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: that the fashion business was THEO what was your gig with?
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: And you just showed up and say I'll do anything
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: that you hired you? I mean, I just that's the place.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: I don't want to knock on one door. I don't
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: like this committee business even now. I think you've got
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: to pick where you want to go and go there. Okay, well,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: what was your spiel? There's such that she hired you.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I can never remember the actual moments of
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: because I'm so fucking nervous going in like that. I
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: know it works, but I can't somebody else in the
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: room would have to tell you what my picture. Okay,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: you go into a zone when the whole situation exactly
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: In any event, she does hire, she has me. I
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: last there for eight or nine months because uh, and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: we're in what year? This is sixty one, And I
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: then start taking a job in the nights working at
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the original Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, and my job there
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: was hanged. Was that another thing where you said I
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: have to work at Ronnie Scott's. Oh, yes, because I've
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: been given a great education of music when I was
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: about eleven by a guy next door. During the years
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: where you could sit for a guy next door and
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: not get molested. Is that because the it's because they
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: didn't molest you, or the cops weren't there. You didn't
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: have the we're all stars even though we're a star
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: molester or were start you know, the rights of entitlement
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: where you think you've got the right to intrude on
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: somebody else. There was less of that. Although the other thing,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: of course is I mean, we know that's against the law,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: but being gay was against the law anyway, right, But
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: you can't even touch another kid if you put it.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: You know, it's it's amazing world we live in, but
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: any even you're with your next door neighbor. And so
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: when I was eleven, he ran me through everything from
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: uh Anna Jamal to Bob Crosby and the you know,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: the Brother of Being Crossed, the Bobcats, the the Red
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Novo Um. The one thing that really made a dent
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: on my mind and on Lou Adler because he used
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: it as the prototype for Carol King was George Sharing
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: with Peggy Lee live in Chicago. It's really I mean,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know that record. I certainly know those people,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: beauty and the beat. Okay, if I track that record down,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hear Tapestry. Okay, sound it's there. It's there.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Um great, especially with the instrumental Sat and Sat and
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Doll on it, which I think it's George Sharing Quintint
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: and Peggy. Um. So I went to work for Ronnie Scott's.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: I hung the coats, I got the Pakistani food from
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: over the road as they didn't have a food license. Uh.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Then I kind of got greedy and I went to
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: work the midnight to five am shift at the Flamingo Club,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: which was owned by a guy called Jeff Krueger who
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: had Amberg records, but he rented the place out that
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: night to the Gunnell brothers, who might have heard of
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: from Chris Farlows money and all this kind of And
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: I served the whiskey and the coat bottles because if
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: the cops came in and he looked innocent and looked
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: like he wouldn't be serving scotch um. And so I
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: did that. Then basically I had my first nervous breakdown. Um,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: the others don't count. The first one is the most important. Okay,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: So your how old when you have your first nervous
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: break sixty one? I'm seventeen. And how do you know
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: you're having a nervous break Were you've taken on too much?
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Too much? Three jobs in a week is And do
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: you feel building you're building up to it or you
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: just freak out at one point building up? Then I
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: wouldn't call it freak out. Then you decide travel will
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: be the cure. So I went to the south of France.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting, kind of like the Rod Stewart's song.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: You know, every picture tells the story, Oh yeah, yeah,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and I kind of, Um, I ended up there and
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: It's interesting being back in this location because in a
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: restaurant up there this past spring, I was able to
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: say hello for the first time to Johnny Hallity really
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: before he passed. Yes, Because when I was seventeen, it
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: was a very good year and I worked in Joan
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Lapin at an English tea room, serving tea of course um.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: And at the end of the block he was already
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in a white tux playing the casino and he was
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: only nine months or eight eight months older than me,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: and I went, wow, yeah, first of you go, you
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: don't go something's wrong, but you go, well, there's hope, man,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean the other rockers like Eddie Mitchell
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: and Dick Rivers were playing cafes, and I was attracted
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: to all. As bad as French rock is, I was
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: attracted to it because it wasn't as personally bad as
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: English rock was at the time. Cliff Cliff, Richard, Billy
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Fury right, you know, they were only they only had
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: an American accent when they sung um. And so I
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: preferred the French New Wave in the movies. I preferred
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: their rook you know, and all that. With Johnny Hallity,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: and I'd seen him a couple of times in the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: two thousands in Marseilles, which was a town that when
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I was seventeen I couldn't go to it was too rough.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Then well, in my job, I didn't have a job,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: I was begging off English tourists literally begging, oh yeah,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: begging in that the pitch went into Okay. Mainly the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: ones who ended up in those areas of south of
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: France were the Jewish world to do out of London,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: who knew how to get money out for the holiday
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: because you're only allowed to take fifty pounds away. And
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: so you remember when newspapers or magazine used to arrive
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: rolled up, of course the money would go in there
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: and it would actually turn up at your hotel. Wow, okay,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and I would put on an accent that appealed to them,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: which I'm moving into now, and I would excuse me,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: but my allowance hasn't arrived from my mother, and I
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: wonder if you could lend me, if I could borrow
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: ten or twenty francs, and if you tell me which
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: hotel you're in, And I did, depended on whether I
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: thought they were worth paying back. But the rest of
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: it went to my water skiing lessons. Okay, so you're
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: in the south of France and you meet Johnny Holliday.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: No I don't meet him. I saw him from Afar
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: and you got inspired. And then how long are you
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: in France before you return to the island until the
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: season runs up? And I'm now I got involved in
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: slight Mickey mouse type of kidnapping there where I ran
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: into a photographer who recently passed, a great guy called
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Philip Town's End and he said, look, if you will
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: keep this heiress locked up, she's still around. I can't
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: remember his lady something right. We can sell the stories
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to the stringers of the newspapers like the Daily Mail stringer,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: the Express string and things like that. And the girl
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: was willing, so it wasn't really it's alway scared, of course,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: but unfortunately her father had the powers to install a
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: scheduled de notice on the newspapers, which was is the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: English way of of a newspaper, can't print something it's
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: against the public interest. At that time it was used
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: for government thing, but he used it so we couldn't
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: say let the girl go or she We said it's over.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: And by November, with the season, I'm going around knocking
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: on the doors of the stringers who didn't buy the stories,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: getting cash from them, and then from an English vicar.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I let the English take my passport away pay for
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: me to go home. When I started again, Mary quant
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: said I can't give you your job back and drew,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: but I'll tell you where you can get a job.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: And she sent me to a guy called Peter Hope Lumley,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: whose mother had been a lady in waiting for the Queen,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: and he represented doing pr all of the guy who
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: made the shoes for the Queen, Edward Rain Norman Hartnell,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: who made the dresses, hardy amies who made prince and stuff.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: So I had a very good education there and then
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: fell into pr It was not something you said, um well,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: the sweet smell of success helped me, you know, right,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: And then pop was I got my first I was
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: I gotta. I had to get a job to please
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: my mother that was real pr as opposed to the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: pansy royal type of stuff that very I mean, that
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: was her opinion. So I took a job at a
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: regular place to please my mother, who did things like
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: the British Men's Work Guild hated it, and I started
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: taking pop. Clients on the first were like Mark Wynter
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: who covered the venus and blue jeans and go with
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: a little girl, Kenny Lynch who covered up on the roof. Um.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: And then in the way, how did you get connected
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: with them? You just knock on the door man, you know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, um, and yeah, I mean it's it was
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: a simpler time. You find out that Bob Dylan is
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: staying in the Cumberland hotel in January, either December of
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: sixty January brought to England and the freakish or circumstances.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: The television director nobody really knew who he was. Then
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: goes on holiday to New York, sees him in the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: village is doing a Jack London play for for the BBC.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: The BBC and says, look, there's this folks singer I saw.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: I'd like him to be doing the Mad House of
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Carroll Street or something like that, right, Um, and says
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I think he would be good in the background, singing
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: in the background. The tapes are wiped, they don't exist anymore. Wow,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I don't even know this story, okay. And so he
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: turns up in England with Albert Grossman and that's the
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: manager for the listeners, for the listeners who were not
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: steeped in sixties history. Okay, well he's the manager, right,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: and well, I mean, you know the genius of it,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the that without Peter, I mean Peter Paul and Mary. Well,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: let's go back to the thing without Albert Grossman. Does
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Bob Dylan make it? No? Right? Of course? Not, no, no.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: And I threw a guy at the Melody Maker, which
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: was one of our four musical papers which came out
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: every week. Yes it did, but it was the most
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: jazz and folk of the elders were basically pop, right,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: And I went and knocked on the door, and I
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: got the gig. I got the gig for ten the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: ten days they were there, probably I got You were
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: the pr guy for Bob Don't now? Was he? So
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: he was in that musical? Well, it's a television play,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: and and while the plays it's a Jack London thing.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: And while the play is going on at certain parts
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: during yet he's playing the guitar in the background. So
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: the actors got you know, where you and I are talking,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: he's at the corner playing. But he's not doing any
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: independent gigs or is He took him around London. He
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: got to places like the jazz stores, the record stores,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: Dobell's Jazz and things like that. But the only gig
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: was the television show. And one has to ask was
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: he is enigmatic or was he you know, wet behind
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: the years at that point they never are man Otherwise
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't have been with Albert Gross, right, I mean
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: the the I spent twenty minutes with him in the hotel. Um,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: and that Bob Dylan is the Bob Dylan you've got
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: now fully formed, fully formed, Okay, so you do the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: gig with Dylan and yeah. But the point is that
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: when I'm in the room with them and I'm watching
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: this celestial marriage between the two of them, you know,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: you've you know, when you've been there, when it's worked. Um,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm going for whatever this is, I want it, okay,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: because there's no don't don't come out and go. I've
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: got to find an act that never came into it.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: I just carried on what I was doing and at
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that beginning of sixty three, so I had Bob Dylan
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: for ten days. Then through one of my more pop clients,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I was in a television show with Mark Winter and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: he was promoting go Away a Little Girl, his second single,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: the Steve Lawrence Thing here and the Beatles were doing
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: their second record Please Please Me, and so um I
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: walked up to John Lennam and said who handles you?
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: And he said, oh, the guy at the Paisley Scarf
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: in the corner. And I went over and got the
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: gig to do their pr in London because the Beatles
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: or Brian Epstein's operation was still based in Liverpool and
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of three you didn't make long distance
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: phone calls selling a crew. I still remember that when
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: you used to pay by the minute, right, so you
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: might over a funeral. A bus would be a letter,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: you know. And I got the gig. Somebody else had
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: a guy called Tony Barrow. Have you heard of him. Yeah.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: He had a very oppressive version of the gig because
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: he worked at Decca, which is you know, was that
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: not the Beatles record prompody? And when Decca closed at
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: five o'clock he would use the printers, the stamps and
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: the envelopes to mail out Beatles stuff to people. He
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: never got on the blower, never got on the phone.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: I did all of that, and in fact, when Paul
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: McCartney was in Boguitar about four years ago and I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: was in the room with him and he introduced me
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: to his wife as this is Andrew, our first press agent.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: And I thought it might be a trick British question,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and I said, well, what about Tony Barry? He said, well,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: that's another story, and that I was the first one
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: who was able to go on the street for them.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: I would have them during the four months I was
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: with them. I would have them like for a day
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: every ten days. And because of the roller decks of
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: fashion that I had walked away with from Mary Quant
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: and Peter Hope Lumley, I could get them in a
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: wider range of places than exactly. So one has to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: ask is you know, of course, because it was literally
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: an invasion in America, when you're working with the Beatles,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: do you sense that this is a turning point for
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: them and it's going to be a revolution or it's
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: just another popular there's a night in the in those days,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: the same way as you had the Dick Clark and
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: that what we had was different promoters, including the father
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: of Sharon Osborne and other people like other House and
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Tito Burns, put On um shows that were touring England,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: the cinemas would close for the night and you as
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: they were all old theaters who have been considered to
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: being converted to cinemas. Ah, they do two shows a night.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: And the Beatles started out on a bill in February
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: of nine, three of which top of the bill was
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: Chris Montez, Tommy Row and a British singer the straight
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: version of Amy Winehouse Helen Shapiro, Same thing comes, same
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: town of town, mustache, you know, nice Jewish girl from
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: North London but without the smack right, and had hits
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: like six huge top ten records walking back to Happiness
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: in the sixty that were huge, and the beginning of
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: the tour, the Beatles were bottom of the bill and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: by the time and it moved north to the tour,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: and by the time he got north, they the top
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: of the bill that with because of the span and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: the effect of please please me. And in answer to
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: your question, there was one night in the Granada, Bedford
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: where the fans were starting to break the windows from
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: the outside and that didn't even really go on. For
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: even Johnny Ray, who was a huge influence, I mean
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: he was before Elvis for all of us. But that
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: night I stood at the back of the theater with
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: Brian Epstein and Okay, there may have been hundred kids
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: or eight hundred, whatever it was, but we both heard
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: the whole world. You knew that was the moment. Okay.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: So you work with them for a number of months
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: until the Rolling Stones. Okay, so very slowly. How do
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: you end up connecting with the Rolling Stones? Very slowly? Um?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: I used to go to hustle journalists at the Record
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Mirror at a pub called d MS off Shaftesbury Avenue.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: That was a great guy, and he recently passed, called
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Peter Jones, and he said to me, when I'm joying hustling,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: and christ I did was doing Chris Montez as well.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Americans came through, Sam Cooke, little Richard, all this right, Um,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: I just didn't want a regular job. He wanted to continue.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: My mother was wrong, you know, right? And I um, uh, listen,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: he says. Andrew said, you know our musical papers called
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Record Mirror, which means we only write about people who
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: have records. But there's this young R and B fan
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: writer who works for us called Norman Jopling, and he's
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: so enthusiastic about this band in Richmond, that we're actually
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: going to publish a piece in a couple of weeks,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: a small piece, but nonetheless a piece or a group
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have a record, called the Rolling Stones. He said,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: I think you should go and see him, And I thought,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: is he trying to get rid of me? Or does
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: he have my best interests? And I, even though I'd
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: been in the room with Dylan and Grossman, I didn't
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: actually want to be a manager. I was fine. And
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: I then thought, and then on Sunday nights we would
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: have our equivalent of the At Sullivan Show, the Sunday
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: night of the London Palladium. And Sunday was staying at home.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: You know, my mother on my shirts better than I did,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: and so you paid lip service while that process of
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the trousers and your Chelsea boots got polished, and you
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: at and then you watched the Yeah right, And that
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: was Sunday right, and I was I thought, well, if
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I don't go, how can I turn up the next
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Tuesday and hustling? Right? So manners it was that had
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: me and I found out I could. I didn't have
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: to step all the way into town. I could go
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: out on the override trains to Richmond, and I got
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: to Richmond station. It was Georgia Gamelski who promoted these gigs,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: who also died just a couple of years ago, that's right,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: and he thought he managed them. Um. But then in
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: the world where you know, there are no accidents. Um,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: his father died in Switzerland and so he nobody was
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: minding the short at the store. These gigs he put
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: on in the back of the station hotel. So I
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: went in and I kind of um fell in love. Um.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: One of the great ah parts of it was that
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: I really had no real affinity for your actual rhythm
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: and blues. I mean, Libra and Stollar was my you know,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: the drifters was my you know. Um. So I didn't
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: walk in there as others might have and go, oh god,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: they don't do that Willie Dixson thing. Very well, it
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: was all fucking magic to you know. This wave came
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: over me and I knew that. That's why coming up
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: with an ext pressure there a way of life was
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: it was easy because they had already been saturated with it. Um,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: and you know they were sitting down really performing. Yeah,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: they were, but welcome because it gave you if you've
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: got the sweater with the holes in it and you're
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: that left wing that you're left slightly socialist for you're
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: lining yourselves up with sharecroppers, which I've always found a
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: little difficult for white middle class boys going to art
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: school or university. Um. But nonetheless, so to make it
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: look more authentic, didn't have enough movements to lot to
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: go through that Actu's show standing up as yet, but
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: there was on stools like rhythm and blues people and
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: and or jazzes or whatever, and so you had that
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: which people forget as the revisionism changes or time changes everything.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: You had a front line of Brian, Mick and Keith
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: and it was just so visually, which was always top
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: of my list anyway, because coming out of fashion, and
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I mean when we started this conversation, he said, clothes
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: went with the music. What's the point of listening to
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: the music if, um, somebody doesn't know what you like?
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you must have had your own equivalent of that.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: What you liked and how you looked told everybody who
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: you were, of course. I mean in the early sixties
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: was gen indeed, and the Beach Boys, no matter where
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: you lived. I mean you have the striped shirts and
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: the blue sneakers, and before these English bands hit the
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: shores and then we all grew are here. Happened in
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: Europe too, I mean there were like every country except
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: France had its own version of the South America to
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: his own version of the Stones and the Beatles. It
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: became It's finished in sixty when nobody had rolls Royces
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: or six months in Ebbey Road to make a record.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: But while they were like banging out studio records, in fact,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: the people who were the locals, say the Wehedish Stones
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: would be on the shows with us, would they be
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: basically imitating your material? Yes, that's very strange. Let's go
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: back to his club. So you're in the club, you
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: go to see him the first time, you have the
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: epiphany the first time. Yes, and you go and talk
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: to the band. Yes, I do, And what do you say?
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Um again? I don't remember. Well, did you pitch him
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: as a pr person and I pitched him as a manager.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: I know I pitched them without stating what I was
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: pitching them about, to say I want to work with you.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: And were they receptive? Why do you think they were
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: receptive because of you, or because no one had approached him,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: or Gomeshi was right all of those reasons. And I'm
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: gonna you know, I mean I was younger than them somewhat.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Um uh. You know, did they think at the time
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: this was it? Was this a lark? Or was this
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: a lifetime employment? Nothing was a lifetime? Then, nothing was
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: a lifetime until February the eighth or whatever the day is.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: The beat was a beard on that sell of them. Right.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: So now you're also talking about to the era certainly
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: pre internet but also pre calling. So they're not playing
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: again to the following Sunday night, right, No, they would
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: play in on Wednesday nights and another at a different place. Um.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't see them again though, until the next Sunday.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: And at that stage I had a huge dilemma. I mean,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: a week was a wonderful amount of time. You know.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Then right now, he's just waiting for somebody to call
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: you back, right. Um. In that manners decreed that I
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: would offer them to Brian Epstein because I was still
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: working for him, and I was not only the Beatles.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: I was doing the beginning of Billy J. Kramer Stilla
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Black was going to be in a month I've done.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: I had been up to um Liverpool and met his
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: next find who he is sure told me, and this
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: was true, They're gonna have a number one record during
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: the placemakers And I looked at these scrafts, man, you know,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: the coats looked like they were made out of liner um.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: And he was right because of the song that the
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: song that the Beatles had to central We're not doing
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: it right, the Mitch Murray's song how do you? How
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: do you do it? So I went, you know, I
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: knew it wouldn't work with Ryan Empstein because he was
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: already getting a bit right um obsessed. So I probably
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: went like, well, Bron not like Mick doing much and
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: he passed and a guy who Ago. But you actually
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: got to the point where you said, I have this,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: if you're interested, can we share it? Right? Yeah? Oh yeah,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: you do. Wonder sold it so much you said I'm
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: not interested. I don't know if he was listening, but
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: I still did what I wouldn't about yourself, he said,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: I gave him a shot. I wouldn't use those words.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: I did the right thing, right, okay? Um? And that
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: then the editor of the melody maker. Guy called Jack
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: Hutton said, had already said to me about am before
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: when you need an office, Andrew, I know this, uh
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: failed organist didn't say that. The guy used to be
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: play organ and the Blackpool tre and then you know
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: it changed his name to Eric Easton. He was another
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: actually another Epstein Eastman, one of those the names. Because
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: you're now dealing with the wonderful as with my mother's
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: boy with the last generation of Jews in England who
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: manicured up and became British, you know, so they didn't
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: there were you know, you wanted to belong. So he
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: was now Eric Easton. He was an agent and he
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: managed a guitarist called Bert Weeden, a disc jockey. It
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: was very level c but I got an office from
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: him for four pounds a week and all no Andrew
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: the long distance phone calls. All of the country was
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: all about the long distance phone calls. And because he
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: was an agent and I just did mouth um, I
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: actually probably would not have got the Rolling Stones if
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: I hadn't made him the first partner I had in
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: it before the Towers of Babel in America. Um, and
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: he was became their agent. He became the co manager
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: with me and the age. So when they were playing
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: the club, they didn't have an agent. Okay, somebody was.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: You've got those two structures of England trad jazz is
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: poor relative skiffle. I mean, you know from the Billy
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: Brag book, the history of how the Lonnie Donegan records
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: came out of all of that stuff, and how the
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: people who controlled the club circuits. I mean either the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: promoters like Harold Pendleton Georgia with his sort of left
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: wing oasis that he would run um frowned on rhythm
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: and blues. It was a poor relative, but it did
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: seem to be attracting younger people than the traditional jazz
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: bands like Humphrey Littleton and Chris barber Head. So it's
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: a week later and you show up with at the
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: gig and you tell the Stones what I now, show
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: up with Eric Houston, and then we signed them and
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: because of mine, and when you signed them, you literally
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: have a piece of paper. No, they came in the office.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: Brian was the leader, and so Brian would come in
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: for the negotiations and Charlie and Bill had jobs. Um
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Mcinkeith didn't good and they would sit at Lion's Corner
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: house on the corner of a couple of black teas,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and wait for what Brian had determined with Eric and me,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: and and because of my knowledge of America through mainly
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: Jim Lee who had Chris Montez, but then Bob Crew
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: and my knowledge of Phil Specter, we signed them for
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: the management and the records. Okay for those people who
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: don't know, And this is becomes very important, especially in
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: the history of the Rolling Stones. It was licensed to
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: the label. You owned the records. Anybody else in the
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: UK have that deal at that time they did, so
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: it was not incredibly uncommon. No, but because it was
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: incredibly uncommon, but because I was younger than all the rest,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: it would get noticed. All the rest. You had a
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: pecking order of Joe Meek, who did tell star Um
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: who you could call, and he cut acts for Robert
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Stigwood like John Layton and things like that. They did it,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: but they had actually learned it from a guy called
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: Dennis Preston who had He'll be in that book Landsdown Studios,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: who did Chris Barber. Therefore Lonnie Donegan. They were all
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: independent records. So once again you became a student of
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: the business. How did you know this? When I would
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: be doing pr for anybody from like Johnny Tillottson or
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: Brian Highland or ah Sam Cook and little Richard. I
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: wanted to meet the managers man because they would travel
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: with the acts and you just you know, I mean
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: America was it for me from Saul Bass? The posters
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: for those awful out of Parmeger films. The posters were
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: better than the films. And you know, I mean anything
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: ammunition and the knowledge that comes in all the instinct
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: that gets developed by studying these things. You don't don't
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: actually have to look at a book and read it
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: and get what's in the book. You just have to
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: hold it and well, this is very well articulated. This
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: is what people don't understand. They go to music schools,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: they think they can learn it. It's more about your sensibility.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: Match with a passion and eyes wide open, you can
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: feel something. Especially all the greats in the music business
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: are not educated people. There are people who operate on field.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: So in any event, you make a deal with the stones,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: and how long is that deal is supposed to run? Oh,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: three or five years? Three to three? You have a
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: lawyer who are or Easton just takes out the usual
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: piece of and they say they're in okay, and you
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: say you're gonna make them and what is the next step.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: The next step is the pub called the weather be Arms.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: They used to rehearse. And I just said to me, listen,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: pick out five things that you think of the most commercial.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: Plays them to me, and then we'll pick three and
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: we'll go and record them. And so there was Come On,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: which was a Chuck Berry b side Willie Dixon thing
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: I want to be Loved. I can't remember the third thing.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: And so we went to Olympic Studios, which at that
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: time was near Marble Arch and it was a four
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: track studio with whose money? Eric's, yeah, you don't have
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: any I don't have any money, Dar, And if I
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: did it, I'd be wearing it. But let's be clear.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: You were the producer, for want of a better word, Okay, Well,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: what would you consider your role to be at those No,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: I do concern I am the only one if they
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: had gone through the system. Where As you know from
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: the pictures you've seen from Abbey Row, you everybody gets
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: what they deserved. The Beatles got what they should have
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: In other words, they've got a very competent George Martin,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: who had a musical experience as well. The engineer, Norman
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: Smith knew about another kind of music, so all those
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: elements could come into the Beatles when they needed it.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: What we had to get away from was the fact
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: that acts before us, the English rockers and things like that,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: you'd have a three hour session. They wouldn't even let
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: him listen back to what they've done. You know. It
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: was just run like a shop steward, like a union
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: thing um. And the engineer was a guy called Roger Savage.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: They give me the kid an olympic um. We had
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: the forty quid three hours, three hours are up at
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: five to six, and I got no more money. Right?
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Recordings weren't that good? Right? I mean, but they weren't.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: They were less terrified with me than they would have
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: been with a guy who might have been seven years older,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: who would have felt like fifty years old. Did you
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: give them any direction? No? Interestingly, when I eventually listened
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: to the chuck Berry record, the vocals a spot, I mean,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean they you think, almost think that
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: Mick was on the chuck Berry record sing in the
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: backup right five six. I went, all right, that's it.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: Engineers says, well, we got to mix it, and I said,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: what's that And he explained to me about the four
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: channels or the four tracks it was on. And my
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: attitude was if I'm not here, I don't have to
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: pay for it. So I said, you do it. I'll
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: come back in the morning. Um the and that was
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: the first single. Then then Decker tried to fund me. Okay, well, well,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: well a little bit slower. So you cut these three
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: tracks and then how does it become a single? What's
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: the deal? Okay, we had gone to Decca because they
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: turned down the Beatles and actually fact one of the
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: A and R men, as you know, picked brian Pool
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: and the Trammelas because it was nearer. It was Daggingham,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: it was it was nearer than the Beatles being in Liverpool.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: But anyway, Dick Roe was a very bright man, the
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: R man. There was no no He just said, yeah,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I'll take it right on the least deal. But they tried,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: as you know what I mean, for the sake of
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: your viewers. The least deal is you know, you're got
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: to get ten points or eight points to play with
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: us opposed to three or four or two or three,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: and but he wanted to try and get them signed
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: as a direct act, so he said, yeah, yeah, but
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: the recording is not that good. We want to let
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: one of our producers have a crank at it. And
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: they picked a guy who they were giving the gold
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: Watch two because he delivered a couple of pop things
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: to them from sixty two. Guy called Michael Barkley, who
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: done Eden Kane, and oh god, I was at I'm going,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: I mean you. I couldn't turn around to the Stones
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: and say play badly. But my version was marginally better
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: enough that they then accepted the least deal and we
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: were off to the races. In the first track, does
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: how well? In the marketplace, it would have only gone
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: to thirty eight, But I bought it from thirty eight
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: to eighteen because you had forty five shops. It wasn't
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: as company. It wasn't a simple and complicated as American Paola.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: You had forty five. You didn't you weren't greasing DJs.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: You had forty five shops that reported to the four
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: musical newspapers, and all you had to do was go
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: in and buy three to five singles at five shillings
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: and sevenpence each um in those shops on a Friday
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: or Saturday. You know, it's basically the trick is making
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: the record company fall in love with you once when
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: you signed with them, and twice when they shipped the record,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: and so the factories would go wow. We sold three
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: records in Wellingborough, we sold three records in nor Willing
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: Garden City and the Rolling the Rolling Stones fans, the
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: small volume that they were at the time, were still
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: so devoted that they knew we didn't have the money
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: anyway to beat. They don't worry about and we'll send
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: you a postluder, No, don't worry about it. We'll buy
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: the records and so um a record. It goingly got
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: to eighteen for one week. But that was the first dent.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: That was the beginning and DECA was happy, yeah, and
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: so then what what happens after that? Then we have
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: to find a follow up, And the R and B
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: basket of potential songs is getting smaller as people like
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: the Searchers are doing sweets for My Sweet or the
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: B side of the or once thing, which was amazing,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean in where you're finding your songs,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: Don't throw your Love Away. It was a b side
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: by the or once and we had nothing to record,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: and one song that I suggested to them, which they
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: never got to actually working on, was the James Ray
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: thing if you've got to make a fool of somebody,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: but somebody said no. Andrew Freddie and the Dreamers did
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: that last week, so that was gone and it was
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: getting and we were at a rehearsal studio in Great
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: Newport Street off Leicester Square, and I just kind of think,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: if you're not contributing to the energy of the room,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: leave and go to the bathroom and you're gonna cup
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: of tea, do something like that. So I leave, I
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: turn right as opposed to left, and I end up
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: outside Leicester Square Tube station and getting out of a
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: cab is John and Paul, John Lennon and Paul McCartney,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: and as they knew me slightly from the months that
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: we've been together, it was what's wrong, Andy, And I said,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: I haven't got a fucking song too record. With the
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Rolling Stones, Oh no problem. They were great hustlers and
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: in those early, very early days, let's go backstop for
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: a second. With the Beatles, have made it without Brian Epstein. No,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, look at the pattern. What will they be?
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: They were backing Johnny Gentle for the guy called Larry
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: Pans who was the gay Colonel Tom Parker, with Billy Fury,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: Marty Wild, Joe Brown and all these acts. How would
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: they've made it? If? I mean, what would if Ed
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: Sullivan hadn't been on holiday in Europe? Would he have
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: known what anybody was talking about when he was offered
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: the Beatles for the Ed Sullivan Show. But he had
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: experienced it because on a holiday with his wife, they'd
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: stopped in an airport and what is this pandemonium? Oh
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: it's a group called the Beatles who are playing there.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: So these things are all destiny, right, So in anything
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: you're saying they're greed hustlers, Yeah, but hustlers for what
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: it's like as we were still getting out of the
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: trap that had been set for us by losing or
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: winning World War two. The future if you're not if
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: you weren't part of the elite anyway, right, um, you're
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: any day you stay you know, Oh this is still
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: working and it was right in America changed it. But
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: to see then, because of our we all idolized America.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: And you know, I could sit and look at a
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: forty five record and the credits or the nat ntoff
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: notes for Dylan or whatever, and just this could this
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: would just go on forever. You know, it would just
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: inspire you. So they hustled to see their names on
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: records as writers of records. That wouldn't They weren't necessarily
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: going to pay the rent. That was not the point.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, as you know and have said often, if
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: you come in into this for the money, right, that's
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: not quite enough. If you turn out to be good
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: at money, God bless you, right. And so they come down.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: I the moment I heard Brian Jones play the Bottleneck
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: on this, I want to be a man. I just
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: fucking died when we got to hit right, Okay, A
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: little bit slo You run into them at the Lusts.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: So they're getting out of a cab. They have just
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: won their first song writing so they're clairvoyantly tipsy, okay,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: and they literally come straight to the straight to the studio,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: not oh I'll be there and tomorrow, No, no, then,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: and then they got a Nivea Novello Award, which is yours.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: They demonstrate the song and they pretend that, ah, they're
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: finishing it in front of us. Ringo had recorded it
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: ten days before, right, um, and I, oh, lordy, you know,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: I mean it was the next apparition after having heard
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: them for the first time. So I didn't even bother
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: to produce the record. I led Eric, I went to Paris.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: This is my second nervous breakdown because I wanted a
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: pair of forty five pound butter leather boots from Pierre Cardin.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: That would solve my problem. I had had. You see,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: when I worked from Mary quant I had had a
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: photographer who was about fifteen years older than me. When
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: I was seventeen at Mary quants say you know, Andrew,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: you're an acoholic, right, And I said, Terry, I don't
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: even don't know them. The photographer, I said, I don't
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: even drink. He said no, but you've got the isms. Okay, um,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and forty five pound boots are part of the isms. Okay,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: but you disappear just when the record is being made. Yeah,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be no problem, man, you know, I mean,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: Eric could heard Feliciano could have done it. Oh, he
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: could have done he could have done Feliciano could have
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: done the video. It was that much of a breeze.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: I mean I heard it in the rehearsal room, um,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: and it was just magic. And how long did you
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: go to France for four days? Okay, so you come
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: back ready to work, ready to work, and Decca, here's
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: the tracks. Excited they put it out and what Decca.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: The same way as when they tried to shaft me
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: out of the licensing deal, they would have meetings at
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: ten thirty every Tuesday morning where they would decide what
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: they were taking, what they were putting out. So even
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: it's still you couldn't call something I got a hit. No,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: you would submit it and it would go into the
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: Tuesday morning A and R meeting and then they would
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: call you back. It was all very corporate. I didn't
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: see record untill I saw the boot of Sonny Bono's
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: car or Red or Buddha. Those people not put it
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: the ones with Comma Sutra. But and then they would
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: say we're releasing it on November. It was all very
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: but just because this is interesting, how long afterwards cut
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: did it come out? See cut in um August six
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: weeks so it comes out you buy a hit? Or
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: is it an immediate hit. Um, we buy it. It
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: goes to number ten. You're on the way from eighteen
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: to ten. That's right, Yes, indeed, Hi everyone, this is
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Bob Lefts. If you stumbled upon this podcast on iTunes
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: or tune in, you may be wondering who is this guy. Well,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: my story of the story of my blog, The left
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Sets Letter, was told in episode one. Please check it out.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: If you like what you hear, subscribe to the podcast
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: today and you'll hear my interviews with songwriters, performers, music
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: industry and tech executives. First, also, I'm over the feedback.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: What do you like? What do you het? Email me
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: at Bob at left sets dot com. And now more
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: with Andrew lou Goldham. Now, in today's business, it's all
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: about the live business. So as a result of selling
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: those records, does that increase the gigs? Does that change nothing?
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: It's all about the record back then, it's all about
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Remember we have only ten twelve years out of where
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: the big sales thing of them is still sheet music. Wow, yeah,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: I got you right. I mean, you know we're only
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: fifteen years from the Moses with a piano on the back.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: Not I was raised, but where some of our other friends,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: whether Who the Who and people like that, where the
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: guys would go down the street with an upright piano
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: on the back of the truck and be selling sheet
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: music because the family entertainment we hadn't reached the time.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: What we were reaching the time of the home entertainment
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: with the record player with that dropped the records and
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: was like a piece of furniture exactly living room of consol.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: But that was only middle class people who could afford those. Um.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: Poor people were still the pubs, the pianos and let's
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: get drunk singing this. So but in answer to the
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: sheet music was the one way to increase your gig
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: money in that as as you know in England, there
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: was an American hit like Unchained Melody, there would be
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: the American L. L. Hibbler version, then there will be
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: probably two English cover versions. And it's the one who
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: got on the sheet music who could probably get five
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: pounds more for a gig. Okay, okay, So I want
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: to be your man is out It has a level
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: of success. Yes, do you know where you're going from there?
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: No idea? So what do you end up doing? I
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: by then, by that time um sharing rooms with the
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: Mecan Keith and living with them, and um he Keith
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: one day, Oh, now I know we need songs, right,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: so you know you have to write. And my attitude was, well,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: if Mick Jagger can write postcards to his girlfriend and
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: his mother when they're doing the book because they burned
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: out to playing ballrooms as opposed to just R and
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: B clubs and ballrooms are on your way to being
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: booked on a cinema tour. And the first cinema tour
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: that they actually did was in October November as I
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: want to be a man went up the charts for
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: Don Arden, for Sharon's father, with the Evely Brothers, Bo
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: Diddley and bottom of a Bill with the Rolling Sterns,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: Mackey Most And how was reception on that tour? It was,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: Keith says it was university. I didn't. I didn't. I
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: didn't go to the places where I knew they wouldn't
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: do well. Yeah, um, you don't need to see that, Okay,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: they can learn their jobs exactly. And you know you're
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: on the road with Boa Didley, with the Jerome and
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: the Duchess, the Evely brothers who have basically got the
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: semblance of the crickets back in them. And that's almost
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: the first time we've ever heard somebody about to duplicate
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: the records on stage. So it's it is university and
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: it um in in the place that we were living
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: in Wilston Um. I would tell them I've got to
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: write a song. And now, of course the constitute of
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: time goes. I locked him up. I didn't lock him up.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: I just would take gather my laundry and go. I
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: was going to walk back to my mother's house. Was
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: still doing my elning right, you know, And then I
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: would slam the front door and pretend I've left, and
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: I would creep back up the stairs at thirty three
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: makes free road to see if they were actually writing.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and they were all it was awful, you know,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: because the first stuff you write is suppy. It's always awful.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: And so what is the first thing they write that
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: you decide is worthy of recording, Well, it's something they
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: didn't write. I'm such a believer that when I heard
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Keith just with the acoustic doing what was the B
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: side again? Not fade away to me? Written it? Okay,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: then how does it tell me? Come about around the
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: same time, and you've got this wonderful process of where
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: as they start to write, it's also got to pass
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: muster with the rest of the band, even when we'd
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: already got to hear to l a like with some
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: of the songs like I'm Free or the singer not
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: the song when they run it down in front of
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: the other three stones, you don't know what I'm just
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: gonna say. Oh fuck, you know you don't think we're
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: gonna play that piece of ship, do you? But you know?
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: But staying with tell me for a second, that was
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: the song that closed me, not fatal great, right? I
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: remember them being on some New York TV show. Yes,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: that's exactly before uh with Bill Wyman. You know with
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: the guitar they based almost vertical, etcetera. So you know
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: why he did that. So he could stand on stage
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: as he wasn't moving, call out his room numbers, mouths
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: his room number. I'm just done for those people don't know.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: He has almost a photographic memory and supposedly has had it,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: slept with more women than Mick and Keith could even dream.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: And what do you think his magic was? You know,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: it didn't affect me, So the other thing we would
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: we were miss assistance. That's why question. You know, there's
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: certain people you ask enough times, you know the door opens.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: You did take Ian Stewart, Austine, can you walk us
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: through what your flaw process was there? That? How do
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: you know any of the Hurricanes apart from Johnny? Okay?
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: Um four with the Beatles and the Shadows, because then
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: the prototype of all this is the cliff Ridges back
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: in group in terms of electric bass, in terms of
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: the lead guitar, Hank B. Marvin, that's the benchmark cliff
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: Ridge and the Shadows, the Shadows. Okay, therefore why were
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: the Beatles in suits? Because the Shadows were the example.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't believe the public could count to five, but
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: you already had five. Six thinks that thank you correcting me? Yes,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: six was now putting you in Johnny in the Hurricanes territory.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: And apart from that, he looked like William Bendicks or
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: Neville Brand, which was not acceptable. Ironically, you know, twenty
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: years later if you put a picture of ste and
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: Morrissey up, it's the same thing. But when you tell
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: the band this, what do they say, Well, you've got
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: this wonderful thing with time that I can now say.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, for example, when I want to be your
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: Man came out, there was no oh, this group was
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: against the beat or so you know, I think there
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: was none of that. That's part of Keith's rotation of
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: Andrew knew that you know, we were going to be
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: the opposite of the beat. Was no, I didn't look
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: at this way. Can you imagine if I was having
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: to talk to the Rolling Stones and I said, your
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: greatest ability is that you unlike another group? I mean,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: what is that saying? That's a negative? Exactly? And within Stewart,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: all I can say is the Stones didn't stop me
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: because they were that hungry for success. That's their identity.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: Um I think the real hunger came after America, but
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: probably as a result of Alan Klein. But we can
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: get to that. Um it. I don't know, you know,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: it's like, remember, kids are cruel. It's Lord of the flies,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: and so I don't even think you're gonna apply Were
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: they that ambitious or were they you know that It's
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: just you don't think when you're that age that I
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: could be like, you know, destroying somebody that you weren't.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: Because they needed the van which he drove, which he drove,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: and Brian was the only one who's the idiot of
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: the day when he's you know, don't worry, Stu will
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: take care of you for the rest of your life.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: You'll be an equal partner with us, was he No,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: of course no, of course not. But but he lasted
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: longer than me. I mean I did have a moment
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: in the eighties because his wife used to work for me,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: and I was staying at their house and I'm in
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: the house by myself and he comes in after having
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: played golf with Glynn Jones, and I thought, well, if
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: there's ever going to be a moment, this is it.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: But he knew how it had worked. He played piano
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: on the you know it was he played all the
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: blues pianos. He had the van that he had a
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: wonderful run in the eighties tour when it was him
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: and he and McLagan as the things. And he also
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: was one of the few people who picked satisfaction. Okay,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: let's not jump too far ahead, so not fate away
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: comes out? How far does that go on the chart?
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: Number four? Number four? And then okay, now we're over,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: now we're over buying. We don't have to buy it
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: up the charts anymore. We also in the interim and
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: had an EP, which is do you want to explain
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: to them? Shall I think today they know what an
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: EP is because EPs are down coming. Then an EP.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: There's only two acts in the world that had five
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: songs instead of four on an EP, and it's US
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: and Elvis Um Jail House Rock was and we um
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: d P. We did a version of you Better Move
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: On the Arthur Alexander thing and that went between um,
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: in between yeah, or we'll tell me's on the album,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: right um. So it's either after Not Fade Away or
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: before Not Fade Away, probably after I think it's like
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: April six that went to number eleven and the sixth
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: in the singles charts, so they're paying a level double
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: the price and it still goes to number eleven. And
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: you better move on with Killer I mean him on
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: a TV show with the French sweater and that to
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: die for, right um. And next I'm in a panic.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to do except I decide maybe
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: I can hold it back. That's while I've got to
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: give yourself thinking time. So I decided to release Little
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: Red Rooster I figured that will hold it, you know,
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: I mean after you know what what we doing next,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: slow it down, have a difficult record. It was too late.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: There were a hundred orders of a hundred eighty thousand,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: and it went straight to number one the first week.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: Little Red Rooster flies right up the charts, contrary to
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: your expectation, and you're panicking again. No, got used to it. Okay,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: exposure therapy. So what was the move after a Little
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: Red Rooster? Uh? Where? Now starting to deal with America? Now?
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: Are you pushing to get in the door. Are they
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: clamoring to have you come? No, nobody's clamoring at all.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: I mean we were worse than the sex pistols, you know.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: I mean you had a core following, most of whom
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: are following you because nobody else is well articulated. And
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: in some instances the promoters didn't show. I mean, we're
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: playing in Sacramento. The prom that doesn't show. I don't
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: know whether they went off with the money. We played
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: about ten dates in Texas. We're playing with Bobby V
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: and Diane Renee and some performing seals at a state fair.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: When you see that the promoter doesn't sure, I mean
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: you get to the gig and there's nobody there, well
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: that the actual promoter, your local Bill Graham has decided
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: it's not to turn up. So we left in the
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: hands of assistance or what a lot of the gigs
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: I mean we did okay in say Chicago, or okay
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: with said Bernstein in New York. But once you got
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: to the b places, nobody knew, nobody cared, nobody showed up,
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: including the promoter. So there was no infrastructure today. And
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: how do you get the television gigs through? We were
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: with g c M. That's an agency's an agency and
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: they so we would do Clay Cole. I'd rather done
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: Joe Pine. You know, I don't think what's my audiences,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: Joel Pie? But keep going well okay? Um? And because
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: of I had done PR, made a point of doing
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: PR for Phil Specter in around the time of Not
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: Fade Away. So that's like he came to England like
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: February of sixty four, right and went back on the
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: plane with the Beatles. He arrived on the plane with
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: them in jfk or than Kennedy idle world what it
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: was right right? And um he was at the Not
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: Fade Away session he was your note, did he weigh in?
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: He played the miracles? And did he tell you how
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: to record it? No? I mean it's a mono. Studios
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: have to ask interacting with Phil at that time it
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. Is this This
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: is the defining time for Phil Specter's life? Is the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: article that Tom Wolfe wrote about And he then decided
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: that's who he was, and that was the beginning of
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: everything else. I don't really think River Deep, Mountain High
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: not going to you know, he's he was already nuts,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean it went to number one in England.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: You grab what you can so and he went to
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: number ninety in America. Fuck it, Um, he was just
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: a pleasure. He had a gleam in his eye that
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't see again until the last prison picture in
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: that whatever the medication he's on now it's working. And
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: there was a picture out of him. Remember we weren't there,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: you mean, in his so called castle. We weren't there
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: when it happened. And you're saying, you're implying what I'm
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: implying that the same as armad Urgin. As a certain age,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: you stopped going out and you can all right, Well,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: when you go out at that age, what you're going
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: to end up with is troubled to start with. Well
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: armed still went out to a good degree. Okay, yes,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: he certainly did went and he shouldn't have gone down
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: those final steps at the Beacon and into a room
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: with Keith. Well, okay, we can rewrite history. I mean,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: we could try to change history, but let's go on.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: That's what I meant. I'm trying to say myself. No, no,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: that that's not that I misspoke. What I mean is,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: you know, it would be great if he didn't go
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: down those stairs, but he did. He did. Is my point,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: Not that I'm saying that the facts are not correct.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying though, Okay, Okay, he was giving um
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: he hadn't closed up. Now, when the stones are on
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: tour in America, is that also when they go into
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: chess studios? James was not fight away too? Really, yeah,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: I called James j Pittney was in Paris. We had
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: done we making Keith wrote the follow up to twenty
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: four US to tell Usa, which was only really a hit,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: only went to fifty six here in England. It went
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: just went top ten. So that was their first top
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: ten song as writers. Then came Mary and Faithful and
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Pittney was in Paris and the Not Fadeaway session was
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: going very, very badly. Because when you've heard something in
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: a room, like in the room that I lived with Keith,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: when you've heard a song someone play your room, play
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: play to you in a room and you hear the
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: whole thing. Now you've got to go and get it right, um.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: And it was not going well. And in this time,
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: this time, for once, an audience helped get it to
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: the point. Normally, an audience in the studio fucking kills
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: it right. So you got Pittney come in with Brandy
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: Prospect to come in in a red corduroy coat and
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: he played the maracas. Two of the Hollies were there,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: and Peter Meaden, who, as you know for five minutes,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: was the first manager of the Who before Cat Lamber
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: and Christa. So there was a cheerleading section in this
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: little room that's about the size. So it's room sound
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: that makes the record. How long did it like? Tell
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: Me Free you Love tell Me? The reason the guitar
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: sounds so great is because he's leaking into Charlie's bass. Drum.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: How long did it take you to get in our
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: feet away? Two else? Which is a long time? Right,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: And there was so relieved that making seriously, Mick and
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: Specter go outside and sit on the staircase and they
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: come up with a little by little. So you tour America,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: you mentioned satisfaction. How do satisfaction come to be? He
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: wrote it? Actually, Keith wrote it in the Scientology building
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: in clear Water. Now the rumor is that he woke
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night and sung it
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: into his tape recorders. He did, that is true. Yeah,
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: And the scientologists supposedly had the room, the whole floor
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: exercised too, to get rid of that whatever, so that
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: we never had another satisfaction. So but the one amazing
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: thing about Satisfaction is brilliant as that record is with
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: the iconic sound. He cannot play it live. And I
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: will tell you why. Okay, to start with, we'd attempted. Okay,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: at the end of the first tour. The first tour
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: was basically so fucking disastrous, right because we'd ended up
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: in Texas. You know you don't we're ending on a
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: bummer with bby V and the Seals, right, um, and
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: I called Phil and I mean, I don't know why
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't do it myself, but I asked him to
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: do it. Get us into Chess studios because I need
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: them going back to England with a smile on their faces.
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: Can't have this. It was all your idea. And we
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: go into Chess and they do thirteen things in two days,
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: including it's all over now. Because Murray the k had
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: at a party of Bob Cruz had put the Valentino's
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: record in my hand and said, Andy, if you cut
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: with the boys, because he was the sixth Stone as
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: well as the fifth beatle Um, you'll have a hit.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: And he was right right, and thirteen other things in
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: case of the Highway, all those kind of things. And
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: we did try satisfaction. Oh really, yeah, don't ask me
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: where the tapes are. Abco don't have them, The Stones
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: don't have them. They're gone, right um. And it sounds
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: like to me it sounded like the rooftop Singers, which
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: of course is not satisfaction. But it's got that thing.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: So we get to l a but and very this
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: is the only time that in my history, in my
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: time with them, that we tried to cut something again.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: There was no nothing else. Everything else was done, done,
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: no more, you know, no returning to anything. And Jack
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: Nisim whom we knew through Sonny Bernard, how did you
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: know Sonny Berna through Phil Specter and Aspector sent Sonny
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: Bono to meet us at the airport. Okay, it's wonderful
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: the car the first time we saw records, the Caesar
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: and clear records in the trunk. You didn't see records
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: in England, right, What do you mean you didn't see records. Well,
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: you know they could have been a Decca if you
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: went had to go to Decca. You never saw the factory.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: You know, they could have been doing baked beans, right, Um,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: and uh, we're in the middle. You know, most songs
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: got twenty minutes, forty minutes to take the shape they
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: were going to take. And Jack Nichi, well I communicated
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: with you about this. Um took Keith down on one
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: of the shops on sunset because we're recording it on
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: sunset neither and he comes back to the first box
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: just in time. Serendipitous. Yeah, and as you as you know,
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: this was not New sixty two sixty three Hodges and
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: Frankie Lane with Jack when jack NISI mean doing arrangements
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: and either they couldn't afford the horn section or whatever.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: He comes to fuss right, sounding more like muted trumbones
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: and things, and Keate, of course, since then has gone own. Man.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: You know, like the record wasn't finished. I was going
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: to do horns with what Keith. We weren't even meant
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: to be recording in America, let alone bringing union horn
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: sections in. Okay, So he comes back with the fuzz
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: box and plugging, and the record just comes together that
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: it gets made. Okay, But to your point of why
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: it's not good live, it's a difficult song to sing.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: And so what I did was with Brian and Keith
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: put in a huge bed of acoustics that gave the
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: voice somewhere to land that once it had landed, I
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: then took them down from ten volume down to three. Wow.
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: I mean so he in other words, is you know
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: he's singing the verses like a ballad. I can't do
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: that on stage because there's no there's no acoustic guitars
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: underlining it. Okay, you cut satisfaction, do you immediately know
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: you have a worldwide yes? And how long until it
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: comes out? It comes out in America first, which was
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: slightly offensive at the time to England, but it did. Um,
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: you just knew. I mean, it's like, but that's what
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: I tell people. People say, you know that when you
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: achieve excellence, you know there's a smile on your face.
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: That's it. Well, because it's actually having the appeal to
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: you that a record you've loved that you've had nothing
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: to do with, you know what I mean, it's it's
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: on that level pretty previously records, whether it's Cathy's Clown
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is, or it's records that have changed
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: your life, and then suddenly you're in the studio and
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: part of whatever has made it. That's it. So the
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: record comes out, does it totally change the landscape of
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: the band in the business? Yeah? Goes by then we're
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: already seven or eight five no winners September August, September,
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: already four or five months in with Alan Klein. So
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: tell us how you hook up with a um. Alan
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: Klein represented Mickey Most in England and you've got Mickey
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: Most with uh, he's a millionaire, okay, sir? Right for
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: a week at least, and I want I don't want
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: to talk to Alan about the Stones. I want to
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: talk to about I want about the media. I need
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: money for it. Okay, just for those don't know. So
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: the Stones are going and you decide to start Immediate
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: how Immediate Records? Because I was fed up dealing with
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: the record companies. I was probably smoking too much. I
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: rather wanted to control my aunt destiny without having to
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: leave the office. I didn't want to have to keep
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: going and I was basically keep pitching. So you go
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: to Alan looking for money, No, I go ask wanting
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: to get distribution. That should I start the record company? Obviously,
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: in the back of my mind, I had what else
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: can we do? But I'm not going to walk in
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: and say I need help. But he smelled it. Um.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: He actually thought Eric Easton controlled everything, um because he'd
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: done his homework, had been doing his homework already. I
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: was saying I need um the same way as he
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: placed Mickey Most so well, and they were well, you know,
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: he didn't just do a deal for Mickey Most. They
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: were placed hermis hermes was on MGM the Animals. He
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: was stuck on that one because that had to end
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: up on wherever it was originally, and then the other
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: one he had three hits at once national teams. Yeah, okay, um,
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: and I just wanted help that way. Eventually he started
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: pitching me. I said, you better pitch making keys. If
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: they say yes, we'll get into bed. And what was
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: the goal of getting to bed? What was his sales pitch? Um,
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: I don't remember what his sales pitch was. I know
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: what I want it and what I wanted is I
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: was already in trouble with Eric Euston. The two or
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: three years was nearly up with Decca. Eric Easton wanted out.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: He wanted to do a deal where they were going
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: to get six hundred thousand dollars of their own money
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: and the money that was going to come because as
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: you know, we sold records in England by now, in
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: a very short period of time, we built up a
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: lot of royalties abroad, not America, but in Europe that
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: don't have to be paid for another twelve months. So
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: we're very famous. But no petrol, right, And um, I
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: kind of knew by instinct. I mean, obviously I'm articulating
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: it better today, but the street instinct told me if
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: I don't get Eric Easton handled, I could be in
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: trouble because he had the same way as Allan once
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: said to me, you know how I managed to take
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: advantage of you, which years later was an incredible sentence
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: to say to say, of course, And the real thing
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: was that because he was thirteen years older than me.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: Now is that all there is? You know? No, right?
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: But and we were And so you've got this wonderful
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: destiny of time where we've met Alan. Then we cut satisfaction.
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: Then he's got that to run with in terms of
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: the advantage factor of him of things that had nothing
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: to do with the money that there was nothing to
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: do with. Is that London Records was really epistle. It
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: was run by an old war buddy of Sir Robert Lewis.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: He was down on st and tenth and they had
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: Willie Mitchell. But so what and how do we get
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: rise above? When the Beatles wrong? Capital a man for
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: man or whatever, you know, they're on a division of
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: that or Ascot whatever the label was. And so and
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: we're not even down in the boondocks. But it's so
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: the energy of Alan and Alan repeating the same tricks
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: that we didn't know he'd done with Sam Cook, by
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: taking billboards in Times Square and things like that, add
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: um erasmutas and flashed to it that we couldn't I
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: mean I as you know the first album. One of
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: the selling points of the first album was that it
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: had no title on it in England because of communication
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: and they fucked me. They put England's Newest Hit Makers
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: of course, right, so you know um and that. But
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: of course the key then was now we need to
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: follow up. Okay. So Alan's goal was to get enough
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: cash and a better deal so you could squeeze. I
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: don't know what his goal was, Okay. He wanted what
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: he wanted. I wanted what I wanted. Eric Easton was
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: settled five years later. You know, Um, he wanted the stunts.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: You had any idea you were getting in bed of
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: the devil. No, you can remember we're only, um, twenty
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: years after the war. Americans are still terrific, okay, So
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: you get in bed with that. He was American because
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: one of the one of the right. The point is,
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: Bob that when we got to America and sixty four,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: suddenly we're in a country where we're not in a
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: dirty business. I have to digest that. Well, Um, all
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: of them included Dick Rowe, who was good because he's
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: not the man who turned down the Beatles. To me,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: he's the man who signed the Rolling Stones. But they
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: were all hoping we'd go away like that, would go
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: back to Manta Varney and Davy Crockett hats and knacking cold,
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: just like people robbing to get back to rock from
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: hip hop. They were, so let's breathe heavily. Well, did
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: it go well with Alan for a while? Okay? And
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: then when do you start to realize there out for you? Oh? No,
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: it where to start with? There is a point of
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: realization where we haven't got what Alan promised, but we
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: haven't got the time to do anything about it because well, um,
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: we supposedly we're going to continue to own our own records. Um.
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: It's the greatest three card Monty trick of all time.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: If you say to somebody that, um, yeah, you're gonna
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: own your own masters. It's going into this company and
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: it's the same name as your British publishing company. If
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: it's got limited stuck on the end of it, you say,
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: oh limited, you know that's English. Like we we had
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: everything we wanted for three days, and what happened after
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: those three days? The Stones were advised by Alan that
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: they couldn't own it or even the money without horrendous
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: tax consequences, so he would and he'd pay them out
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: over the next twenty years. They and you did not understand,
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: of course not. This is where do you know how
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: I managed to take advantage of you comes in? Although
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: I heard from his nephew that you had positive words
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: to say about Alan at his funeral. Always, man, if
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: you're stuck with somebody for fifty years and responsible for
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: them putting the food on your table, he'll kill you
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: if you hate them. He was always a very attractive person.
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: How does the sun set on your relationship with the Stones? Um?
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: Me taking too much drugs? Me? As Keith put in
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: his book, while we and Andrew liked the same music
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: what and wanted the same goals in other words, singles
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: I'm still not into money wars. I'd rather watch Lionel Richie.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I want hits. So when it came to
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: that stage where suddenly the public taking drugs, which was
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: here you've got the underbelly of Vietnam in England, we
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: had the unrest that was coming up in Europe. Whether
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: suddenly the equivalent on FM market and suddenly you can
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: make albums I was making up. I mean one of
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: the great things through Between the Buttons Aftermath, and that
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: is the Stones are completely seamless. One of the things
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: that places them above forget the Beatles, they're in the
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: league of their own right, but all the other stuff
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: where that's the animals Man from Man is the other
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: bands were daiging to be commercial for one cut like
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: for Your Love by the others, they were not seamless
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: in that we all our stuff EPs or LPs was
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: all as good as the singles. So the last album
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: you were involved with word Between the Buttons. Many people
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: consider that to be the best Stones record. That isn't
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: necessarily my opinion, but people people see that as a
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: great record in an era that was sixty six right,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: thank Ray Davis for it. Think well, it's it's gotta
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: it's it's a strange thing where mcinkeith are right thing
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: about England when they're not in England, and it has
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: some of that flippancy. Flowers was the last one I
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: put together. Um I left in the middle of Satanic
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: match just um. Basically I mean the same way as
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: I got to the Stones say forty eight hours ahead
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: of the rest of the world. I left before I
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: was asked to, and I thought, you realize this was
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: self indulgent. You thought it was going off the deep end,
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: and you said, I'm done. I couldn't. This was the
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: first time that we were recording back in England apart
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: from overdubs, and that they were arriving in the studio
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: and cutting the tracks and then writing the songs on
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: top of the tracks. And I couldn't get behind that.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: I wasn't. I do dreams, not money. I didn't sit
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: there and think, oh, I better negotiate my way out
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: of this. I just was. It was three weeks of hell.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: If you can't contribute, if you want to be a vegetable, okay,
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: or you're gonna sit there. So there was no cart
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: just this of I want to stay in this but
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: from base for my bank account. No. But what was
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: the status of immediate at that point was small faces
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: were just coming together. That we had one hit with
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: hang On Sloopy that we got from Burt Burns. Um.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: We had a very expensive number one that they could
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: produce with Chris Farlow about of time. Um. It was
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: draining blood, but and so it was getting to the
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: end because I couldn't keep financing it with my Stones money,
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: because that was coming to an end, or sort of
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: coming to an end, you know. I mean We're still here,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: but it and we hadn't got the Small Faces. That
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: was very expensive too, because that kind of involved twenty
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: five grand of a paper bag for Don Arden to
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: find a way out of breaking the deal they had
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: with Decca and and the Small Face as well. You know, Um,
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: they were great in the studio, but they were not
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: a band. They were a group you could never there
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: was no reliableity with them on stage. They were children
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: always Keith like when he said about Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy's great,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: but the kids he plays with, right? And did you
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: put Humble Pie together? Yes? Well, no, I had a choice.
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: Steve Mary was had had enough of Ronnie Lane and
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: the Small Faces and the other three. Um, he wanted
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: Peter Frampton, so he knew Frampton and Frampton as a
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: hot guitar, and so we couldn't have gone with whatever
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: the Faces were going to become. And humble Pie. Humble
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: Pie was definitely an adventure man, you know what I mean?
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: You okay, they it became realized after media went down
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: with the Anthony and A and M. But I thought,
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: here's another great shot. You can't get in the way
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: of these people, except when Steve Mary got in the
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: way of himself. So what year do you basically close
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: up shop op and immediate okay? And then you're thinking,
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: what are you so high on drug? Because you don't
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: even know what you're thinking. Oh, I know what I'm thinking.
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: I have the same now economic problems as the Rolling
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: Stones do. And we've all got to leave England and
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: they go to France and I go to Connecticut Wilson
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: of course, very close to where I grew up, six
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: or five Ridge Raild Road. And you continue to produce
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: records and make deals, and you do that for about
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: another ten years um on that more than I do.
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: Had this interesting segue with Rare Earth Records, right produced
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: stuff with them because well after they had get ready,
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: they thought they're gonna have a white label, and so
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: all the old white people who had had the like
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: Bob Crew and it was there. I was there, Bobby
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: Darren was there all producing stuff for Rare Earth. So
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: now fifty years later, with this perspective, what do we
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: learn have fun getting it done. I had fun getting done.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: If you you know this is a cliche question, I'll
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: ask it anyway, if you had to do it over again,
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: would you do anything differently? Absolutely nothing. I mean to me,
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: the life is simply that comes out of Uterus and location.
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: Where you know who drops you and where they dropped you, right,
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's simple. You can't you you're the worst
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: thing you can do is think you were responsible and
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: in the time you have left. What anything you want
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: to say any autumn, Bob, it's an I'm not saying
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: it's over, okay, but any goals, any achievements, any dreams
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: yet unfulfilled. I'm very lucky that, with all due respect
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: to the Stones, once I got over the drug and
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: alcoholism thing, every day is just as exciting as any
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: day was with them, because life brings you that if
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: you fucking embrace it and kiss it. I mean, Pulaski
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: could have been the most depressing, depressed guy who I
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: mean what he went through, But the thing I learned
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: from him was my guard he went through. I mean,
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: you know, Narny dead at eleven Poland and as you
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: couldn't meet a more positive fucker in your life, and
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: it's your choice. And so you wake up every day
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: and you say, let's see what the world brings me. No,
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: let's see what I can take from the world for me.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: If I don't take care of myself, there's absolutely no
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: way I can take care of anybody else. And so
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit more concretely, what might you take for yourself?
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: I'd be grateful, Um, I would pace myself. I would
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: make sure I got enough sleep, and I wouldn't kill
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: mysel I'll trying to get anything done because it's going
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: to get done, or it's not going to get done.
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: You're just watching yourself do it. Do you think that
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: the landscape of both culture and politics always maintains the same,
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: or are we in a worse position better position? You've
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: got the brainwashing of technology that if you actually are
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: one of the unemployed or the underemployed or self employed,
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: and you got time to watch this crap on television,
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: you will notice, like vance packet and the hidden persuade us,
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: that you're getting the same loop of information every thirty seconds,
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: and you're being brainwashed. It's suppressed into absolutely nothing. For
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: those who care to remember, the year we came to America,
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: you had Lyndon Johnson, you know, I mean, come on,
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: you just haven't got the barrage of it going out.
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: But he did his press conference from the bathroom when
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: we arrived in America. Uh. One of the many possibilities
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: was that he could have killed Kennedy. Yes, I mean
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: it was a different arab because we didn't know that much.
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, now we know where everybody is and everybody's
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: reachable seven. You know, we didn't know that f DR
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: basically could walk. And you know, it's a very interesting time.
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, you live through We've We've lived
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: long enough to see a couple of revolutions where music
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: drove the culture, then technology drove the culture. And it's
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: interesting is these changes occur that people believe that things
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: don't change. Music will always survive. It's important. But just
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: like you talk about Mary Kwan and Carnabie Street and
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: all that other stuff, they have these peaks and then
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: the peak becomes something else. It I agree with you,
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: but it also has something to do with your age
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: and where you're coming from. I made a point in
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: April this year last year to go and see Justin
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: Bieber in Bogata. I knew he would be great. You cannot.
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: I hate to say this because it's gonna come out
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: of the time by but Justin Bieber is great. Thank you.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, II the way I do this and the
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: way I uh, you know the recent tracks which you
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: are now two years old. I was listening on Spotify.
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: I'm hiking in the mountains and I'm just clicking through
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: the tracks. I have a little click around my Santahiser
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: headphones and also like I go, what is this? And
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: I gotta pull out my phone. You know, those happen
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: to be great tracks. I mean, it's Justin Bieber. What
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: can you say so great? It's like a great movie. Well,
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: you see when he was in Colombia, that's where he
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: picked up this next record, this panamz that he just
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: picked it up. I know the people he went into
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: the studio in Colombia. He did it in twenty four hours,
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: he got so he did it when he was there
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: on tour. Yeah, okay, so this is someone in a
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: And also the other gift, which I didn't allow for
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: because I had not seen him live, is when he
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: and you can't rehearse this. I mean, you're born, You're
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: born with this and it goes with the rest and everything.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: When he spoke to that audience, it was like Doobe
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: Gillis meets Elvis. Okay, it was magic. It had as
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: much volume and intensity as all the records of the
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: songs and what he was doing on stage. So if
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: you have a few we have four hours now, would
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: you read a book, would you go for a walk,
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: would you watch a movie? Would you watch television show?
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: Would you listen to you know, listen to music? What? What? What?
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: You don't listen to what? I go to see it
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: and you don't listen because I will listen if I'm
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: not choosing because you think music is best performed live,
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: or you get an um. Uh. You know, look when
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: I got here two days ago, we're in Los Angeles. Okay,
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: it's weird. Uh in that my place, you know, I
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: mean coming here six four and it's our c A
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: and it's Liberty Records, and it's sunset, it's this um
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: And now all that used to be inside a building.
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: You were creating music, you were making it, you were
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: still outsiders. Now it's wall to wool, restaurants, everything, and
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: invariably in some music that I've made, or music that
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: I'm familiar with that was made at the time. If
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: I can hear in a supermarket, I'm gonna play it
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: at home. I'm gonna be at Rock Hudson showing his
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: old movies. What I come across, I will let in.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: But the reward is seeing stuff live. And that's a
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: gentleman who lived through it and is still alive. Andrew,
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: so great to have you. We could go out for hours.
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, we'll have to do it the next time
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: you're in Los Angeles because we have so much more
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: to talk about a little deeper into those Stones albums
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: and immediate and your era in Connecticut. Never mind, we
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: didn't even get into the scientology thing, which but thanks
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: so much for being Thank you for being so well.
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: Until next time, It's Bob left Sex with Andrew lou
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: Goldham on the Bob Left Sets Podcast. That wraps up
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: another episode of the Bob Left Sets Podcast. I know
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of podcasts out there. Hell, you
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: can do so many other things with your time, so
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate you joining me. Be sure to check
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: out previous episodes if you missed them, and don't forget
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: to subscribe on tune in, Apple podcast, or where where
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: you get your podcast