STONE FREE

Stone Free by Andrew Loog Oldham (Escargot Books)
This is the third volume of Loog Oldham’s memoirs and it focuses on the impressive line-up of hustlers or “pimpressarios” with whom it has been (mostly) his good fortune to have had dealings with. As an infamous hustler himself he is well qualified to expound on the lives of these rogues (nearly all of them artist managers) and almost manages to elevate their frequently suspect behaviour into an art form. If you’ve read and enjoyed Stoned and 2Stoned you’ll recognize here the barbed wit and hilarious turn of phrase that made those books so noteworthy. Loog Oldham is a born raconteur and he writes like a dream. His fondness and respect for these characters (we’re talking Larry Parnes, Albert Grossman, Brian Epstein, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, Malcolm McLaren, Don Arden) is matched only by his disdain for the modern music business – “what the industry really needs is a Schindler’s List before everyone is marched to a kind of death”. Of course charlatans of all species still proliferate the music industry but as Loog Oldham so divertingly demonstrates they are all hustling on the shoulders of giants, so to speak.