Part I: Mick Jagger The Rolling Stones And The Sixties

　

Part I, Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones And The Sixties

Andrew Look Oldham Learning The Ropes

by

R.E. Prindle

Andrew Loog Oldham 

I’m in the James Dean suite, better known as two shoe boxes at the back of the Hotel Iroquois on West 44^th Street in Manhattan and life has definitely lost its color.

You try for a few things to forget that he who is not busy being born is busy dying, to block out the thought of yourself as a wingless, hurt, spineless bird of the 60s.

Another grey-line- they’re not even white anymore- another grappa or Southern-anything-without-Comfort can bring you back for a few minutes but it’s not a given. Occasionally you get up from the couch and have to check yourself out in the mirror above the fireplace to make sure you are still there, and that’s an effort.

One could say that when life becomes too painful, the body sickens and withers and the soul departs.

--Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned, 1995

Mick

            Andrew Loog Oldham was the promoter, the guiding light, who led the five lads comprising the Rolling Stones from a squalid existence to the top of revolutionary society. As he wrote the above quote from Vol. 1 of his excellent two volume autobiography, Stoned, he viewed his past from the perspective of drug induced oblivion. It hadn’t always been that way.

Andrew had been present at the creation of that part of the Revolution known as the British Invasion in the history of Rock and Roll. He had in fact been one of its principal guides.

But, as even the most obscure molecule has its origins in a more distant past a background of the macro cosmos leading to the micro-cosmos Andrew Oldham might provide some insights.

The actual starting point of what became Andrew Loog Oldham is, oh, say, 1789 and the French Revolution of which, of course the future molecule of Andrew had no part. Let us skip lightly over the intervening hundred years or so to the defining moment of our own existence, the years after 1900.

Of supreme importance is the career of that master demolition artist, Sigmund Freud, but we’re just going to be dealing with conclusions not origins or development. Nevertheless Freud began his assault on Western consciousness in 1900 with his Interpretation Of Dreams- the excavations of the unconscious and demolition of the conscious. We will bear this is mind because Freud’s vision of psychology is important.

The stately self-confidence of the Victorian Age was destroyed by the horrors of what at that time was known as The Great War, the term WWI evolving only after twenty-five years or so later. WWII gave that previous war its modern nomenclature.

Thus 1914 commenced a hundred years war in which WWII, the Korean War, The Viet Nam War and the Communist subversion of US institutions was done reaching a culmination under a world wide Communist government led by China with Barack Obama as its king, emperor or dictator.

The First World War destroyed the flower of Western manhood, compounded by the destruction of European manhoodof the succeeding WWII the loss was not reparable up to our time. While the ‘Pacifists’, the physically weak and mental imbeciles remained at home with the elderly and women the best and bravest were sent on an unproductive suicide mission. As the undrafted at least were the patriotic and nationalists that also left the international Communists at home to assume positions of real power- the directors of the war, that is, the beneficiaries of the slaughter.

After the War the Third International interfered in the internal affairs of the nations nourished by the West’s absurd notion of democracy setting up power points in Western capitols that resulted in Popular Front qua Communist governments in all Western States with the exception of the Axis powers who nevertheless adopted socialist administrations.

In the meantime the soldiers returned after the war in various stages of shell shock or mental discomfort of some kind to try to put their lives in order without any assistance from the State that put them in harm’s way in the charnel house. They were greeted on their return by enormous social disorganization caused by the Communists who for instance led the general strike of 1929 in Great Britain and in general caused a conflict between two different economic or essentially religious approaches.

The General Strike was followed by the world wide economic depression that lasted until the religious war of 1939-45 between Communism and Rationality. The former was led by the USSR and Stalin while the latter was led by Hitler, his Germany and the Axis. The result was a forgone conclusion as both the US and USSR were united against a pitifully weak German and Axis Powers.

In this second major incident of the Hundred Years War Britain was all but demolished. She was the big loser. As the incident ended in 1945 London was all put a pile of rubble. From the rubble came the second phase of the Rock and Roll generations.

Since the discussion is centered around the Rolling Stones , Bill Wyman the eldest of the group was born in 1935 thereby having definite memories of the bombing. Charlie Watts, Jagger, Richards and Jones came along in ‘42 and ‘43. The genius who promoted the group, Andrew Loog Oldham, was born in 1944 a couple years earlier than the baby boomers, remaining a part of the war babies.

London from the end of the incident to 1960 and even beyond retained evidence of the bombing. The devastation was nearly terminal.

Replacing English manhood on the front during the war years were millions of US soldiers, sailors and airmen. Thus the women were not necessarily without men. Most such relations did not lead to stable commitments resulting in many illegitimate children. Yet many American men wed their English girlfriends returning them to the US. In my boyhood I knew or knew of several English war brides, so there must have thousands or tens of thousands of them. This may to some extent have relieved the disparity between the abundance of women and the paucity of men, balancing society somewhat.

As it turned out the fulcrum of the Stones, Andrew Loog Oldham, was one of those unfortunate bastards. Even though his mother took his father’s name his status affected the development of his character.

Rationing of essentials continued until 1953 so that Wyman fully experienced the deprivation while the others endured some of it, Oldham the least. Let’s say that they all had less than cheery childhoods while those of us of the same age cohort in the US while having reduced comforts, which were scarcely noticeable to me if at all, knew little deprivation saving that there were few men around. Richards’ felt the rationing of candy rather intensely while I, in the US, could spend whatever little money I had on candy and you can bet I did. Loved candy and ice cream then and love them now.

II.

We’ll begin then with Andrew Loog Oldham as he knew how to take some self-absorbed nearly amateur musicians with a group identity and market them not only to England but the US and ultimately, the world. The Stones were among the first global bands.

Coming from a world scarred by war and a son of an unwed mother who next formed a long standing relationship with a married man who did treat Andrew well the boy still developed a psychosis. Caught up in the glamour he tried to make his way from age seventeen. He was part of the first generation that had difficulties separating movies from real life. Andrew saw a lot of them taking them as education developing his persona from them. Two influential movies and characters around which he formed the core of his persona he mentions frequently. Expresso Bongo, a not bad rock and roll vehicle for Cliff Richards, contributed the character Johnny Jackson very convincingly played by Laurence Harvey. Jackson was essentially a street hustler who overplayed his hand as Andrew himself would do.

A second personality forming movie was the grim, even repulsive The Sweet Smell Of Success starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and based on the life of the reptile journalist Walter Winchell. Once again a couple characters who overplayed their hand ending in disaster.

Andrew took flings around the incipient glamour industries that would form Swinging England including Mary Quant and others before settling on the truly surface glamour of the recording industry.

He introduced himself to Brian Epstein becoming a publicist for the Beatles. There could have been no premonition of the phenomenal success of the Beatles leading to the British Invasion. The Beatles success itself remains a mystery to me. I can guess who engineered the situation but I can’t explain its success. Certainly when Andrew heard of the Rolling Stones in 1963 before the Beatles’ success in the US he could only have been thinking of conquering England.

At the time Andrew found them the Stones were building a reputation as a stage band, but small. Appearing in Rochester they performed before only thirty people, which swelled to sixty shortly, hardly enough to build an empire on, yet it worked. When he saw this very small situation he realized he had the chance of a lifetime; a seize it or lose it situation. Andrew was definitely a visionary of no mean farsightedness. His problem was that he was underage unable to legally act on his own. He was forced to include an old line manager to front for him named Eric Easton. Formed in a small time England Easton hadn’t the imagination to take the Stones global while Andrew did.

Andrew then had to bide his time until he was twenty-one and able to act in his own name. This was dangerous because artist management was and is basically dishonest and Easton was of the cloth, but we will get into that later when we discuss the concept of intellectual properties.

For the time being Andrew guided the Stones to Easton.

III.

The Rolling Stones

As I say, the Stones, with the exception of Bill Wyman, were of the second generation of rockers being War Babies. They, then, experienced the bombed over London of the forties along with food rationing that lasted until 1953-54. According to Richards the lifting of the candy ration was the battle cry of freedom for British youth. One wonders why some astute entrepreneur didn’t smuggle in some M & Ms or Mars Bars from the US. Lord knows we never suffered from sugar deprivation.

Nevertheless the older age cohorts brought Dixieland music called Trad Jazz in England to the fore in the post war years while the War Babies progressed to Negro R&B and straight Blues which the first rockers had already converted to rock and roll in the US mid-fifties. At the same time Jazz had a following so that the whole of British music after 1960 or so was derived from American Negro depression music. At the line goes: The Blues ain’t nothing’ but a good man feelin’ bad, that is to say, depressed.

So the trajectory was the first group of British musicians picked up on Dixieland or Trad which is pretty much the music of depressed people trying to convince themselves they are joyous, a sort of Singing In The Rain spirit, correlating with the spirit of the immediate post-war generation. Dixieland, originating in the old French colony of New Orleans then was Negro music that tried to lift depressed spirits. It was only natural, so to speak, that a totally depressed post-war English generation would find Trad so emotionally satisfying.

In the fifties, Rock and Roll music evolved in the US based on Country music, or White blues, and certain Negro Blues influences. However the White American experience with Negroes and Negro music had been integrated into White consciousness while Negritude was rejected. It should be remembered that the cowboy singer Gene Autry not infrequently sang blues based material.

The spirit of Blues is much different than the spirit of Dixieland. R&B livened the spirits of the War Babies while still being depressed but cheered and encouraged by increasing prosperity the moved up the evolution of US Negro music from Dixieland to R&B. Thus a crossing or melding of Aryan and Negro sentiments with a heavy reverence for African culture. ‘Drop down mama, and spread yo’ legs, I’s comin’ fo’ ya and I don’t begs…’ Wonderful Lenny Bruce style stuff, that.

The R&B strain began to emerge then about 1960. Jagger, Jones, Richards were all R&B crusaders from post-puberty. Wyman came from a pop R&R background while Watts came from a Jazz backdrop. Ian Stewart was a solid Boogie Woogie pianist. Although dropped from the line up he contributed significantly to the band musically.

Of the group, including Oldham, the only member with a political consciousness and agenda was Mick Jagger. The others were either yobbos or living close to the line. It would be Jagger who gave the political direction to the group. Mick obtained a scholarship to the Communist London School of Economics where he assumed a Communist stance that he carried over to his lyrics and posturing in the Stones. He tempered his enthusiasm after 1970 as he says for ‘pragmatic’ reasons. Richards while not appearing political aided and abetted Jagger’s approach because of resentment against the ‘system’, in other words, a rebel with cause enough.

Part IV

Going With The Flow

The music business was a fairly tight knit community fully under Jewish control. The financial engine that drove it was the body of intellectual property, songs, which was known as publishing. Publishing includes all royalties whether from sheet music, recording or media play. The money from media play, mainly radio and television is collected by ASCAP and BMI. Both publishing and media are firmly under Jewish control. Aryan artists then, like it or not, always work for Jews entirely, under contract they are essentially slaves with their earnings kept ‘in trust’ by their masters, doled out on an as need basis. The absurdity of these ‘legal’ contracts is shown by the clause in the Stones contract with Allen Klein in which he wasn’t required to even pay out recording advances for twenty years after receipt. How such a clause could be supported by the courts is beyond me. But, on that later.
 

Now, intellectual properties are the easiest property to steal. Quite frequently the artists don’t or didn’t even know what they were or how valuable they were. Jac Holzman of Elektra records just assigned the Doors rights to himself. Klein in some manner did the same with Jagger-Richards’ intellectual properties and he or his estate still owns them. And the law allows this.
 

Frequently a portion of the royalties are assigned to another entity with or without the knowledge of the writers. Then a situation arose as a result ot technology that was unforeseen and had immeasurable consequences.
 

Until the mid-fifties, that is from c. 1930 to 1954 radio had been a melange of programs with very few minutes a day devoted to music programming, especially of the popular sort which intellectuals have always despised. Then TV, introduced commercially after the war knocked the legs from under syndicated radio programs. For a moment it was believed that radio itself would go bankrupt. However, we teens of the era were clamoring for more popular music on the radio. It was believed that all music radio couldn’t succeed but this notion was speedily proven wrong.
 

We wanted to hear our records and wanted to hear the same songs and we wanted to hear them often. This led to the innovation of Top 40 radio that seldom was more than the Top Ten with new introductions. We demanded that smash hits like Lonnie Donnegan’s Rock Island Line be played once every quarter hour. This would go on for a week or two until a new hit came along. I once manipulated the dial to get seven consecutive plays of Rock Island Line before I lost my rhythm. Now, multiply 2 ½ cents a play by several tens of millions and you’ve got yourself some pocket change.

 

 

Of course a record had to be introduced or ‘broken’ as they said. The key break out markets were New York City and Los Angeles with Chicago a distant third. By the time you got those three markets behind a record every other station in the country fell in line. You had a hit. The process usually took about six months to penetrate all markets. So the top DJs in those three markets had to be serviced. You can imagine the competition for those DJ jobs. Produced some remarkable disc spinners. To listen to the radio back then was to participate in a non-stop party 24/7.
 

As a national break out center all at one time TV came along. Ed Sullivan could introduce the entire nation to such as Elvis Presley or the Beatles or Stones in one three minute segment. Bravo! Ed more or less led to American Bandstand fronted by the eternal teenager, now gone to his eternal rest, Dick Clark. Clark became the most powerful DJ in the history of the world. But…you had to get your record and artist on his show.
 

The men responsible for getting records played were called song pluggers. This was a time honored practice going back to before the electronic media to hard copy sheet music. No one had found fault with the practice of offering incentives to play records up to this point.
 

But now Dick Clark and American Bandstand. The incentive that would get you artist’s appearance and record played on Bandstand was a piece of the ‘action’ also called publishing. If Clark played your song, and it had to be a good one, presto! There were millions of plays on radio the very next day or sooner at 2 ½ cents a play and with luck a million sales of the 45. I think the moral is clear here. If Clark were allowed to go on collecting pieces of intellectual properties, or copyrights, within a decade or so he might be worth many times the value of Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building put together. Now, here’s the rub…Dick Clark wasn’t Jewish.
 

The word from the Alley was stop Dick Clark. But how?
 

Well, Clark wasn’t doing anything that hadn’t been kosher from time immemorial so the only thing to do was to make the ancient practice of song plugging sound immoral; hence the name of song plugging was changed to the morally reprehensible sounding label- PAYOLA. Well, so what? So pressure was put on Congress, this became a Federal case, to investigate Dick Clark and to make it ecumenical, certain important DJs like Allen Freed, who was Jewish but not of the synagogue, and make payola if not a crime at least something that certain people were prohibited from doing.
 

Alan Freed, the poor fish, was totally destroyed, his life ending shortly after his condemnation. Clark, so as not to seem unfair, especially as no known crime had been violated was offered the choice of keeping Bandstand or the publishing of the songs he had already accumulated. Dick chose Bandstand although he later said that was a mistake. Tin Pan Alley was safe for a time as its power was returned to it. Once again they could control what was played and who could and could not succeed.
 

Now, enter Andrew Loog Oldham and The Rolling Stones.
 

Bob Dylan in one of his fits of delusions of grandeur claims that he was the man who brought the giant Tin Pan Alley to earth. There is no denying he made his contribution but Oldham gives greater credit to the Beatles which is probably true. By 1964 the time of the following story of Andrew’s the demise of the Alley hadn’t yet happened. This is a great story.
 

This story involves two people with whom the reader may or may not be familiar. One is a DJ, powerful in the business, and the other was a very powerful member of both the Gay and Jewish mafias, capable of making or breaking any aspirant to recording fame and a fixture of the Tin Pan Alley/Brill Building who most likely had a hand, if not the guiding hand, in stripping Dick Clark of his looming power over the Alley. Murray Kaufman- Murray the K- was the former and Bob Crewe was the latter.
 

Both of these gentlemen were Jewish, as indeed most similar positions in the music business are, hence wishing to continue Jewish control over artists and repertoire - A&R in the business.
 

Clark’s assault on Alley dominance was just the opening volley. The years ’60- ’64 were quiescent perhaps giving false assurance of victory to the Alley. The next assault on the Alley was to begin, or was already in its birth throes about 1964 when the Beatles who wrote their own songs and published them dominated the airwaves hurt the Alley worse than Dick Clark. Remember at the Beatles’ peak four or five of the Top Ten were Beatles songs. Assuming those songs were played twice an hour at three minutes each 8 x 3 equals 24 minutes of non-Alley credits allowing for ads that means the Alley was virtually shut out of AM radio thus earning severely reduced royalties.
 

An assault requires a counter assault so any vulnerabilities in the Beatles armor had to be sought out. Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager was Jewish, indeed the Beatles would be surrounded by Jews siphoning off their riches, but I don’t think Epstein was a member of the synagogue while being quite protective of what was his. So, Epstein was in the way. He conveniently committed suicide, as… who knows: At this point the entire Beatles empire was up for grabs while the Beatles themselves had never been involved in the business aspects of their success and had no idea what to do. Who stepped in to turn their money green but two Jewish characters, Allen Klein and Leonard Epstein to divvy it up. Leonard Epstein went by the nom de guerre of Lee Eastman, Linda’s father. So, in the end the Jews got it back from the Beatles.
 

Another big factor in the demise of the Alley was the self-confessed assassin, Bob Dylan. Dylan claims full credit for the demise of the Alley but he exaggerates. His stuff which defies description as much as his hero’s, Little Richard, was certainly not acceptable to the Alley. His application being rejected, Bobby, one assumes, swore revenge. His major contribution was that his success encouraged the success of the singer-songwriters who were not of the Alley and a great many not of the Faith thus removing precious minutes of play time if not hours which obviated the need for roomsful of writers in the Alley putting them out of work. Carole King had to make her own records becoming a singer-songwriter.
 

By the time of Andrew’s story one imagines that the perceptive Bob Crewe was aware of the developing problem, at least from the incipient British Invasion. While I have always been familiar with the name of Bob Crewe it had little meaning to me. I thought he was just an arranger of orchestral versions of rock songs; in other words, cashing in. As Andrew explains he was a major songwriter of the fifties and sixties. Sixty to sixty-four are considered very fallow years in R&R and this period is when Crewe shown. Indeed, the music of the period so disgusted me that I refused to listen to Top 40 spending my time on the Country end of the dial. The period was the end of the Golden Age of Country. Well, what doesn’t die moves on.
 

It turns out that Crewe wrote all of that falsetto crap of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with all its homosexual double entendres: Walk Like A Man, (Talk Like A Girl), my son.
 

Murray the K was one of the most important DJs in an age when DJs walked with the gods. He originally fastened himself on the Beatles like a barnacle on the bottom side of a ship, calling himself the Fifth Beatle. As Andrew says in this story he is attempting the same hoping to become the Sixth Rolling Stone. Murray went around in fifths and sixths.
 

Andrew’s description of Crewe’s digs at the Dakota Apartments in front of which John Lennon would be shot sixteen years later:

    

We grabbed some hasty victuals from the hot dog stand on the corner of Fifth, then cabbed west across the park and back into our own Holly Golightly world to attend a Bob Crewe party in our honor. The yellow stretch cab wheeled out of the park at 72^nd across Central park West and let us out at the austere and majestic granite entrance to the Dakota. Three short 60s-filled years later, the building would become famous for housing Roman Polansky’s Rosemary’s Baby. Sixteen years on, it would become the site of the killing of John Lennon. Keith and I asked for ‘Bob Crewe, please.’ The rest of the Stones were already there. Bob’s apartment was a film set, all ornate and Roman gay splendour over the park - marbled floors, bronzed Ma Bell’s, African motif zebra and leopard throw rugs, and enough brocade tassel and gilt to assure you that you weren’t visiting John Huston. The living room was sunk down to a waist-high setting with an aqua-Nero motif, complete with statues of nubile youth that gushed water. Bob Crewe was Doris Day, if Doris Day had been all man and stayed gorgeous. Leonard Bernstein chatted with actor/neighbor Robert Ryan who asked Mick if he knew Terence Stamp who he’d worked with two years before in Billy Budd. Mick didn’t or wouldn’t. Lenny B. and Ryan turned away from Jagger and resumed discussing elevator problems at the Dakota. Bob Crewe was above it all and flying.

    

So you see what royalties and a few intellectual properties are worth. You could kill for them, at the very least, steal them. You can see what became available of the Beatles when Epstein committed ‘suicide’ and the value of the Jagger-Richards properties that Klein, Easton and Oldham- all Jews- stole. As mere artists the Stones are actually inconsequential, they are the mere raw material, the gold mine, to be exploited by the prospectors of pop. Thus Crewe’s confederate Murray the K cornered the key figure in the Stone’s organization, Andrew Loog Oldham, p. 16:

    

Sometime during the evening, Murray the K pulled me aside and put a 45 single between my hand and his. Murray stood out in these svelte surroundings, grey-blue straw titfer atop his hair replacement and ghastly tangerine skin. He was wearing a Cadillac upholstery colored Teflon sweater with winkle pickers that set off fuchsia flared trews that wouldn’t even pass for wallpaper in Slough. Murray had no shame but was master of his game…pop kingmaker.

He backed me against the wall, both of us still holding the 45, his free hand gripping my beige suede jacketed elbow. ‘Andy, I love the guys. I think they are fabulous. I know the Beatles love ‘em too- George told me so. I don’t go out of my way for many people y’know, but I’m promoting the hell out of them- you’re gonna sell tickets. The Stones are special. I really like them.’

This rotund puck of pop caught his breath and allowed me time to acknowledge this outpouring. ‘Murray they like you too’ was all I could muster.

‘They do?’ He came back at me smiling vices. ‘Great. I could feel it, especially Brian, real straight guy, sweetheart, really genuine, Mick too. Listen Andy, I don’t often do this and I promise you, forget whatever you’ve heard- I don’t want anything for it, I just love this business we’re in and that’s the truth of it. Don’t want no freebies, no B-sides.’

He paused and grinned- this was pure pop oxymoronic air we were breathing. ‘All I want,’ he continued, ‘is to know that whenever the guys play New york- and you will, often, I promise- you have ol’ Murray the K behind you, man you’re gonna be big…’ (The wonderful thing about America I somehow found time to think, is that you have nothing to do with getting there. Other people do it for you and you are merely beholding, beholding- left holding the bag.) Murray meanwhile droned on, ‘Anyway, all I want is that Murray here is the only disc jockey who MC’s your New York shows and-’ Murray pushed me further against the African motif’d wall- ‘and you and the guys remember Murray when those cocksuckers put me down…and they will, just you remember.’

America was turning into beads of sweat trickling from questionable hairlines and Paul Simon was still Tom of Tom and Jerry. I felt the vinyl, now it was all mine. ‘Feel what’s in your hand, Andy. It’s yours; it’s for you and the boys. Just take it and record it. I guarantee it. Murray guarantees it babe. I just gave you your very first American hit.’ He had, and God Bless America, land of a thousand dances. I’d just gone to the perfect party and got laid by the perfect partner, Murray the K. Bob Crewe beamed knowingly from the other side of the room and raised his glass in a welcome-to-the-good-ship-lollipop salute while musical guest Tiny Tim entertained guests with that and other ditties from another room.

     The 45 was It’s All Over Now. It went to 30 US, the lower reaches of success. Not much of a pottage to sell your birthright for but you should catch the threat. So, what’s going on here? Remember you’re in a Jewish milieu on Jewish turf.
 

You’re standing in a magnificent Dakota apartment of 3 or 4,000 square feet. The apartment is expensively and magnificently appointed in an occult mysterioso manner in what may have been the center of New York Saturnian Satanism, more on that in its place. Crewe is in the bucks and he got there in 2 ½ cent bits. The power of intellectual properties x tens or hundreds of millions.
 

Over in a smaller room of the apartment Crewe is supporting the once successful British songwriter, Lionel Bart, also Jewish who has apparently fallen on hard times, perhaps wiped clean by Crewe as Andrew will be by Allen Klein.
 

The impression of great power is clear. As Crewe watches from the other side of the room Murray the K acting as his agent or, perhaps, stooge, has pinned Andrew to the wall at the same time wrapping their hands around a mysterious object.

Bob Crewe

Murray the K then lays out the terms on which he as the most powerful DJ in the most powerful break out market in the US, save Dick Clark, will allow the Rolling Stones to market themselves in NYC and hence the United States. All Murray’s negotiations were positive from his side although expressed in negatives. These are the items Murray wants in exchange for the Stones’ soul. Remember this apartment might actually be the apartment replicated in Rosemary’s Baby in which Satan was cradled. The movie was released after this incident but Andrew has already mentioned it so that this incident to him seemed like a scene in Rosemary’s Baby. He is conflating the two.


Murray says: The Stones are special. I really like them. In other words you’ve got our attention and we can see our way to make a bundle off you.


Murray says: He doesn’t want any freebies, no B sides. In other words that is exactly what he is asking for. The A side of a 45 is the hit side; the B side whose royalties are the same as the A side can by a throw away. Indeed, Andrew would make crowd noise a side just for the royalties. At this point the Stones are merely a cover band- they re-record other people’s records hence the B side Murray wants for his own publishing account is worth potentially tens of thousands of dollars. Hence, as we can plainly see Congress effectively put an end to ‘payola.’


Then Murray threatens that if they don’t they will never play NYC again and if they do they won’t get any help from his hand.


In addition Murray does demand the prestige of MCing the Stones shows. So essentially at this point he’s got the farm. He would become the Sixth Stone.


Then as Crewe beams approvingly from across the room Murray tells Andrew that the thing they’re holding onto is the next song the Stones are going to record (was that a command?) - publishing obviously going to Crewe while Murray guarantees that he will play it on his show.

Murray The K

Murray looks to Crewe and Crewe blesses the transaction by raising his glass. Of course this was written well after Andrew had seen Rosemary’s Baby so maybe he just portrayed the scene in that context with Crewe as Satan.


Andrew had no trouble catching the drift. He buckled or perhaps wisely acceded. The 45 was It’s All Over Now and it was the Stones next release and not much of a hit, reaching only thirty but indicating Andrew has caught the ball and would play the game. Andrew had his own counter attack however.

Andrew perhaps compared the Beatles as songwriters to the Stones as a copy band and got that point. On returning home he demanded that Mick and Keith begin writing their own songs. That would more or less place them beyond the reach of Crewe and his ilk. But then whose smiling face showed up in England? Allen Klein and there went the publishing until the next Stones counter attack.

If Andrew had just stayed off all those drugs.

The Stones loved the attitude and energy of New York; we’d walk it and we’d talk it. Andrew loved New York, too. It was a movie come true for him- the Brill Building and 1650 Broadway, running around from office to office listening to that Jewish rock ‘n’ roll coming out of New York. It all had that sweet sound. The Carole King sound, the music of Bob Crewe. It wasn’t ‘I see a red door and I want to paint it black.’ It was more up; it was pop.

Roberta Goldstein, p.1, 2Stoned

You don’t really have to read between the lines to get that point but there is a lot between the lines too.

Next: Jagger, Bailey and the Yobbo Revolution