Following on from yesterday's post on books relating to my London tours, here's my music book vlog My Back Pages…
I launched My Back Pages (named for the 1965 Bob Dylan song) late last year.
Episode one deals with Andrew Loog Oldham's Stoned and its sequel 2Stoned.
Loog Oldham was the manager, rock svengali and young turk who shaped the Stones as the anti-Beatles. His first volume of autobiography – Stoned (1998) tells the tale of his youth and his meeting the self-styled World’s Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band. It is a great read.
The second volume – appropriately entitled 2Stoned – gets down to the nitty gritty.
OIdham’s tale is unique indeed. Few had such a close view of the so-called Swinging Sixties in London. And few have allowed other voices into their story. Oldham, always the radical, has no fear in this quarter.
His narrative bowls along with stylishly-honed tales of drunkenness and cruelty, yet… every so often he steps aside to allow someone else to chip in. Townshend, Marianne Faithfull, Al Kooper, Nick Cohn, John Paul Jones and many more – provide a Greek chorus of asides and contradictions that helps to make this one of the best of all rock’n’roll reads.
Here's the trailer for Friday's Rock'n'Roll London Walk which meets at 2pm Tottenham Court Road station (exit 1).
To book for the Rock'n'Roll London walk this Friday 28th with London Walks - meeting at Tottenham Court Road tube 2pm - Click the button…
Keep In Touch…
