Stoned : A Memoir of London in the 1960s

Rating:
Summary: A major disappointment
Review: This is a dull book. It's written in a hip, quickspeak, that is too oblique to grab you. It's like reading Derek Taylor's memoir of his time with the Beatles, where he tries so hard to sound hip-literary, he completely buries what he's writing about. Oldham was intimate with the Stones. He's a witty guy in interviews. This is a fat book, but very little in it that's intereting. After I bought it, I read it once, skimming a lot of it, and donated it to the library. It does obliquely confirm that he and Jagger had a gay affair. In the bio JAGGER UNAUTHORIZED, that author makes the claim that Oldham and Jagger slept together. In Stoned, Oldham says, "Me and Mick got as close as two men can possibly get," which to me confirmed the rumor. And Oldham set Keith up with his girl friend, as Oldham thought, "Keith should go out with something other than his guitar." That's about all of interest about the Stones in this book. It's as disappointig as Peter O'Toole's memoirs.

Rating:
Summary: Andrew Loog Oldham...One in a million
Review: This is a GREAT book! It takes place in a time when London was producing film, fashion and music that would forever change people's lives then and now. Even as a pre-teen in those days in which the book is written about, I was very much impressed with the bands that were coming out of England.Most of all it was and still is the Rolling Stones.I have followed the Rolling Stones from the day I heard their first single here in the United States. I have studied their evolution as a band and am quite familiar who Andrew Loog Oldham is and what he did for the Stones.This book was interesting and an absolute delight to read, particulary knowing it was comming directly from Andrew Loog Oldham himself. His style of writing and describing how events occurred is so unique and clever that I found myself re-reading pages instanly for the sheer pleasure of it. Andrew didn't write this book with the intention of writing another book about the Rolling Stones. He wrote about the many interesting people and places that he experianced that shaped his life from the day of his birth to the year of 1964. I am anxiously awaiting the next installment of his triography, knowing that there are more fantastic stories to be read from a man who is one in a million!