Филип Норман – Mick Jagger (страница 22)

Oldham soon talked himself into a freelance PR role with Epstein’s NEMS organisation and forged a good personal relationship with all four Beatles. Ambition-wise, though, it was a blind alley, since the possessive Epstein handled all their PR himself in tandem with fellow Liverpudlian Tony Barrow, and would allow Oldham to publicise only second-rank NEMS names like Gerry and the Pacemakers. He had decided to move on and was just reviewing his not very numerous options when his Record Mirror contact Peter Jones advised him to check out the house band at the Richmond Station Hotel.

For Oldham, walking into the Stones’ jam-packed, mirror-multiplied lair was like seeing ‘rock ’n’ roll in 3-D and Cinerama for the very first time’. His cracklingly entertaining autobiography, Stoned, records the visual shock of their front rank like a James Joyce epiphany: Keith’s ‘black as night, hacked hair . . . atop a war-rationed baby body . . .’; Brian’s ‘pretty-ugly shining blond hair belied by a face that already looked as if it had a few unpaid bills with life . . .’; Mick, ‘the boy from the railway tow-path . . . the hors d’oeuvre, the dessert and meal in between . . .’ After the cute Liverpudlian harmonies currently clogging the Top 10, that raw, sour, southern solo voice was like a dash of icy water in the face. ‘It wasn’t just a voice, and it was much, much more than a rendition, a mere lead vocal . . . It was an instrument . . . a declaration, not backed by a band but a part of a band . . . their decree.’

Oldham, in fact, caught the Stones at a low-energy moment, when they had reverted to being serious bluesmen seated on a semicircle of bar stools. Even then, Mick ‘moved like an adolescent Tarzan plucked from the jungle, not comfortable in his clothes . . . a body still deciding what it was and what it wanted . . . He was thin, waistless, giving him the human form of a puma with a gender of its own . . . He gave me a look that asked me everything about myself in one moment – as in “What are you doing with the rest of my life?” The lips looked at me, seconding that emotion.’

In the brief interlude before Record Mirror’s story brought every London talent scout flocking to Richmond, Oldham persuaded the Stones he should be their manager. It was a pitch of finely tuned brilliance, in which the nineteen-year-old presented himself simultaneously as a street-smart metropolitan tycoon with more experience of life than all of them put together, and a kindred spirit who shared their love of the blues and sacred mission to preserve it. Actually, he would confess in Stoned, ‘[the blues] didn’t mean dick to me. If it had, I might have had an opinion about it and missed the totality of what had hit me.’ The clincher was the tenuous connection with Brian Epstein and the Beatles, now made to sound as if John, Paul, George and Ringo barely made a move without his say-so. The cautious Mick could not help but be as impressed as the fame-famished Brian. ‘Everything to do with the Beatles was sort of gold and glittery,’ he would recall, ‘and Andrew seemed to know what he was doing.’

For all his hubris, Oldham was realistic. As a small-fry freelance PR, without even an office, he knew he was in no position to launch into management on his own. Bearing in mind the main plank of his sales pitch to the Stones, his first move was to approach Brian Epstein and offer Epstein a half share in them in return for office space and facilities. But Epstein, feeling he already had more than enough artists, declined the opportunity that would have put the two biggest bands of all time in his pocket. Trawling the lower reaches of West End theatrical agents, Oldham next hit on Eric Easton, a former professional organist whose middle-of-the-road musical clients included guitarist Bert Weedon and the pub pianist Mrs Mills, and who also hired out electronic organs to theatres, cinemas and holiday camps.

Despite being an archetypal ‘Ernie’, according to Mick and Brian’s private argot, Easton realised how the British pop market was exploding and readily agreed to become the Stones’ co-manager and financial backer. However, a potentially serious obstacle existed in Giorgio Gomelsky, who had given the band their Crawdaddy residency, got them eulogised by Record Mirror and was their manager in every way other than writing. Oldham brought an incognito Easton to the Station Hotel to see the Stones perform and meet their acknowledged leader, Brian Jones. A few days later – during Gomelsky’s absence in Switzerland following the sudden death of his father – Brian and Mick attended a meeting with Oldham and Easton at the latter’s office.

It was a scene that had already been played in hundreds of other pop-managerial sanctums, and would be in thousands more – the walls covered with signed celebrity photos, framed Gold Discs and posters; the balding, over-genial man at a desk cluttered by pictures of wife and children (and, in this case, electronic organs), telling the two youngsters in front of him that, of course, he couldn’t promise anything but, if they followed his guidance, there was every chance of them ending up rich and famous. The only difference was the sceptical look on one youngster’s face and the penetrating questions he put to both his older and younger would-be mentors. ‘Mick asked me to define this “fame” I kept talking about,’ Oldham recalls. ‘I breathed deeply and said, “This is how I see fame. Every time you go through an airport you will get your picture taken and be in the papers. That is fame and you will be that famous.”’

True to his altruistic nature, Giorgio Gomelsky made no trouble about having the Stones filched from him in this devious manner, sought no financial compensation for all he had done to advance them, and even continued to offer them bookings at the Crawdaddy. In May 1963, Brian Jones signed a three-year management contract with Oldham and Easton on behalf of the whole band, setting the duo’s commission at 25 per cent. During the grooming process, each Stone would receive a weekly cash retainer, modest enough but sufficient to lift the three flat-sharers out of their previous abject poverty. Unknown to Mick and Keith, Brian negotiated an extra £5 per week in his capacity as leader.

Svengali lost no time in setting to work, though his original aim was to package the Stones pretty much like other pop bands, i.e., as Beatle copies. Their piano player, Ian Stewart, was dropped because Oldham thought six too cumbersome a line-up in this age of the Fab Four – and besides, chunky, short-haired Stu looked ‘too normal’. Good friend as well as fine musician though he was, neither Mick nor Brian protested, and there was general relief when he agreed to stay on as roadie and occasional back-up player. Keith deeply disapproved of Stu’s treatment – as he had of Giorgio Gomelsky’s – but felt his subordinate position (‘a mere hireling’) did not entitle him to take a moral stand. He was equally docile when Svengali gave a moment of attention to him, ordering him to drop the s from ‘Richards’ to give it a more showbizzy sound, as in Cliff Richard.

As an experienced entertainment agent, as well as a substantial investor, Eric Easton had a voice that must also be heeded. And, so far as Easton was concerned, the Stones had one possibly serious weak link. He wondered whether Mick’s voice could stand the strain of nightly, often twice-nightly, appearances in the touring pop package shows that were every band’s most lucrative market. There was also the question of whether the crucially important BBC would still bar him for sounding ‘too coloured’. Group leader Brian Jones was brought into the discussion, and readily agreed with Easton that, if necessary, the Stones’ vocalist would have to go the same way as their pianist.

A couple of days after the contract signing, Oldham telephoned a young photographer friend named Philip Townsend and commissioned the Stones’ first-ever publicity shoot. The only brief Townsend received was to ‘make them look mean and nasty’. He posed them in various Chelsea locations: on a bench outside a pub, mingling with oblivious King’s Road shoppers, even sitting kindergarten-style on the road outside 102 Edith Grove, ferociously casual and cool with their corduroy jackets, polo necks and ever-smouldering cigarettes, but, to twenty-first-century eyes, not mustering a shred of meanness or nastiness between them. Mick stands out only for his lighter-coloured jacket with raglan lapels; if anyone seems the star of the group, it’s sleek, enigmatic-looking Charlie Watts.

Having been dubbed the next big thing by London’s most influential music trade paper, the Stones were as good as guaranteed a contract with a major record label. Theoretically, of course, they were still bound to IBC studios by the demo tape on which they had given Ian Stewart’s friend, Glyn Johns, a six-month option. Eric Easton’s advice was that the agreement would have no validity if they could get back the tape’s only copy. Adopting Brian’s habit of bare-faced lying, they therefore told Johns they’d decided to break up the band but would like to keep the tape as a souvenir. An unsuspecting Johns handed it over in exchange for its recording cost: £109.