Westport, CT, 1969

I have mixed emotions about New England. When I was there at the end of 2012, I saw Ronnie Spector and Christine Ohlman singing to support Haiti at the Westport Playhouse, stayed at a lovely new hotel, The Study at Yale in New Haven, marveled at the art of sculptor Robert Gregson, had a wunderbar lunch with Al Kooper and his designing missus in Somerville, Massachusetts, and a super supper with super vet Dr. Marty Goldstein outside Ridgefield, Connecticut.

But things were not always as good between myself and being in New England. I bought a house in Wilton, Connecticut, in ’69 and the ‘60s had left me more than battered and bruised. I’d managed The Rolling Stones from ’63 to ’67 and a very successful independent record label called Immediate (Small Faces, Humble Pie, Nico, early Page and Clapton stuff) and I was toast. I left England under a barrage of tax problems and electric shock treatment and settled into Wilton. My friend Noel Harrison came to stay; at the time, he was hot with “the girl from UNCLE ” and was doing summer stock at the Westport Playhouse.

Westport was a wasted hoot and Vietnam horror show. All of the rich kids were 4F and more wasted than Keith Richards. Joe Cocker stopped by when he was on his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and mused, “So this is what’s between New York and Boston.” Oh, Westport looked pretty and had Sally and her great record store at the back of Klein’s on the main drag, but despite all its Stepford Wives properness, the Westport train station was a nightly procession of lost and drunk Jack Lemmons pouring themselves back into station wagonerama, just as drunk as their kids were stoned. America was at the crossroads. Vietnam had done the Robert Johnson on the lot of you and your lovely nation was in a sorry state for a while.

I saw the inside of the Bridgeport jail a few times for driving under the influence of you name it. I blacked out more than once on the Merritt Parkway (coming to just in time for exit 40). I made my second home at Syncron Sound Studios in Wallingford with my forever friend Doc Cavalier and thought about getting better. I recorded the folk singer Donovan in Wallingford; we worked for a few hours a day, smoked pot and shot hoops during the rest and I remixed some old Stones tapes for an album called Metamorphosis. Later, I saw James Taylor somewhere, Taj Mahal a few times and Carole King in Boston.

I recorded Jimmy Cliff somewhere outdoors in Massachusetts – anybody remember that Bee Gees’ song about the state? – for a live LP called Jimmy Cliff – Live in Concert and that was a total thrill. I recorded a 4F-ish band called Repairs for the white arm of Motown and saw Mr. and Mrs. Paul Newman driving around Westport on more than one occasion. I had a wonderful time and I cannot think of any place I’d rather have been the first time i heard Harry chapin’s “W.O.L.D.” Eventually, I got much, much better and as long as New England keeps on doing just that then we’re all doing well. Now, about those ticket prices….

(by Andrew Loog Oldham)

Andrew Loog Oldham was the manager/producer of The Rolling Stones from 1963 to 1967 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. In 1965, he co-founded Immediate Records, which released recordings by Small Faces, Nico, Rod Stewart, Humble Pie and others, and he’s produced material by artists including Marianne Faithfull, Jimmy Cliff, Donovan, Charly Garcia and Los Ratones Paranoicos. Oldham is the co-author of ABBA: The Name of the Game (Pan, 1996) and the author of Stoned: A Memoir of London in the 1960s (St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 2Stoned (Martin Secker & Warburg, 2002) and Rolling Stoned (Because Entertainment, 2013). In 2005, he began hosting a daily program on Steven Van Zandt’s Underground Garage radio program (broadcast on SiriusXM).