The countdown is on to this years’s most exciting street-style collaboration: the limited edition Barney Bubbles x Fred Perry collection.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 4000 Weeks' Holiday, Armed Forces, Billy Bragg, Cracking Up, Depeche Mode, Do It Yourself, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, Hawkwind, Henrietta Street, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Ian McLagan, Nick Lowe, Rob Tufnell, Rolling Stones, Sir Peter Blake, Small Faces, The Faces, The Specials

A couple of months back I was commissioned to review Andrew Loog Oldham’s latest book Stone Free for a website, but my copy was rejected on the basis of my use of  “criticism”; they prefer to keep things – in their words – “upbeat”.

I like the commissioner, think the site is good and had no problem with the rejection, but thought it may be of interest, so here it is:

“I have little use for the past and do not give it much thought.”

Now that is rich.

One anticipates and has often applauded bare-faced sauce from the music business maverick turned self-chronicler Andrew Loog Oldham, author of Stoned (384 densely-packed pages of reflection on life from birth in 1944 to the point of managing the Rolling Stones in 1963, with “drug-cuts” into the 70s and 80s), 2Stoned (480 pages on his four-year stewardship of same) and a “fictionalised biography” of Abba (on which we need not dwell).

When this confession – even if it is soon qualified – arrives 10 chapters and 140 pages in to Oldham’s new digital-only tome Stone Free, it produces a whoop not of glee but of derision.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 2Stoned, Alec Morris, Allen Klein, Andrew Loog Oldham, Don Arden, Edward Albee, Frank Rich, Johnny Rogan, Lana Clarkson, Larry Parnes, Phil Spector, Rolling Stones, Sergei Diaghilev, Sharon Osbourne, Small Faces, Stone Free, Stoned, Svengalis & mythmakers, The Babys

I have a piece on mod fashions in the new Mojo special MOJO ’60s.

To mark it, THE LOOK blog is featuring scans from a great interview with the Small Faces keyboard player Ian “Mac” McLagan from Rave magazine, April 1967. See here.

Tags: April 1967, Ian "Mac" McLagan, Mojo '60s, Rave, Small Faces