Adventures In Vinyl: #8 In A Continuing Series – The Andrew Oldham Orchestra and The Rolling Stones Songbook

 

In the 1960s, Mantovani, the 101 Strings and their ilk were stomping all over pop music with their Easy Listening jackboots, providing a hip yet culturally neutral backdrop to key parties around the globe. Andrew Oldham, then manager to the Rolling Stones, had a radical thought. In 1966, he gathered a host of studio musicians including, some say, the Stones themselves, anointed them as the Andrew Oldham Orchestra and produced The Rolling Stones Songbook. Popular Stones tracks, such as (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and Time Is On Our Side became sweeping orchestral instrumentals. The cardigan-clad swingers briefly broke from their flokati-bound labours and cried “it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas”.

Almost fifty years down the track and key parties are quaint anachronisms, replaced by Tinder and evangelical Christianity but.the Rolling Stones Songbook sounds not unlike a parallel universe, one where Sergio Leone directed Performance for which Morricone reworked the Rolling Stones anthems of angst and rebellion into a compelling soundtrack. I’m playing the Australian pressing of Songbook, released by the World Record Club in 1968 with an original psychedelic cover (the original UK release had a cover photo of the Stones in what looked suspiciously like a cage). Equal parts bizarre and creepy, baby.

 

 

Note: It’s these little stories that divert me from the main path; it started out as a piece on Gram Parsons (nearing completion, believe it or not) but I was soon hung up on the relationship between Gram and Keith Richards. Picking over several biographies and autobiographies for clues until I’m as satisfied as I’ll ever be that I have a firm grasp on the subject. All looks well and good. Then I unpack the latest box of vinyl and rarities destined for auction and find the Songbook. While researching that, I discover the existence of Fred Goodman’s 2015 book, Allen Klein: The Man Who Bailed Out The Beatles, Made The Stones, And Transformed Rock & Roll. Klein figured large in the Stones history (he was their business manager and ended up owning their pre-1972 publishing rights), just the sort of story I love. Nothing to do with Gram Parsons but I can’t resist a good yarn.