ABSTRACT
Born in Hampstead, London, England, Oldham became a well-known pop-music impresario during the British Invasion years thanks to his association with the Rolling Stones. He began his career as an assistant in the fashion industry, and then moved on to music publicity and promotion; working for pop-music manager Brian Epstein, he helped promote a new group called the Beatles in 1963. Hearing the early Rolling Stones performing at a club, he became the group’s manager and encouraged the singers to build their “bad boy” image (to distinguish them from the loveable Beatles). He got the group their recording contract with Decca Records and produced their recordings through 1967. Oldham also led his own “Orchestra” on four albums of instrumental versions of pop music during this period. In 1965, he formed the Immediate label (and the subsidiary label, Instant) with fellow publicist/manager Tony Calder, which signed the Small Faces, among other groups. Oldham broke with the Stones in 1967 and Immediate closed in 1970. Oldham moved to New York in the mid-1970s, producing new groups on occasion. In the 1980s, he moved to Bogota, Colombia, where he continues to live. In Argentina, he produced Los Ratones Paranoicos from the late 1980s through 1996, a group that achieved considerable success in the Latin music market. He has written two volumes of his autobiography, Stoned (St. Martin’s Press, 2001) and 2 Stoned (2002); a third volume is planned to complete the story.
