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Andrew Oldham Orchestra

From page 92 of Classic Rock Magazine July 2004

Cover of July 2004 issue.

‘The Rolling Stones Songbook’

(Universal) Universal didn’t miss their chance to bung out this curate’s egg of an album, timing it to coincide with ex-Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s rare trip

home from Colombia to present screenings of Peter Whitehead’s Rolling Stones film Charlie Is My Darling . It turns out that a few of these lush and loungey strolls through Mick and Keith’s back pages make it on to the soundtrack. Call it industry synchronicity. Notable almost exclusively for the fact that the final track, ‘The Last Time’, was sampled by The Verve and transformed into ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, there are a few other minor esoteric pleasures on the erstwhile Stones boss’s side project, but they’re probably destined only ever to be enjoyed by ultra-completists. As you might expect from the producer of all the early Stones material, Oldham can pick some pretty paths through the songs’ suggestive swirls, extrapolating and improvising some very sweet counter-melodies. All it really needed was the Stones playing over the top and it would have been one of 1966’s musthaves instead of a mere footnote. ★★ ★★★

Derek Hammond