BETWEEN THE BUTTONS ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM REFLECTS ON A DANDY CAREER IN THE CRUCIBLE OF BRIT POP.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

Andrew Loog Oldham lives up to the common perception of what makes a Britisher so British - he's a bon vivant, a born raconteur with a devilish wit and the owner of both an excellent wardrobe and unforgettably odd double-barreled name.

And like a character out of an Evelyn Waugh novel, the former manager, producer and brains behind the Rolling Stones is having a stunning time far from the homeland he now considers a foreign country. For the past 20 years, Oldham has lived in Bogota, Colombia, with his wife, son and frequent delivery of Rolling Stones royalty checks.

For a guy who admits he drank like a fish and tried to snort a large percentage of Bolivia's best-known export for 30 years, Oldham has an astounding memory. The first two highly entertaining volumes of his autobiography, ``Stoned: A Memoir of London in the 1960s'' and the just- published ``2Stoned,'' offer an amusing and lovingly detailed chronicle of the British pop world of the 1950s and 1960s. The U.K.'s Sunday Times placed ``Stoned'' atop their list of the best music books of the year, calling it ``a rattling good yarn of the birth of the Swinging Sixties told by a cast of characters centered around the man who managed the Stones and taught them how to succeed through misbehavior.''

But before the Beatles and Stones came along, Britpop meant cinema, jazz, fashion and skiffle music.

``American films like 'Sweet Smell of Success' and (the movies of) Laurence Harvey showed me the life I wanted for myself,'' Oldham recalled one recent morning in Santa Monica. ``When I saw the Beatles, I was taken by their sound, songs and image. It was a look and attitude we hadn't seen before. I immediately knew the potential.''

Yeeeah, baby!

Oldham didn't just live the '60s, he helped create them after discovering the Stones playing at a suburban London pub in 1963. A natural hustler and press agent, the 19-year-old had already dressed boutique windows, worked for the fashion designer Mary Quant and was run out of France for his involvement in what he calls ``a tawdry but innocent kidnapping.''

Although he spent just less than five years with the Stones as producer, manager and motivational force, the music they made together is the basis for the group's continued popularity and drawing power. That golden-era soundtrack includes ``(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction,'' ``Time Is On My Side,'' ``Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown,'' ``Paint It Black'' and 11 more hit singles. He also co-founded Immediate Records, Britain's first independent label (Small Faces, the Nice, Humble Pie).

``People say I created the Stones,'' he said. ``I didn't. They were there already. They only needed exploiting. They were already bad boys when I met them. I just brought out the worst in them. As for the records, a producer's job is to provide an environment in which the work can get done and fill up audio space in a way that compliments the song and the performance. That's what I did.''

As for how he locked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a small room until they came up with their first co-written song, Oldham (credited, incidentally, as a co-writer of the Marianne Faithfull classic ``As Tears Go By'') says, ``I knew they could do it. That's how the process began.''

Pop eats itself

In a rare personal appearance, Oldham will give the keynote address Friday at the New Music Reporter Conference, a day of panels and schmoozing at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel designed to ferret out how pop talent can be uncovered, nurtured and promoted in the day of the download. On hand will be panelists Ian Copeland, former agent of the Police and Sting; Gary Calamar, a TV-film music supervisor and longtime host of ``The Open Road'' on KCRW-FM (89.9); and Nick Ferrara, a New York entertainment attorney whose clients include Creed and Vanessa Carlton.

``The music industry machinery is too huge for something that should be of and from the streets,`` Oldham, 59, said. ``Major label contracts are written so the only money the band makes is from touring and T-shirt sales. The record companies have so much overhead to take care of before an artist can make a dime - manufacturing and printing, lawyers, promotion, the company's offices. There's no such thing as a slow build now. It has to come out of the box as this gigantic explosion, with videos and massive print buildup and radio hype. By the time you get to hear the thing, you're already fed up with it.''

Oldham's books are assembled in a reader-friendly form that involves testimony from important characters such as Vidal Sassoon, Pete Townshend, Lionel Bart, Faithfull and others. The period after Oldham left the Stones will be covered in a third book.

``When the '70s came and I didn't have a regular gig, I assumed the lifestyle of my acts,'' he said. ``At some point in 1995, it was either get clean or die. The drugs were taking me. I hadn't been taking them for a long time.''

Now clear-eyed, Oldham's vices are few. As he sips a demitasse in a sun-drenched hotel suite overlooking the ocean and his wife and son prepare to explore the Third Street Promenade, he explains that fantastic middle name. Loog, it turns out, was his father's surname.

``He was a Texas airman of Dutch heritage named Andrew Loog,'' Oldham says. ``My mother was his girlfriend during World War II. He died dropping bombs on Hitler six months before I was born. My mother gave me his name, Andrew Loog, and her maiden name, Oldham, and I'm proud of all of them.''

NEW MUSIC REPORTER CONVENTION

What: Conference devoted to finding and developing new talent attended by DJs, record execs, video directors and publicists. Andrew Loog Oldham gives keynote address.

Where: Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday.

Tickets: $25 in advance; $35 at the door. Call [phone] or visit www.newmusicreporter.com.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Andrew Loog Oldham, who embodied the carefree '60s, now finds himself an avatar of the music industry.

(2) no caption (Andrew Loog Oldham)