Rolling Stones: Time Was On Their Side
According to Forbes Magazine, the Rolling Stones, a sixty-year-old rock and roll group, found themselves among the top 10 list in 2022. The story of their success is one that speaks of fate and fortune, a tale that revolves around the concept of time.
In 1963, at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, the band’s future manager, Andrew Oldham, heard something that no one else had. Though he was only 19, this was as about as surprising as saying that Bill Gates started Microsoft at 19, which, in fact, he did.
Oldham was no wet-behind-the-ears teenager, however. He had previously managed the Beatles under the tutelage of Brian Epstein. Following the Stones gig, he met with Mick Jagger, stating, “I was likely 48 hours ahead of the rest in getting there. That’s how it was meant to be.”
This was fortuitous, as the Stones’ initial US tour in June 1964 was “a disaster,” as per drummer Bill Wyman. “When we arrived, we didn’t have a hit record or anything going for us.” During their appearance on The Hollywood Palace variety show, that week’s guest host, Dean Martin, ridiculed their performance and hairstyle.
Oldham realized that the secret to music success was to appeal to a broad audience. However, he took a different tack. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger began to write their songs under his tutelage, and their edgy style repelled parents while fascinating teenagers. The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, introduced his group as “my popular music combo,” while Oldham coined the famous and divisive headline, “Would you let your daughter sleep with a Rolling Stone?”
Within days of becoming the Stones’ manager, Oldham landed them a record deal with Decca (the company that had recently passed on the Beatles and was not going to repeat the mistake). The band was paid thrice the typical royalty rate for new artists, and granted full artistic control and ownership of the master tapes. This gave the Stones the power to be as creative as they dared and the rewards that come with artistic growth, typically reserved only for well-known Hollywood stars. Oldham’s mother co-signed the contract due to his young age.
In 1964, the Stones released a single that would become one of the band’s trademark hits, “Time is On My Side,” written by American songwriter Jerry Ragovoy and recorded by jazz trombonist Kai Winding in 1963, before being covered by the Rolling Stones. It wasn’t a song they planned to record, but Oldham convinced the band otherwise. As he once said, “I was a cultivator of dreams, not money.”
Time is always more important than money.
