Andrew Oldham is fond of saying, "There are no accidents." In the course of disagreeing with him about the direction of this site, I recalled that phrase and then a seemingly contradictory statement, that seems just as irrefutable, by John Lennon. It seems that most of the photos I've put up run counter to the look that Andrew is most responsible for, and the one that is as much a part of our cultural memory as Elvis in an Army uniform.

We've seen all those shots ad nauseum; their virtue is that they make time stand still in a manner that is both great art and great marketing. They are deliberately the opposite of photo journalism, a genre Andrew believes in keeping firmly in its place on the tabloid pages. But Andrew's autobiography doesn't view his career and that of the early Stones from this Olympian point of view: it is as intimate and quotidian as any journal but more elegantly and ironically written. Stoned is notable in that it really captures the paradox of "There are no accidents" and "Life happens to you . . ." Paradox, of course, being the nature of reality.

I believe that John meant his lyric to be more sadly ironic than philosophical, since "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" is among the most sincere songs he ever wrote. But if you remove the "to you" (which highlights John's passive/aggressive side), the expression "Life happens while you're busy making other plans" is really a pretty exciting concept.

Let us restate "There are no accidents.": "Based on cause and effect, which operates on both the mundane and 'mystic' levels whether we acknowledge it or not, everything that 'happens to us' is the outward effect of an inner cause, or 'intention.' Because of dependent origination, there simply cannot be something manifest that was not first intentional in the subtlest sense." What makes life grand and/or challenging, and what makes the restatement of John's aphorism so apt, is that we are and should be constantly surprised by what happens to us in the outward circumstances of our life. The possibility of surprise, rather than accident, should keep us pure in our causes and happy in our effects.

Back to why I chose some of the geekiest photos of the Stones I could find. Growing up with Andrew as a rock tycoon ideal, I wrongly assumed that he ruled their early exposure with an iron hand and was a paragon of transforming ideas into "reality." I didn't know that the first Rolling Stones album cover as released in England was revolutionary because it had no name or title whatsoever (Andrew probably protested the Decca logo). I never even saw it until many years later. That definitely was Andrew's idea, one of his best and most imitated.

I should have realized that "England's Newest Hitmakers" splashed across the top of the US version was not Andrew's idea and in fact represented a major loss of control over his product that was to become endemic. And let's not even think about the confusion London started when they released "Electronically Enhanced" ersatz stereo. But it wasn't just the collision of Andrew's hipness with London's lameness that caused "accidents" to happen; Immediate, which was truly "independent," for all its virtues had it share of unproductive amateurish wackiness.

The pictures I've chosen show that in the beginning no one had a clue, but everyone, except Brian, learned very fast. One of the things that they did was to make their intentions that much clearer so the accidents became happier ones. Keith by various causes made it known to the others and the universe that he intended to make his living playing guitar in front large paying audiences until he dropped, or at least until heroin dropped him. This was a refinement of his earlier intention to never hold a "job."

Mick made it known by the way he looked at the camera that he was not only going to be a star but the rock and roll version of a female movie star; he would risk disdain and possible failure to perform in that girl's highest heels. His inner Joan Crawford (to be explored in another essay) screams, whines, or howls depending on whether he's being prissy or powerful when he does his rendition of "NO WIRE HANGERS!" His quickly assumed confidence in that role was one of the most provocative things about him. Andrew was kind of a Dorothy Parker version of it, with much shorter hair. So when people said, "You look like a girl," they were saying more than they knew, and by the time the New York Dolls start playing with this a generation later, it's become a post-nuclear parody of a parody but no less controversial. To the extent that Mick lost his ironic detachment from this aspect of his image around the time of "Start Me Up," his writing and his act have declined.

Andrew realized that as long as there was no real ready money to be had in the beginning, he'd best use the fact that they provoked everybody to make it look like they were rich. Because nobody likes a poor trouble maker. And thus, the boys on the cover of December's Children or Out of Our Heads do not look like punks - Andrew disdains punk - they look like rich droogs. In the nineties they'd have slipped behind the former Iron Curtain and become wealthy, amoral black marketeers.

So maybe Andrew isn't as fond of the photos in the leather vests as I am because, contradicting himself, he thinks of them as accidents. But I think that's what makes them worth seeing and in this sense the Bailey and Mankowitz portraits are also "accidents." They are merely two different external effects of the extended Stones' internal causes, served up by a mystical universe at different times to thwack the history of pop in very different ways. Ride on, girls.