Andy Wickham

Journalist Barney Hoskyns, in Hotel California, his 2006 book about the late '60s–early '70s southern California music scene, described Wickham as Warner's "house hippie" who “worked Laurel Canyon’s narrow-laned hills, had long hair and did not keep office hours."

In 1975, he was assigned to oversee the establishment of Warner's Country Music division in Nashville.

Wickham had worked as a commercial artist in London, and was employed at Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate Records label before moving to Los Angeles to work for Lou Adler's Dunhill label. He met Warner Bros. Records executive Mo Ostin at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, and was hired as the label's "company freak" to scout new talent and forge a bond between rebellious young artists and established Warner Bros. executives.

Warner Executive Stan Cornyn recalled working at the label in the late 1960s. "At one point," he said, "I was the hippest person at Warner Bros. Records. My hair was slightly longer than the others’, and my attitude was good. But we were all guys in suits, or even blazers up to a certain point in time. To my knowledge, Mo Ostin never took a drug. Joe Smith never took a drug. We had Andy Wickham to take the drugs. ... Mo knew to go after people and find people who were not proven yet — to find someone like Andy Wickham, who might come in at two in the afternoon with his eyes not quite focused, but who knew Joni Mitchell and that whole crowd."

Andrew Wickham (9 May 1947 – 29 March 2022) was a British native who became prominent in the U.S. music business as a producer, A&R director, and talent scout in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.