The most famous pop band in the world, even today The Beatles hold center stage. Anyone who lived through the 1960s remembers them and the digital remastering of their output has ensured that younger generations know them too. How could they not? The songs will live forever and are regularly reused in film or TV scores, on advertisements, and on radio channels everywhere.
With such coverage and interest, how can there be anything new to say about the band? The Beatles: The Days of Their Life manages to do so thanks to the remarkable collection of photographs housed in Mirropix, the library of the Daily Mirror, Britain's premier popular daily. With so much interest in the band, photographers were always looking to cover not just the major events that all the media attended, but smaller more intimate moments. And then, of course there were the paparazzi: the Beatles were perfect targets for this new breed of photographer who didn't ask for permission to take their photos and followed George, Paul, John, and Ringo wherever they went.
Mirropix has a sensational collection of material taken to feed an insatiable desire to see the band, its families, hangers on and what they did. Record launches, publicity events, holidays, flights in and out of the country. TV broadcasts, film work, births, deaths, and marriages: everything was photographed. With this sort of coverage, unsurprisingly much material was not published and it is this treasure trove that is exploited in The Beatles: The Days of Their Life.
The first official, in-depth history of the Rolling Stones told through the band's television and radio broadcasts--appearance by appearance--published to tie in with the global release of a DVD containing recently discovered, never-before-released footage of the Stones on TV, in front of and behind the cameras.
The Rolling Stones on Air in the Sixties is a unique chronicle of the band's rise to fame during the 1960s. It begins with a letter the BBC received from Brian Jones in January 1963, politely requesting an audition for The Rollin' Stones Rhythm and Blues Band, and ends with the story of the group's performance of Let It Bleed for BBC's end-of-the-decade celebration television program Ten Years of What.
From their first television appearance on Thank Your Lucky Stars!, sporting matching houndstooth suits at the insistence of manager Andrew Loog Oldham, to the louche rockers who performed at a televised free concert in London's Hyde Park in 1969, The Rolling Stones on Air in the Sixties reveals, year-by-year, how the group rose from obscurity to dominate rock-and-roll. Throughout, the Stones look back at their career-defining broadcasts, sharing their individual recollections about the music, the clothes, the fans, the rivals and friends, and the impact they had on the generational divide and the world around them.
This remarkable collection features previously unseen facsimile documents from the BBC and commercial archives, exclusive interviews with directors and producers who worked with the band during their rise, and showcases many stunning images never before seen. This is history as it happened, both in front of and behind the camera, and on and off the studio mic.
Viewing the band from a fresh and unusual viewpoint that makes their story both immediate and vivid, The Rolling Stones on Air in the Sixties offers invaluable insights into one of the greatest great rock 'n' roll bands the world has ever seen.