The Rolling Stones through photographer David Bailey's eyes, in LA show and book
At a Los Angeles gallery show about the Rolling Stones, David Bailey reflects on being among the band's early image makers. Steve Appleford takes a look
The names on the walls outside the Taschen Gallery on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles are freshly painted in bold and rosy shades of pink. "The Rolling Stones", they declare, and "David Bailey". Just as bold are the photographs inside, including many by Bailey, documenting the 50-year rise of an essential band.
In the 1960s, Bailey was a rare photographer whose fame rivalled that of his subjects. His life as a young artist in Swinging London inspired Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up. He was among the first and most important photographers to shoot the Rolling Stones, helping establish them as icons of music, fashion, sexuality and danger.
"Kids having a good time, really," Bailey says cheerfully of his pictures, which fill the main room of the Taschen Gallery's debut exhibition. "It was great, because everyone was willing to take a chance - because we had nothing to lose."
Now 77, Bailey knew Mick Jagger from the Stones' earliest days in London. Bailey was engaged to British supermodel Jean Shrimpton then, and Jagger was dating her sister, Chrissie.
"I got on great with him - he liked Willie Dixon and all those great blues singers," says Bailey, grey-haired and relaxed in a corduroy jacket, blue bandanna knotted loosely around his neck. "I never understood the Beatles, because I thought they were just a boy band - until they did the White Album and things like that."
The show celebrates a new oversize book of pictures, titled The Rolling Stones, published by Taschen Books. Bailey is the guest of honour on a rare visit to Los Angeles. As he talks, the Stones' lascivious lips-and-tongue logo is being carefully painted onto a display case.