What was supposed to be a standard appraisal of some vintage rock concert posters turned out to be the discovery of a lifetime - an extraordinary collection of 3,500 unpublished photographs taken by Bob Bonis (above), the first U.S. Tour manager for both The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Not Fade Away Gallery in New York City just put 50 plus of these images on display (March 4th - April 14th). Gallery owner/founder Larry Marion spoke to Blender about what is likely the largest single trove of such important unknown rock photographs ever uncovered.
BLENDER: What was your reaction when you first heard of these photos?
LARRY MARION: I was completely blown away. I’ll give you a two-minute background. My professional history in the past twenty-five of years has been in rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia where I am considered one of the experts particularly in concert posters and that kinda of ephemera. A fella called my office about a year ago and said I have some memorabilia, I would like you to appraise and possibly sell. I said sure please tell me about it. Well in 1964, 1965 and 1966 my father was the US tour manager for both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Not particularly an average phone call as you can imagine. I fake composure and said I would love to meet with you and Alex Bonis, Bob Bonis’ son came over to my office and showed me the memorabilia. We went through the memorabilia which I all authenticated and appraised, not that it needed authentication. And almost at the end, Alex reached into a duffel bag and pulled out a notebook and said what do you think of this and I looked at it and it was about a dozen contact sheets of the photos and I took my loupe and I looked at them a little more carefully and I immediately saw that they were unbelievably uncommitted, unguarded and beautifully, beautifully shot and composed photographs. So I tell Alex these are extraordinary but contact sheets have a limited value as contact sheets - on the other hand, if you have the negatives and the copyrights then we are talking about something very significant. He explained that his father took all the pictures and that his father passed away in 1991 and he inherited his father’s estate so he did in fact own the copyright and had all of the negatives and he decided that rather than sell the negatives that we would honor his father’s memory and make them available to the public.
B: It’s mentioned in your press release that you are going to be using year-appropriate paper and the traditional photographic methods to print these images. What does that involve?
LM: What we mean by that is that for the most part they are not going to be scanned and digitally enhanced and then printed out. They are going to be old-style, traditional, (using a) dark room you know using an enlarger and a developer and all the chemicals. So the black and white prints will be museum quality, silver gelatin prints on the finest quality, museum fiber paper that you can buy.
B: When looking through the images did you gain any particular insights into the bands, like "I didn’t know Ringo did this." Is there anything that came up?LM: Actually it was quite fascinating because you can see as you looked through the pictures that The Beatles’ organization and The Beatles as a group and the Stones’ organization and the Stones as a group were very different. The Beatles were more guarded and more controlled. Brian Epstein really held sway over them and protect their image and Bob wasn’t allow to photograph a lot of the candid stuff so there aren’t seen in the hotel rooms and the Beatles doing controversial or embarrassing things. On the other hand, the Rolling Stones were cultivating this bad boy image and their manager Andrew Loog Oldham looked at The Beatles and said we are going to position ourselves as kinda like the opposite. When they are making all of the kids love the music but their parents are sitting behind them tapping their feet, we are going to make the kids love the music and scared the daylight out of their parents.
B: I saw this picture on the web of Brian Jones and Keith Richards drinking what appears to be Lemon Drops.
LM: Exactly. And Keith is giving the finger to the cinematographer.
B: That’s cool to have that kind of attitude, particularly back then.
LM: Absolutely. And there is a picture of Keith exposing himself. There is a picture of Mick Jagger with his pants pulled down showing his underwear, spanking his butt. So, I mean, the level of intimacy and the entire attitude that they were putting forth. It was a striking comparison between the two groups.
B: So we know these prints are going to be very limited so do you have a set number already for each…
It’s going to vary by size. So for example, the 16" x 20" are going to be an addition of 250 and as the size goes up the addition goes up drastically so the 20" x 40" will be an addition of 75, 24" x 30" will be addition of 40 and the 30" x 40" will be addition of only 20.
B: Do you imagine there might be a book coming out? Are you working in that now?
LB: We are negotiating with a variety of publishers to do two books. First a book on the Rolling Stones and then a book on The Beatles. The Stone book will probably be out sometime at the end of the year, around Christmas and The Beatles book for the following spring.
B: Which one image do you personally like the most?LB: The photograph of The Beatles pool-side in Bel Air in 1964 and a couple of days of vacation where they are tossing around a yellow balloon that looks almost like the sun. And there is one particular image that you have probably seen, it was on The Post and it was in some of the websites where John and George have their hands you know up to the sky looking at this yellow sun-like balloon floating above them and that image has resonated to me, the minute I saw it as one of the most beautiful images of The Beatles I’ve ever seen.
B: Was there any damage done to any of these contact sheets?
A vast, vast number of negatives were in pristine condition.
B: Have you have any special requests for private viewings already?
Actually, I’ve had a number of them. There have been some very high, high-level people who wanted some private viewings.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW A COLLECTION OF 20 OF THE BONIS IMAGES, INCLUDING SOME WEB EXCLUSIVES.