http://in.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idINIndia-43397820091023
Oct 23, 2009
By Paul Casciato
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A new show at Britain's National Portrait
Gallery in London captures swinging 1960s Britain in photographs from
bopping to the Beatles at the Cavern to the psychedelic explosion
that ushered in the 1970s.
The display of 150 photographs, collections of album sleeves, music
magazine covers, sheet music and other items celebrate the rise of
British pop and rock music giants such as the Beatles, Rolling
Stones, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd alongside U.S. contemporaries
including Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.
The portraits by acclaimed photographers David Bailey, Cecil Beaton,
Don McCullin and a host of others are organised into decades from the
sweet innocence of youth early in the decade to the decadent,
drug-fuelled psychedelia and sexual liberation which characterised
the summer of love in 1968 and beyond.
The early years of the exhibition focus heavily on the Beatles,
Rolling Stones and homegrown acts lesser known abroad including Cilla
Black and Cliff Richards, although Rod Stewart appears alongside Long
John Baldry in a 1964 portrait of a group called Steampacket.
"We just wanted to reflect really who were the big stars in each
year," exhibition curator Terence Pepper told Reuters on Friday.
But Pepper -- who at 60 recalls the era and the music well -- said
the show also depicts how quickly the Beatles, the Rolling Stones,
David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin changed the musical
landscape and conquered the world.
"It was all completely new. It was all happening. Pop music isn't
even on the radio yet," Pepper said.
"The BBC has got three hours on the air they can play records and
hardly any of them what you can call rock and roll or pop."
Overhead speakers softly play hits from the decade to lend atmosphere
to the exhibition that also includes original '60s fashion from Biba
and Mary Quant on Adel Rootstein mannequins.
The show plays out the rivalry of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
in pictures from a variety of top photographers who helped create and
endorse their changing images.
Pepper said the show's title illustrates how the decade which
belonged to the Beatles at its inception eventually gave way to stars
like David Bowie, who came into his own at the close of the 1960s and
flourished in the 1970s.
Younger photographers Fiona Adams and Philip Townsend also feature as
the exhibition explores how they took over from established masters
of earlier eras such as Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, who were
still shooting.
A series of 10 showcases features pop ephemera including pop
magazines Fabulous and Rave and pictorial spreads from Town magazine
showing McCullin's photo-essay on a pre-T.Rex Marc Bolan as a Mod
before he was famous.
Other sections are devoted to the mini-invasion of U.S. stars, among
them the Walker Brothers and later Jimi Hendrix, who moved to England
to launch their careers.
The portraits also show Britain's transition from a post-war era
where rationing had ended and the babies of World War Two grew into
tentative teenagers trying out their independence, to the sex, love
and rock n' roll lifestyle which characterised the late '60s and gave
birth to the hedonistic 1970s.
"It's great to have all these songs playing again," Pepper said.
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