Excerpted from the
Foreword
by Bill Wyman
When the Danish photographer, Bent Rej, first showed me his collection of photographs of The Rolling Stones, taken between Spring 1965 and early summer 1966, I was amazed. I had no idea that he had taken so many, nor had I point of reference for the scope of the collection. No photographer up to this point in our career, or since for that matter, has had the access to the Stones that Bent had. He was right there, on the spot, at the crucial period in our career, and in our lives like no other photographer before or since. It's this closeness that makes what Bent has done unique.
Some may say what's all the fuss about? It's just a collection of photographs about a group, and one that's been photographed much more than most at that. This, of course, is true, but like most things in life that seem to go right, it's all about timing. Bent was there when we were a group in transition. When he took his first photos of us in March 1965 we had been together for a little over two years. We were already a very big group, we had toured America, we had topped the charts and we had caused outrage among an older generation unable to get to grips with what we were all about. We were also beginning to appreciate how very big we could become. But at the time we were just enjoying ourselves and not thinking too hard about how long it might last.
Initially, like almost every other group, including The Beatles, we covered a lot of songs written by other people. By March 1965, Mick and Keith had written their first No. 1 and by the time Bent stopped taking pictures of us regularly we had become a songwriting force that, ifnot quite a match for John and Paul, was at least able to establish us as a band that had potential staying power. But, having said that, the Stones were not just about writing songs that could both sell and last -- we were much more than that -- the Stones were a band that had something that no other band has been able to come close to competing with. As a live band able to excite and captivate an audience there have been few bands that have come close.
Bent's pictures have helped me to see what it was like to go from being a group with the potential to succeed to one that absolutely knew it would. We were never short of self-belief, always sure of success, but somehow you never quite know if you have succeeded until just after you have. If you compare how we were in the opening pages of the book to what we had become by the end you can visibly see the change. It wasn't just because we had won awards, had No. 1s, filled concert halls, and caused riots -- although that helps -- it's the mystical quality that comes when you go from being fairly popular to becoming world-wide stars.
