Rolling Stones

Due to a no-nonsense reputation earned from years of working in the jazz clubs in New York that were mostly run by wise-guys, Bob Bonis was tapped to serve as U.S. Tour manager for the Rolling Stones beginning with their very first tour of America in June, 1964 and continued in this role through 1966. He brought along his Leica M3 camera on the road and recorded approximately 2,700 historic, intimate, extraordinary and often iconic images of the Stones at the very beginning of the British Invasion.

In addition to exciting, revelatory and extremely artistic photographs of them on stage, he also captured many of the backstage goings-on, and documented their historic recording sessions at Chess Records Studios in Chicago in 1964 and many of their sessions at RCA Studios in Hollywood, California. Bob also photographed TV and film appearances including their rehearsals for TV shows, Shindig, Hullabaloo, and the Ed Sullivan show and the historic seminal concert film The T.A.M.I. Show where they met James Brown for the very first time and shared the bill with The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and many other acts.

He shot them having fun and relaxing by the pool in Savannah, GA and at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida on the day the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote their signature song and their career making hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” He traveled with them to England and for a brief, but historic, tour of Germany in September of 1965 and shot some of his best work there. And that just begins to scratch the surface of the Bob Bonis Archive of unseen and unpublished photographs of the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and many other musicians and bands. We present here the first of a continuing series of these extraordinary photographs available for the first time ever as Limited Edition fine art prints, hand numbered, embossed with the official Bob Bonis signature logo as authorized by the Bob Bonis Estate, and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from The GRAMMY Museum®.