David Bailey's Rock and Roll Heroes [Paperback]

Neil Spencer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1997

David Bailey's photographs have helped to create the face of modern pop. He has trained his camera on most of the pop icons since the 1960s, and this volume brings together more than 80 of his most vivid and indelible images of the pop scene, from his earliest photographs of Mick Jagger, Lennon and McCartney and The Who, to his later portraits of Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. There are pictures of Patti Smith and Bob Dylan, John Lydon and Boy George, Tina Turner and Sting. There is a session from 1985's "Live Aid" showing Bob Geldoff and Queen at a moment of glory, and there are classic heroes too: a grinning Fred Astaire, an offbeat Miles Davis, and a solemn Duke Ellington. Bailey aims to capture the essence and grab the unexpected, confound our expectations, and make us look afresh at faces we thought we knew so well. This large-format book is for all lovers of pop music and for those interested in photography.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Thames and Hudson (April 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500279063
• ISBN-13: 978-0500279069
• Product Dimensions: 14.2 x 10.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,395,745 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rock And Roll Classics, September 29, 2000

By 

Rick E. Lund (West Point, Utah USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Bailey's Rock and Roll Heroes (Hardcover)

This is a great picture book of some of the greatest stars of rock. The cover of Mick Jagger with a sword in his teeth is worth the price alone. This book has more pictures of the Stones in the early years, even has pics of Brian Jones. There are also pictures of the Beatles, U2, Alice Cooper, The Who, Elton John, Queen, Dylan and many others. Still almost half the book seems to be pictures of the Stones. I highly recommend it to the true rock fan.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slightly mistitled, January 9, 2009

By 

EL - See all my reviews

This review is from: David Bailey's Rock and Roll Heroes (Hardcover)

This coffee table book of art photography portrays representatives from the roots and royalty of the rock world -- everyone from Duke Ellington to Seal, from Fred Astaire to Marianne Faithfull, Bowie and Boy George to Oasis, and of course the requisite Dylan, Stones, Beatles, Elton John, U2 and Who. This book is mistitled though. Despite these big names, I find the book's breadth of coverage rather limited. It should have been called "David Bailey's Rolling Stones and Friends". (If it had, I'd have given it 5 stars)

This beautiful large format hardcover contains over 70 black and white and 11 color images whose time span ranges from the early 1960s with the birth of rock as we know it (via jazz, folk and blues), to the mid 90s. It even captures the pinnacle of 80s pop history with a couple of spontaneous portraits of participants of the Live Aid event.

The interesting three-page intro by Neil Spencer provides a nice background on David Bailey in the context of the pop world; he apologizes for the preponderance of Stones pictures by explaining that Bailey befriended Jagger just as the Stones burst onto the music scene. Hanging out with Mick then, Bailey naturally captured tons of pictures of the band. And wonderful pictures they are (I counted 49).

Aside from the introductory text, the entire remainder of the book is photographs. Each photo is dated. Not surprisingly, many subjects are half-dressed. There is a wonderful artsy variety to the layout of images. Some photos take up half a page while others are huge and cover a two-page spread. One two-page spread consists entirely of two dozen photos from a single Stones photo shoot. On some pages it's hard to tell where one photo stops and the next one starts. Though there is little logic in the arrangement or chronology of these photos, there is a wonderful unity of style throughout that makes a Bailey picture from 1965 resemble one taken in 1995, and vice versa. He has captured the essence of each of these rock souls in their particular moment.

A nice collectable book for art's sake, but perhaps not everything you might expect from the cover. Or perhaps so.