Rock 'N' Roll Times. The Style and Spirit of the Early Beatles and Their First Fans
Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1983. 2nd Edition. Quarto, publisher's photo-illustrated stiff paper wraps.
Second edition of German photographer Jürgen Vollmer's love letter to the Beatles and the youth culture of Hamburg and Paris in the early 1960s they inspired. The Fab Four cut their teeth performing in the early rock clubs in the German port city of Hamburg, "the vice-center of Europe with sex-oriented cabaret shows, sex-acts with women wrestling in mud, and a street housing prostitutes, who sat in their groundfloor windows on display." Vollmer, who hung out with the Exies (young existentialists), was mortally afraid of the Rockers, but was lured to a show at the Kaiserkeller by an art school friend, Klaus Voormann, who would wind up sharing a flat with members of the band, designing the album cover for Revolver, and playing bass for Lou Reed and Carly Simon, among others. Famously, Voormann's girlfriend, the photographer Astrid Kirchherr, who was present for the Kaiserkeller shows, left him to be with Stuart Sutcliffe, the original "fifth Beatle," who left the band to pursue an art career. The modish look the band both adopted and popularized in their pre-psychedelic days is on full display here in Vollmer's grainy black-and-white photos of the boys and their fanbase of disaffected German and French youth. Originally published in 1981. Light edgewear to wraps. Near fine. Item #13262
$85.00