Author Description

In 1963, when Beatlemania was just beginning to explode in Britain, photographer Terry Spencer returned from working on news stories in Africa to find his daughter - then thirteen - begging him to do a feature on "the Fab Four." The editors of Life magazine were at first unimpressed by the idea; in America the group was still practically unknown. But after the Beatles had agreed to let Spencer travel with them for four months, in January 1964 Life did indeed publish a feature, just before the band launched into its historic and triumphant tour of the States. Thirty years later, 5,000 negatives of Spencer's Beatles photographs - virtually all of them unpublished - resurfaced and were sold at auction by Sotheby's of London. It Was Thirty Years Ago Today contains the cream of these "lost" pictures, presenting a uniquely fresh and uninhibited portrait of the Beatles at a time when they were on the very brink of international stardom - still anonymous enough to allow Spencer intimate access yet already famous enough to need protection from their multitudes of fans.