Page 41 – LIFE

The Champ, The Beatles and a Tearful Girl: The Photography of Bob Gomel

August 27, 2021August 26, 2021 by Bill Syken

The photographs of Bob Gomel put you in a diner with Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, poolside with the Beatles, and high above the U.S. Capitol rotunda as John F. Kennedy lay in state.

Gomel plied his craft in the middle of history—not that he knew it at the time. “I had no idea the 60s would be so iconic,” Gomel, 88, said recently in a phone interview. “It seemed quite ordinary at the time, but looking back on it now, I realize how fortunate I was.”

Gomel grew up in the Bronx, N.Y. and became fascinated with photography in grade school. One of his teachers was a photographer who kept in his classroom a sepia-toned print of a pigeon standing on a manhole cover on a cobblestone street. That image beguiled Gomel, and he saved money from his job delivering groceries to buy his first camera at Willoughby’s in Manhattan. Gomel shot pictures for his high school paper and then in college at NYU, where he made connections with senior members of the New York press while shooting games at Madison Square Garden.

After a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy as an aviator, he came back to the U.S. and actually turned down a plum job offer from the Associated Press, so focussed was he on creating magazine-style narrative journalism. His initial breakthrough with LIFE came during a tough time for his family; Gomel’s brother was in a serious car accident, and Gomel shot pictures of his family as they managed this crisis, including photos of his brother’s operation during which a lung was removed. Gomel showed those pictures to LIFE editors, who were impressed and began to give him work. (His brother recovered and went on to live a full life, Gomel says.)

While obviously possessed of a great eye, Gomel says that his best attribute as a photographer was his ability to earn the trust of his subjects. It shows in his photos with Ali, who Gomel shot many times over the years. When Ali and Malcolm X celebrated Ali’s winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, the only two photographers present were Gomel and the boxer’s personal photographer.

Gomel enjoyed great rapport with John F. Kennedy, and they bonded in humorous circumstances. After Kennedy was elected in 1960, Gomel was one of the pack of photographers who camped outside the president-elect’s Georgetown home in those wintry days, capturing photos of the people who came to consult and interview for cabinet positions. One day a Kennedy press staffer informed the assembled media that Kennedy was not seeing any visitors that day, so they could all go home. Everyone left, except for Gomel and one other photographer. After a while Kennedy opened the window and invited the photographers to come in from the cold, and he fed them a sumptuous steak meal—after which Gomel fell asleep on Kennedy’s sofa. “He never let me forget that embarrassing moment,” Gomel says.

Gomel would go on to capture stunning images from Kennedy’s funeral after the president’s assassination. While Kennedy’s casket was on display in the Capitol rotunda, Gomel broke away from the pack to climb the stairs and find an overhead view. It had been a cloudy day, but when Gomel was on high, the clouds parted and sunlight shone through, a moment so photographically propitious that Gomel refers to it as “divine intervention.”

When Eisenhower’s casket was on display in the same rotunda years later, Gomel became the first photographer to gain permission to set up a rig directly overhead, for what became a LIFE cover.

Gomel is aware that his career is inevitably defined by the photos he took of the famous and the powerful, and while he understands that, he also regrets it. Talking from his Houston home, Gomel spoke of how he looks at the New York Times obituaries each day, and thinks of how he will be recorded as a photographer of Ali and JFK and the like, and his pictures of ordinary people—including those he enjoys shooting to this day when he and his wife travel—will fade into the background.

One more “everyday” image from his years at LIFE he speaks passionately of: in 1960 he shot a story about the return of the Triton submarine after circumnavigating the globe—the first submarine ever to do so while remaining submerged for its entire journey. The trip was a Cold War display of might. Among the crowd was a little girl waiting for the return of her father, who was a crew member on the ship. As she readied to welcome him home safe after two months underwater, tears fell from both eyes.

“Those tears—it’s my favorite image of all time,” he says.

Gomel tells many more stories about his LIFE work in the 2020 documentary Bob Gomel: Eyewitness. Enjoy this gallery, which includes many of Gomel’s images of the famous and the everyday.

Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X celebrated after Ali won the heavyweight title, 1964.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Gomel actually took this photo before Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston, so LIFE would have a cover prepped for deadline in case Ali scored the upset.

Photo by Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Muhammad Ali viewed a photo of Sonny Liston before their rematch in 1965.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Muhammad Ali in 1968, at the Broadway play The Great White Hope, about the life of boxer Jack Johnson.

Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock

John Lennon did cannonballs, Paul McCartney splashed and Ringo Starr turned away during a photo shoot in Miami, 1964; LIFE chose not to run the pictures, and they remained unpublished until 2015.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in a swimming pool in Miami, February 1964.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul Mccartney and Ringo Starr, February 1964.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

The Beatles clowned for the camera in Miami, 1964.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

John F. Kennedy and daughter Caroline strolled in Georgetown, weeks after he had won the presidential election, 1960.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Carloline Kennedy looked out the window in her Georgetown home, 1960.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

John F. Kennedy stood amid sea of reporters at the hospital on the day of the birth of his son John Jr. on November 25, 1960.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

President John Kennedy emerged from inside a model of the Apollo space capsule during his tour of the Manned Space Center, on the day he had announced his intention to put a man on the moon.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

President John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin, Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C.; photographer Bob Gomel described the parting of the clouds that sent the beam of light shining down as “divine intervention.”

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

A horse-drawn caisson bearing the flag-draped casket of John F, Kennedy led the funeral cortege and was followed by a riderless horse, Washington, D.C., November 25, 1963.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

General Charles De Gaulle of France and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (center, saluting), along with German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, Philippine President Macapagal, South Korean President Chung Hee Park and many other dignitaries, attended at the burial of John F. Kennedy, Arlington National Cemetery, Va.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Actor Dustin Hoffman visited the unemployment office in New York City to discusses his case two months before the opening of the movie The Graduate, which would make him a star; Gomel, who was shadowing Hoffman, recalls that they rode to the unemployment office in a movie studio limousine.

Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock

Dustin Hoffman did chin-ups in doorway of his NYC apartment, 1968.

Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock

Humorist and former Marine Art Buchwald (left) went back to boot camp in service of a light-hearted story for LIFE, 1965.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

This image of a basset hound illustrated a story about what dogs go through when the kids in their home return to school in the fall.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Warren Beatty at the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures in 1967.

Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock

For a story on airplane traffic backups due to a work action by air traffic controllers, photographer Bob Gomel arranged to have planes lined up on the run way to illustrate the congestion (and create a vertical image for the LIFE cover).

Bob Gomel / LIFE Picture Collection via Shutterstock

To illustrate the exuberance of youth hockey, LIFE photographer Bob Gomel placed a five-dollar bill under a hockey puck and had the players go after it, capturing the joy and mayhem of the ensuing dogpile.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Running back Eugene “Merucry” Morris of West Texas State; photographer Bob Gomel had an art student at the school design wings for the helmet.

Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Running back Eugene “Mercury” Morris of West Texas State.

Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Al Hirschfeld with his daughter Nina, whose name he famously worked into his drawings, 1961.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Lisa Fisher, the daughter of a US Navy officer on submarine Triton, which had circumnavigated the globe while submerged—a historic first—wept as she welcomed her father back from his two months underwater, 1960.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Life Magazine’s cover of April 11, 1969, featured an overhead view of the coffin of former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower lying in state under the US Capitol Rotunda; this was the first time a camera rig had been suspended above the rotunda in that manner.

Photo by Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

The Titanic: The True and Tragic Story and the Movie Remembered

October 20, 2021August 26, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is an excerpt from LIFE’s special issue Titanic: The Tragedy That Shook the World, available at newsstands and online:

Twenty-three years ago, at the 70th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Sean Connery stood in his tuxedo before a microphone, the evening’s final note card in his hand, and read the news: The award for Best Picture “goes to Titanic.” That it was the movie’s record-tying 11th Oscar win—after a record-tying 14 nominations—and that it came before a television audience of 57.3 million, still the largest to watch an Academy Awards, seemed apt. From start to finish, this movie didn’t simply go big. It went huge. Colossal. Titanic all the way.

Director James Cameron (Best Director James Cameron, that is) spent $200 million to make Titanic, almost twice the original budget and the most expensive movie of the 20th century. He dressed 1,000 extras in period costume. He oversaw 90,000 gallons of water being flooded into the set during the film’s climactic scene, and he delivered Titanic at a longest-movie-of-the-year running time of three hours and 15 minutes.

And after those extravagances came these: Titanic spent 15 straight weeks as the number one movie in the country (another record), and it was still showing in first-run theaters nearly 10 months after it opened. Paramount had to send theaters replacement reels because the originals wore out. Throw in the take from the movie’s occasional rereleases, among them a 2017 limited run celebrating its 20th anniversary, and Titanic has brought in box-office receipts of $2.2 billion.

It’s a stunningly beautiful film, with startling effects. Cinematography, Production Design and Visual Effects were among its Oscar haul. More germane is that Titanic has at its heart an exquisitely drawn love story that’s as Hollywood and as Shakespearean as can be, one that slips bounds of class and circumstance as defiantly and heroically as a Capulet and a Montague trysting at the balcony by moonlight. Jack the penniless, romantic third-class passenger. Rose the betrothed-to-an-ogre aristocrat in diamonds. They spit together. They dance. He sketches her in the nude. Together, they rise. Who among us does not cherish the rare moments—lit by love or accomplishment—when we feel as if we are standing on the bow of our own ship, going somewhere, a king of the world?

Titanic touches on a fundamental question: How would you act and what would you do if you had just a short time to live? The boat takes a while to sink, and as it does the violinists famously play on, the bridge officer puts a gun to his head, Rose’s odious fiancé weasels onto a lifeboat meant for women and children, and an old couple spoons in their cabin bed. Then there’s Rose herself who, while being lowered to safety by lifeboat leaps back onto the sinking ship. Anything for a few more minutes with Jack. She’s nuts. She met the guy three days before. But we believe her. It’s a moment even the greatest storytellers might wait a lifetime to achieve.

There’s another crucial slant to Titanic: the fact that the audience, godlike, knows from the start that disaster is nigh. This puts all the actions and reactions of the characters into a kind of final, judgmental light, and it ties straight to the movie’s real power. From the opening sepia montage at the departing dock, to the genuine shots of the real, rusted hull 12,500 feet deep in the Atlantic, to the appropriation of language from post-wreck inquiry transcripts into movie dialogue, lies the understanding that the story is, at essence, true. Whatever license was taken to form Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet’s Rose Dewitt Bukater and Billy Zane’s Caledon Hockley, such characters and others like them surely existed and were on that boat.

At the Oscars ceremony in 1998, Cameron, who also wrote, coedited and coproduced the film, asked for a moment of silence for the 1,503 people who went down with the ship—acknowledging his debt to the human stories that were set against the audacity of the 52,000-ton luxury liner itself. Man in his hubris, flying too close to the sun. More than a century later, the voyage of the RMS Titanic remains one of history’s most astounding events, filled with intrigue, moxie and false steps, with majesty, with tragedy and with life. It’s this true story that spurred Titanic to such success, and this true story that unfolds so poignantly and dramatically in our remembrance of a moment that continues to captivate.

Below are images from LIFE’s special issue Titanic: The Tragedy That Shook the World, available at newsstands and online:

© Ken Marschall

The Olympic and the Titanic, both vessels of the White Star Line, under construction in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1909-1911.

Universal History Archive/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The first class lounge of the Titanic.

Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The Titanic only had enough lifeboats to hold a third of the ship’s passengers and crew.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The Titanic sailed away from her final landfall in Ireland on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic to New York in April 1912.

© Ralph White/Corbis/Getty Images

The April 16, 1912 front page of the New York Times announced the sinking of the Titanic.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

This image from 1912 showed the exact latitude and longitude where the Titanic sank.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

This early illustration depicted the sinking of the Titanic.

Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Scouts raised money in Stratford-on Avon, England after the sinking of the Titanic.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Dining plates, shown here as they were found, were among the artifacts recovered from the sunken Titanic.

Nils Jorgensen/Rex/Shutterstock

Disney Theme Parks: The History and the Magic

October 20, 2021August 26, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is from LIFE’s special tribute issue to the Disney theme parks, available on newsstands and online:

Walt Disney spent his life dreaming impossible dreams—and usually realizing them. In 1928, he created the first animated short with synchronized sound (Steamboat Willie), which turned Mickey Mouse into an international superstar. Less than a decade later, Disney released the first full-length animated feature (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), which became the most successful American film up to that point. And in the early 1950s, Walt dreamed the most impossible dream of them all: an amusement park to end all amusement parks. He would call it Disneyland.

Though it’s hard to believe now, the park’s success was anything but certain. In fact, Roy Disney—Walt’s brother and financial partner—thought it was yet another one of “Walt’s screwy ideas,” and bankers refused to lend the company a dime. “When he started Disneyland, he didn’t have a friend in the world,” one colleague said. But Walt persevered, as always. “Sometimes I wonder if ‘common sense’ isn’t another way of saying ‘fear,’” he said. “And fear too often spells failure.”

In the face of enormous obstacles (record rainfall, labor strikes), a ballooning budget (total price tag: $17 million), and a disastrous opening day (women’s high heels sunk in Main Street’s still-drying asphalt), Disney prevailed. His “screwy idea” quickly became an enormous hit—and eventually changed popular culture forever.

Of course, he kept dreaming, making plans for an even more ambitious park (Walt Disney World) that would include a place that he felt would transform the country’s future (EPCOT). Sadly, he didn’t live to see these become a reality, but the spread of Disney parks throughout the world (Tokyo, Paris, and Shanghai among them) and the astronomical ongoing success of the company he founded prove beyond a doubt that Disney’s “impossible” dream endures.

Here are some images from LIFE’s special issue Inside the Disney Theme Parks: The Happiest Places on Earth

Cover image by imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock

Walt Disney crossed the drawbridge that serves as the entrance to Sleeping Beauty Castle in the heart of Disneyland, circa 1955. The original site of the castle proved to be overrun with feral cats, which Disney took pains to save.

David F. Smith/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Disney in his Burbank office with one of his most important artists, John Hench, discussing the map of Disneyland that Walt called “the $5 million layout.” The most important element was the castle, Walt told artist Herb Ryman, who made the first maps of Disneyland. “Make it tall enough to be seen from all around the park,” he said.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE/The Picture Collection

Disney discussed his new park with some imagineers in Los Angeles in 1954. “Imagineers” is the term Disney used to refer to the film studio creatives who brought their cinematic sensibility to the theme park, which was the first park to tell a story, like a movie.

Earl Theisen/Archive Photos/Getty

Artist William J. Koch touched up a model of the Los Angeles basin, part of “The World Beneath Us,” a show featured in Disneyland.

Bettmann/Getty

Children running through the gate of Sleeping Beauty Castle, the centerpiece of Disneyland. “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the park,” Disney said. “I want them to fee they’re in another world.”

Allan Grant/LIFE/The Picture Collection

A family visited the park during opening week, 1955.

Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives

Disneyland’s opening day parade, 1955.

USC Libraries/Corbis/Getty

Walt Disney during a telecast of the official opening of the playground. The premiere was televised nationally.

Bettmann/Getty

Disney employees climbed the Matterhorn, a 1:100-scale model of the Swiss mountain, which opened as an attraction in 1959.

Ralph Crane/LIFE/The Picture Collection

In 1971 the entire Walt Disney World staff posed for a group portrait in front of Cinderella’s castle prior to the grand opening of the amusement park.

Yale Joel/LIFE/The Picture Collection

Finding the Elusive J.D. Salinger, and More: A Photographer’s Tales

November 2, 2021August 25, 2021 by Bill Syken

In 1961 LIFE photographer Ted Russell received the assignment: bring back a picture of J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye.

At that point Salinger hadn’t made any public appearances for years, and he had even asked his publisher to remove his author’s photo from Catcher in the Rye so he wouldn’t be recognized. It was clear that any new photos of the iconic figure would be a rarity. LIFE reporters had located Salinger’s fortress of seclusion—a home in Cornish, New Hampshire that was surrounded by an eight-foot fence. Russell’s plan was to park at least a half mile up the road, walk the rest of the way, hide in the bushes with a telephoto lens, and wait for Salinger to show himself. It was winter, and Russell had a cold. The first two days, Russell endured drizzly weather without even a glimpse of the author. But on the third day, Salinger opened the home’s gate to let out his dog, and then briefly stepped outside himself. Russell took aim, hoping that Salinger’s dog wouldn’t flush him out. “I got off three or four frames,” he says, before the author disappeared and Russell left with his photographic treasure.

While hiding in bushes was not the norm for Russell, it could serve as a metaphor for his basic approach to photography, which was to make himself invisible to his subjects. Once in their presence, he would talk to them as little as possible, in the hope that they would forget he was there and act naturally. “My style of photography is to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open,” says Russell, 91.

That technique served him well for a particularly memorable story—photographing young Bob Dylan in his Greenwich Village apartment. Russell first met Dylan in the fall of 1961, months before he released his self-titled debut album. Russell was tipped off by a publicist that this newcomer to the music scene was someone worth paying attention to. Russell saw Dylan perform downtown and the next day pitched him a story. “I explained to him that I wanted to do a story on the struggles of an up and coming folk singer in New York,” he says. Dylan agreed, but after their shoots Russell, a freelancer, couldn’t find any takers for the story. He recalls playing Dylan’s music for editors at the Saturday Evening Post in a formal conference room around a big oak table and them losing interest after one song. He was only able to make use of the photos after Dylan had been widely recognized as a revolutionary songwriter and the voice of a generation. In 2015 Russell published a book of his photos of Dylan’s early years. When people ask him to describe what the future Nobel Prize winner was like as a young man, the photographer tells people “I haven’t the vaguest idea,” owing to his fly-on-the-wall approach. “There was no verbal interaction between us, just the bare minimum,” Russell says. “At some point he must have given me the address of his apartment.”

Working in the 1960s, Russell captured many images relating to race and to civil rights. He photographed Malcolm X giving a fiery speech in Harlem, with the middle-aged women in the audience reacting as if they were bobby soxers at a concert. He shot a star-studded jazz party fundraiser for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the home of baseball great Jackie Robinson, with performances by Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and others. Russell was in Mississippi for the trial of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964, capturing images of African-American prayer meetings and of a smiling Sheriff Lawrence Rainey after federal charges against him had been dismissed.

Russell served as both photographer and reporter for a memorable story in LIFE’s Dec. 8, 1961 issue titled “From Washington to New York, Four Lanes to Trouble.” The story documented how the segregated businesses on U.S Route 40 would refuse service to African diplomats headed from the United Nations to Washington D.C., and Russell captured quotes that were startlingly brazen. When Russell asked a waitress why she denied service to Malick Sow, the ambassador from Chad, she shamelessly explained, “He looked like just an ordinary run-of-the-mill n***** to me. I couldn’t tell he was an ambassador.”

When talking about his most memorable images, Russell mentions “one of the saddest things I ever photographed.” On the morning of Sept. 15, 1958 in northern New Jersey a commuter train derailed and went off a bridge, plunging into Newark Bay and killing 48 people. He captured the moment when the train was lifted from the waters, and later went to the funeral home and photographed the wife and mother of the train’s engineer mourning together.

“The poignant moments, that’s what I set out to capture,” Russell says. “They’re the ones that stay with me.”

Author J. D. Salinger outside his home in Cornish, 1961.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Author J. D. Salinger’s dog outside his home in Cornish, N.H., 1961.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bob Dylan in his Greenwich Village apartment.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Malcolm X delivered a fiery speech to a crowd in Harlem, 1963.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Listeners reacted to a speech by Malcolm X in Harlem, New York City, 1963.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Baseball star Jackie Robinson and his wife, Rachel, hosted a jazz party to raise money to support the work of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dizzy Gillespie performed at a jazz party hosted by baseball great Jackie Robinson to raise money to support the work of Martin Luther King, 1963.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dave Brubeck performed at the home of Jackie Robinson in Stamford, Ct., for a fundraiser to support the work of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Adam Malick Sow, Chad’s ambassador to the U.N., was among those refused service at segregated businesses on the road from New York to Washington D.C.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mrs. Leroy Merritt was unapologetic in explaining why she refused to serve an African diplomat traveling from New York to Washington, D.C.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A group of women held a prayer meeting for the slaying of three civil rights workers in Mississippi.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey (second from left) left the federal building after his case regarding the three slain civil rights workers was dropped.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A commuter train that derailed and went off a bridge was pulled from the waters of Newark Bay in New Jersey; 48 passengers and crew died in the accident, 1958.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mourning together were the mother and wife of a train engineer who died when his train plunged into Newark Bay in New Jersey, killing 48.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Union leader Jimmy Hoffa shook hands with marshals in the yard of a federal prison after being convicted for jury tampering, 1967.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Commuters walked through New York’s Grand Central Station, lit only by flood lights, during a large power blackout of the northeastern United States, November 9, 1965.

Ted Russell/Life Pictures/Getty Images

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones!

August 26, 2021August 25, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is adapted from LIFE’s special issue The Rolling Stones: Their Rock ‘N’ Roll Life.

Of the many things that Mick Jagger has said in public—aside, that is, from the lyrical improvisations and the onstage declarations he has made across more than 2,000 live performances over 59 years—among the more enduring is this bit of bravura from 1975: “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45,” he told People magazine. Jagger was 31, and he and the Rolling Stones had recorded the game changer 10 years before, in the early stages of a decade in which the band reframed the blues, the British Invasion and rock ’n’ roll itself.

The hubris of Mick’s comment, the implication that there were other worlds to be conquered and, more ominously, that the Stones might leave behind the world they had forged, struck the metaphorical chord. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was the band’s axe-grinding soul: Keith Richards came up with the hook and the title while drifting to sleep one night and recorded it, bare bones, on a cassette player by his bed. Jagger later wrote the lyrics poolside at a Tampa hotel while the band was on tour. Add drums. Add bass. Book it at 3:45. When the song landed in America in June of ’65, it went to No. 1 and stayed there.

Jagger certainly was singing “Satisfaction” at age 45 (actually he’d just turned 46), snapping it out as a set-closer on the Stones’ bristling Steel Wheels tour in 1989. He was singing it onstage in 2015 as well, as a guest of Taylor Swift, who was born in 1989. Over the many years, Jagger’s “I’d rather be dead” pronouncement evolved away from arrogance and toward happy irony. In 2018, when Jagger and Richards both turned 75 and the Stones began a tour with dates in the U.K., there was “Satisfaction” on the set list—the predetermined final encore, the classic and quintessential rock ’n’ roll song.

Despite the portentous demise of guitarist Brian Jones in 1969 and the band’s historical fondness for hard drugs, despite the departure of backbone bassist Bill Wyman in the early ’90s, and despite the Keith-vs.-Mick feuds that have long dotted the landscape, time has remained improbably on the Rolling Stones’ side. Up until the moment of drummer Charlie Watts’s death, at 80, on Aug. 24, 2021, the band was not only still intact, it was still more or less doing what it had always done. Their 2016 album Blue & Lonesome, by way of example, is made up of covers of songs written by the same folks the Stones were covering 50-some years earlier—blues colossi like Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf.

And of the 19 songs that anchored that 2018 tour, 17 of them were Jagger/Richards numbers composed during the 1960s and early 1970s, soul-lifters off of one monumental album after another (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers . . .) Another song on the list was 1981’s “Start Me Up,” which, along with “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” hinges upon one of the Richards riffs that have burrowed unstoppably into auditory history. Keith, in 2018, was still out there on his Fender, after the sound. Mick remained glorious: preening and plaintive. Charlie Watts still drove the action, cool and swinging on his simple kit. And there was Ronnie Wood playing the tasty guitar. Ladies and gentlemen: the Rolling Stones.

They had aged by then, to be sure, and some fans grumbled about those U.K. shows. A ticket at 250 quid? Reviewers allowed that there were some imprecisions in the gigs, the occasional softened edge. Yet by and by the crowd and the critics could not help themselves. They’d been elevated. And they were acutely aware, as the old Stones ripped through the songs that will never die—“Sugar,” “Shelter,” “Sympathy”—that even now you could see and hear straight into their beating hearts. Straight into, yes, that’s right, wait for it, the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world.

LIFE’s special issue The Rolling Stones: Their Rock ‘N’ Roll Life is available online:

© Stefan M. Prager/Vanit.de/Retna Ltd.

The Rolling Stones performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1965.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Rolling Stones performed on The ‘Ed Sullivan Show, 1965; from left, From left, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, singer Mick Jagger, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts.

John Loengard/Life Pictures/Getty Images

The Rolling Stones, 1966

courtesy Art Kane Archive

The ‘Queen of Soul’ in ’90’s Fashion

August 18, 2021August 17, 2021 by Erin Livingston

Born in Memphis into a family of gospel, Aretha Franklin was destined for style. With a career over five decades long, the ‘Queen of Soul’ transcended the music industry. Franklin became an icon not just of soul itself, but of strength, women’s liberation, and the civil rights movement. She redefined the art of expression through song.

Over Franklin’s career she won seventeen Grammys, had twenty Number 1 R&B hits, and the largest number of Top 40 singles of any female performer. She also spread her music outside the studio through performing at a number of special events. This included Bill Clinton’s pre-inaugural celebration (1993), the Kennedy Center Honors (2015), and President Barack Obama’s inauguration (2018).

Aretha Franklin holds up her trophy in one hand, and her shoes in the other, as she poses at the 1983 Annual American Music Awards.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Perhaps most impressive is Franklin’s music resiliency. When her career hit a lull in the 1980s she switched record labels from Atlantic to Arista and began working with executive Clive Davis. Davis reminded her music was ‘timeless,’ and reassured her she could create new hits in her 40s and beyond. The new collaboration launched her back into stardom with her 1982 single, “Jump to It,” and the 1985 album, “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?.” Part of the album included her final Number 1 R&B single, “Freeway of Love,” which introduced her to the MTV generation. Shortly after she began a successful formula of collaborating with younger artists like Elton John and Whitney Houston.

Throughout Franklin’s remarkable moments she took to the stage, and numerous red carpet events, in equally radiant garments. From sequined sweet-heart gowns to lavish floor-length fur coats, her presence at an event was never overlooked. In celebration of the recent film release Respect starring Jennifer Hudson as Franklin, scroll through to see some of her most stylish moments leading up to, and through, the ’90’s.

Singer Aretha Franklin holding her award in one hand and her shoes in another at the 1983 American Music Awards.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Lionel Richie (R) and Aretha Franklin (L) at the 1983 American Music Awards.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York, 1989.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York, 1989.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York, 1989.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Singer Aretha Franklin and record executive Clive Davis at a party in New York, 1989.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Portrait of Aretha Franklin, 1989.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Singer Aretha Franklin and record executive Clive Davis at a party in New York, 1989.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin holding her Legend Award at 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin holding her Legend Award at 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin with her Legend Award at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the Night of 100 Stars, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin with record executive Clive Davis at the Night of 100 Stars, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin wearing a red lace dress while at an event with record executive Clive Davis, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin wearing a red lace dress, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin with a signed Harley-Davidson motorcycle at the New York Cafe opening, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the Harley-Davidson New York Cafe opening, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin walking with three dogs at a red carpet event, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin holding a dog, 1990.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Willie Wilkerson (left) and Aretha Franklin (center left) with record executive Clive Davis (center right), 1992.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin wearing a cheetah print jacket, 1992.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the Essence Awards, April, 1993.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin (L) and Lena Horne (R) at the Essence Awards, 1993.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the Essence Awards, April, 1993.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin (L) and Rod Stewart (L) rehearsing for a 1993 AIDS benefit concert.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin during rehearsal for a 1993 AIDS benefit concert.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin performing at a 1993 AIDS benefit concert.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at a 1993 AIDS benefit concert.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin (center left) with Rod Stewart (L) at a 1993 AIS benefit concert.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at an event, 1995.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Artists Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, and Aretha Franklin at an unidentified event, 1995.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin with Guns N’ Roses member, Slash, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opening, 1995.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin holding a camcorder at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opening, 1995.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Singers Aretha Franklin and Al Green performing at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 1995.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the opening of Trump tower, 1997.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the opening of Trump tower, 1997.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards in 1997.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards in 1997.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Aretha Franklin at the Musicares tribute dinner in New York, 1998.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

Singer Aretha Franklin performing at VH1 Divas Live, 1998.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

(L-R) Mariah Carey and Aretha Franklin VH1 Divas Live concert at the Beacon Theater, 1998.

(DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock)

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