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Complete limited edition set of 10 satin-finish photographs of the Rolling Stones taken by Philip Townsend on May 4, 1963, during the band’s first professional photo shoot. The oversized photos, each 43.25˝ x 43.25˝ and numbered 7/10 in a corner, are professionally printed on Ilford high-quality barite photo paper and show the young band – Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts – in various locations throughout London’s Chelsea district. Scenes included the group standing on Cheyne Walk, a disused wharf on the Thames, and in front of a row of five telephone booths at Marble Arch; lying on a concrete embankment by the Thames; posing on a bench in front of a Watney’s Pub; and sitting in the middle of Ifield Road with a ‘No Parking’ sign positioned behind them, the latter being the first photograph taken that day and, by extension, the first official photograph of the band proper. Rolled and in overall fine condition. Each photograph is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Townsend, who dates the images to “March 1963,” predating the generally accepted May 4, 1963 session. Image titles are as follows: ‘The Thames,’ ‘Thames Wall,’ ‘Outside Keith & Mick’s Flat,’ ‘Outside 113 Cheyne Walk,’ ‘Chelsea doesn’t look like this anymore,’ ‘Cheyne Walk, Chelsea,’ ‘The Australian Pub,’ ‘On the Thames,’ ‘Marble Arch,’ and ‘Chelsea Harbour.’
In early May 1963, the Rolling Stones took a defining step with their first official photo shoot in London’s Chelsea district, just weeks after bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts had joined to complete the band’s classic five-man lineup. The session was arranged through a chance encounter between photographer Philip Townsend and the group’s future manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Townsend later recalled meeting Oldham in a café in Monte Carlo, where he appeared ‘wearing riding breeches and holding a horsewhip,’ claiming he planned to hitchhike across France posing as a rider who had lost his horse. The eccentric introduction led to an unlikely friendship, and not long after, Oldham told Townsend he had discovered a band called the Rolling Stones and was determined to make them ‘the greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll band in the world.’ As Oldham began managing the group in April 1963, he enlisted Townsend to photograph them.
Tasked with presenting the band as the antithesis of the Beatles, Townsend encouraged them to wear their own clothes and wander the streets of Chelsea. The resulting images—casual, rumpled, and faintly defiant—struck Oldham as ‘disgusting,’ a reaction he embraced as ideal. As he later reflected, the photographs would ‘define them and divine them,’ establishing the group’s raw visual identity at the outset of their career. Townsend spent the day driving the five band members around London, photographing them in backstreets, along the Thames, and in everyday settings that reinforced their outsider stance.
A tabloid journalist-turned-freelance photographer, Townsend documented a wide cross-section of 1960s British life, from aristocrats and socialites to emerging figures in pop and rock. His instinct to include surroundings – streets, riverbanks, and passing details – produced images rich in atmosphere and period character. His early photographs of the Rolling Stones, taken when they were still unsigned and largely unknown, remain among the clearest visual records of the band at its beginning.
