Book unravels myths of Rolling Stones' Warsaw gigs
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
01.10.2012 13:43
A book celebrating two back-to-back Warsaw concerts in 1967 by UK band The Rolling Stones has been released in Poland.
Author Marcin Jacobson, himself a veteran of Poland's rock scene, says he has “managed to clarify many of the myths that have grown up around the famed concerts, such as the one that they got a wagon of vodka for the performance.”
The English band played Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science – the Socialist Realist giant that dominates the city's skyline – on 13 April 1967.
The first gig was at 5.30 pm, and the English rockers returned to the stage for a second crack of the whip at 8.30 pm.
Rock critics describe the concerts as having a seminal effect on Polish music, as evoked in the award-winning recent documentary Beats of Freedom.
Author Marcin Jacobson recalls that the concerts have been likened to “a UFO landing in the centre of the grey communist reality.”
Besides interviews with about thirty attendees of the concert, the glossy coffee table book includes over a hundred photographs from the gig, many of them never published before.
Marcin Jacobson was a co-organiser of the Jarocin rock Festival, a beacon of counter-culture in the eastern bloc, launched in 1980.
The Rolling Stones – Warsawa '67 has been published by Wroclaw-based imprint Wydawnictwo C2, and comes with an English summary. (nh)