Barcelona is marking 50 years since the Rolling Stones played their first concert in Catalonia, at La Monumental bullring on 11 June 1976. The show came just seven months after the death of General Franco, and for many in Catalonia it came to symbolise a moment of opening and change.
That anniversary is being revisited in a new book by Jordi Novell, project manager at Enderrock magazine. Enderrock is one of Catalonia’s best-known music outlets, and Novell’s book, Black & Cat / The Rolling Stones a Barcelona 1976, looks at the concert itself and its wider social impact. He presented it at La Conxita bookstore in Sants on Tuesday.
The book takes its title from the band’s Black & Blue album, which they presented in Barcelona. It includes anecdotes and a sociological reading of the visit by the British band, which had a strong counterculture pull at the time. The concert was also controversial, with police, known as “los grises”, and the post-Franco governor harassing attendees before the show. Smoke bombs were used against concert-goers, and promoter Gay Mercader described the experience as a “calvary”. Tickets cost 900 pesetas, a large sum then.
Photographer Francesc Fàbregas also features in the story. He photographed the Rolling Stones on stage, and at Barcelona airport the day before, including an image of Mick Jagger passing through customs alone, watched by a Civil Guard officer. Fàbregas said his access to major music events began through an unlikely route, his father’s butcher shop at Barcelona’s Mercat de Galvany. A customer there was the mother-in-law of journalist and critic Àngel Casas, who later reviewed Fàbregas’s photos and gave him his first assignment, shooting a Jethro Tull concert.
Fàbregas went on to work for magazines including Vibraciones, Rock Espezial and Rockdelux, and he photographed many artists’ first Barcelona shows, including Bruce Springsteen in 1981. He used an analogue Rolleiflex camera, and said the work carried real craft because each film roll held 36 photographs. For the Stones concert, he estimates he used four rolls, or 144 images. He said he misses the uncertainty of analogue photography, and the darkroom process that came with it.
His later work took him to TV3, where he helped create programmes such as Sputnik, Silenci?, Loops and Òpera en texans. He still feels the pull of concert photography, whether shooting from the pit or from further back in the crowd. For more Barcelona music coverage, see our Sport and Community pages.
Originally published by VilaWeb Feed. Read original article.
