It was thirty years ago today

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 Thirty years later, 5,000 negatives of Spencer's Beatles photographs - virtually all of them unpublished - resurfaced and were sold at auction by Sotheby's of London.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.