REELIN’ IN THE YEARS LAUNCHES FULLY-SEARCHABLE PHOTO SITE, SHOWCASING ITS EXPANDING ARCHIVE OF MUSIC-RELEATED STILL IMAGES
Reelin’ In The Years Productions, one of the world’s leading footage licensing companies, announced today the launch of a new website dedicated to their growing collection of music-related photographs, photos.reelinintheyears.com, featuring a fully searchable database. Known for their deep archive of music and entertainment footage, Reelin’ in the Years began offering still photos last year. The Reelin’ in the Years Photo Archive now includes over 200,000 images from the 1930s to today, featuring unique photos of artists ranging from Elvis to the Sex Pistols, the Beatles to Beyonce, Muddy Waters to Bob Marley, and everything in between.
RITY’s new online photo database currently contains 25,000 images, which are all fully metatagged, mining all available detail, including date, location and venue, with more photos added daily from their vast photo collection.
The RITY Photo Archive includes the work of many legendary photographers, such as Michael Zagaris, Janet Macoska, Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal, Patrick Harbron, Richard E. Aaron, Eric Hayes, Robert Alford and Eddie Wolfl, as well some truly remarkable private archives, all of which contain both and iconic and unseen images of musical artists spanning the last ninety years. In addition to the well-known photographers, RITY has sought out lesser-known artists who also took powerful images that capture unique moments from music history. RITY is also proud to represent the photo archives of legendary rock artists such as The Doors & Janis Joplin.
“Our mission is to focus exclusively on images of music artists, ranging from Nashville in the fifties to Motown in the sixties to the London punk scene in the seventies and beyond,” said David Peck, president of RITY. “We’re also proud that in addition to offering iconic images, a large part of our archive has not been seen before and isn’t the same photos that tend to be used over and over again.”
RITY’s new photo site offers an array of essential search tools, allowing users to look up images by both date and venue. For example, users can search for “David Bowie 1978” or “David Bowie Madison Square Garden 1978.” Employing the advanced search filter, users see everything available for an artist during a specific date range, or all photos for specific year. To receive lo-res watermarked images, users can fill out a simple online form and the photos will be sent. Since the site has just been launched, and over a hundred thousand images are yet to be watermarked and uploaded, users are encouraged to contact RITY directly to find additional images.
For over 20 years, the RITY team’s love of music and entertainment footage has been the cornerstone of their archival work. Their passion and focus have made RITY a go-to source for footage licensing, and they are bringing the same energy and dedication to their evolving still image business.
As Tom Gundlefunger O’Neal, who in 1969 took the cover shot for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s iconic album “Déjà vu”, put it, “When it came to my photos, David Peck was tenacious and one of the best sleuths I've seen in identifying dates and locations of where my photos were taken. I honestly have never seen anyone like him before. His attention to detail is insane and because of this, my photo archive is catalogued in a way I could never have dreamed of.”
Along with their moving image archive of 30,000 hours of music footage spanning 90 years, The Reelin’ In The Years Footage & Photo archive is now a one-stop shop for moving & still images of music’s greatest artists.
If you are a photographer who has taken images of musical artists and you would like a place where your work is honored and appreciated, please contact RITY to discuss possible representation.
The Reelin’ in the Years Photo Archive site can be accessed directly at www.photos.reelinintheyears.com, or through RITY’s main site, reelinintheyears.com
RITY SIGNS EXCLUSIVE DEAL WITH SEMINAL ROCK BAND THE DOORS
February 18, 2020—
Reelin’ In The Years Productions (RITY), the world’s largest archive of music footage has signed a deal with legendary rock band The Doors to represent their unique footage and photo archive for licensing.
Jeff Jampol, manager of The Doors and other legacy artists such as Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and Ramones approached RITY on the band’s behalf and asked them if they’d like to handle the archive.
"The Doors chose David Peck and Reelin’ in the Years to represent The Doors archive for two reasons. First, they have a stellar reputation in the footage licensing business, especially in the area of music and entertainment footage. Second, they seemed up to the challenge of sorting out our archival collection and getting it ready for market. They did not disappoint us in either area, somewhat miraculously, if the truth be told."
Both Jim Morrison & Ray Manzarek were film students at UCLA and their passion in the visual medium was used throughout The Doors career. In March 1968, Paul Ferrara, a friend of the band, began filming the group on 16mm and capturing snippets of the band in concert, backstage, in the studio, on vacation and in airports. A month later they brought in Babe Hill to capture audio on reel-to-reel tape. The most iconic moments of filming were when they captured The Doors at the Hollywood Bowl on July 5, 1968. The filming continued through September 1968 and subsequently was edited into a film called “Feast Of Friends” and only a small portion of the film footage that was shot has ever seen the light of day.
The Doors in Central Park, NYC. 1968
In 2008 The Doors had all of the existing 16mm film elements transferred to Hi-Def. The film lab made a critical mistake prior to transferring the footage, each original film reel had contained the information as to the date and location where The Doors were filmed but in order for an easier transfer the facility spooled the original film reels (in no particular order) onto larger reels, which caused all the pertinent date & location info to be lost.
Jeff Jampol continues the story:
“The archive required a massive effort in historical sleuthing to catalog and prepare for licensing — a project that Peck and his team took to with zeal. We essentially gave RITY 50 hours of footage on a hard drive and told them to “figure it out” and, almost unbelievably, they did. The first thing they did was find out all of the dates that The Doors played on that tour, and which shows were filmed.
“RITY then had to figure out the rest, using whatever visual clues were available in the footage itself, including, so I am told, street signs and local advertising to identify particular cities, and even the tiles on the floor and ceiling at LAX to decipher what airport they were in. Their dedication to historical accuracy was maybe a bit insane, but that kind of authenticity and accuracy is what we require. And the results so far have been extremely impressive. As a result of their tenacity, for the first time in 52 years our archive is cataloged and ready for use by producers. In addition to all the amazing footage of The Doors that Reelin’ In The Years catalogued, Peck called me up to tell me he discovered amongst the raw 1968 “Feast Of Friends” film footage, eight minutes of Howlin’ Wolf playing in a small club in Chicago. I had no idea why that would be in our archive so I called Robby Krieger (The Doors’ guitarist), who told me that he remembered it being shot by Jim Morrison! Clips from our archive will appear in the upcoming Laurel Canyon documentary, which will be released in 2020.”
David Peck, president of Reelin’ In The Years Productions, said, “We are honored to represent the footage of The Doors as well as their photo archive and to continue sharing the legacy of this significant band whose music, even nearly 50 years after their heyday, still inspires and entertains new generations of fans.”
Jampol stated, “We are more convinced than ever that RITY is the right home for this irreplaceable collection, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.”
In addition to the many hours of unique footage, The Doors archive also contains over 2,000 photographs showing the group from 1966 before they were signed through the recording of the last album to feature Jim Morrison in 1971. This archive is a treasure trove of both moving and still images of one of the most influential bands in the history of Rock & Roll and it is now available for licensing through Reelin’ In The Years Productions.
Of course, all this is in addition to the 30,000 hours of music and 8,000 hours of interviews in our footage archive.
RITY SIGNS LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER TOM GUNDELFINGER O’NEAL
Posted on February 18, 2020.
We are pleased to announce that we have signed a deal with legendary photographer Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal to exclusively represent the photos and home movies he shot of the icons of pop music during his illustrious career.
Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal began his career as a rock and roll photographer in 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival. There he was able to capture candid backstage moments of many of the artists as well as some of the electrifying performances. Based on the positive feedback from those early photos, Tom moved to Los Angeles and was hired immediately by the manager of the Byrds and began taking remarkable images of the band right before David Crosby was fired from the group and through the short-lived return of Gene Clark.
Over the next eight years Tom photographed and built friendships with many of the artists that performed at Monterey. Tom’s photos appeared on numerous album covers such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Deja Vu and Four Way Street, Steppenwolf’s debut album, as well as covers for Neil Young, BB King, John Phillips, Mama Cass, Spanky and Our Gang, Poco, Crazy Horse and Jim Croce.
Tom’s work was in such high demand that he was hired by other major artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Cream & The Monkees and his work is so highly respected that an image of Joni Mitchell from 1969 and an outtake of the photo session for CSN&Ys Deju Vu album cover are hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.
When asked why he chose Reelin In The Years to represent his work Tom replied,
”For years I had been looking for representation of my music photography. Almost immediately after I signed with Reelin’ In The Years, David Peck started sending examples of my work to various projects in production. While photography is my specialty, back in the late 1960s I would sometimes bring my super 8mm camera and shoot footage as well as photos. I remember being at Peter Tork’s house on August 7th, 1969 as I was there to capture images of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as they were rehearsing for their upcoming appearance at Woodstock. On this date I not only took many photos but captured extraordinary footage of Joni Mitchell painting outside as well as CSN&Y in the pool and later rehearsing in the studio. The super 8 footage I shot had been sitting in a box for fifty years and I had never shown it to anyone. Were it not for David Peck’s persistence to get the material properly transferred, the footage would’ve remained unseen. As soon as David saw what I had filmed he called to tell me that he’d “lost his mind” and he then immediately contacted the producers of an upcoming documentary about Laurel Canyon and even though they told him the film was officially finished he insisted they see the footage and as a direct result they fell in love with it and licensed some of it for the film. A few weeks later I had my first check from Reelin’ In The Years.
The Rolling Stones at the San Diego Sports Arena -June 13, 1972
it came to my photos, David was tenacious and one of the best sleuths I’ve seen in identifying dates and locations of where these photos were taken. I honestly have never seen anyone like him before. His attention to detail is insane and because of this my archive is catalogued in a way I could never have dreamed of. David created a very unique cloud-driven database of my work which is private but yet so easy to use. When I saw a friend recently in a supermarket he asked about seeing some of my photos of the Monkees. I pulled out my phone and “voila”, there we were in the produce aisle looking at photos of Davy Jones in a cowboy outfit on the Columbia movie lot taken over 50 years ago.
Now that’s cool. Thank you, David – You Rock!”
Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal’s photos along with the hundreds of thousands of other images from all of the other photographers and collections we represent are available for licensing. Of course, all this is in addition to the 30,000 hours of music and 8,000 hours of interviews in our footage archive.