How one photographer got access to 1960s rock royalty

It was June 1964, at the height of Beatlemania.

The English rock band was launching its first world tour — a pivotal moment in music history — and young photographer Bent Rej was there to capture the hysteria.

Rej started at the Copenhagen Airport in Denmark, where the band was welcomed by hundreds of teenage fans. He attended both of the band’s concerts that night at the K.B. Hallen arena. But one of his most memorable Beatles photos came after the shows, as the band was being rushed away from the arena to its hotel.

As the Fab Four entered a limousine — well, Fab Three as drummer Ringo Starr was out sick — Rej was waiting nearby.

He reached his camera through the window of the front door and snapped the shutter.

It was a bold move by the 24-year-old Dane, and the start of a brief but prolific stretch where he would go on to photograph many of the era’s most influential musicians.

For the next few years, Rej was able to get access to beloved artists — legends such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. He would photograph them both on stage and behind the scenes as they visited his country.

More than 200 of Rej’s photos, some of them rarely seen by the public, can be found in his new book, “Musik: The 1960s Photographs.” The coffee-table book, made in the dimensions of a record album, comes nearly 10 years after his death in 2016.

“Our father didn’t really talk much about that time,” said Ny Rej, one of his two daughters. “It was just him being at the right spot, at the right place, at the right time.”

After the Beatles concerts in Copenhagen, Bent signed a contract with the English magazine Fabulous to photograph British groups visiting Scandinavia.

His first major assignment was covering The Rolling Stones, who arrived in Copenhagen in April 1965. He was invited to an afterparty at their hotel, where they booked an entire floor.

“I did not take pictures during the nightly parties, and I think they noticed that,” the photographer says in the book. “It was just an unspoken agreement; it felt natural to put away the camera at some point. As a result, I gained their confidence — something that would prove useful on many later occasions.”

He became good friends with one of the band’s founding members, Brian Jones, and would later visit the individual band members at their homes for an exclusive portrait series.

Bent’s reputation began to grow in the industry, and it wasn’t long before stars and their managers began to seek him out.

“It was not always Bent who approached the musicians. Sometimes it was the other way around, as was the case with Tom Jones and also The Who,” his wife, Inge, recalls in the book. “The managers knew that he was a good photographer and contacted him with jobs.

“On the shoot for Tom Jones’ album cover, Bent went out and rented a white horse for him to pose on. Bent also had to go buy safety pins during the shoot because Tom busted the zipper of his pants. He became a friend, and we spent a lot of time with him when he was in Denmark. He was such a pleasant, unpretentious guy.”

Bent’s portfolio continued to grow as he photographed more iconic stars from that time: Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks.

“He was just as young as they were, and a little bit crazy, too, I think,” Ny Rej said of her father. “Maybe that functions well with rising young rock stars.”

Maybe it also helped that he wasn’t a big music fan, according to his daughter. He wasn’t intimidated by their celebrity status.

“To my dad, whether it’s someone from The Rolling Stones or a neighbor down the street, it’s the same thing to him. He was never starstruck,” Ny said.

For several years, Bent had a backstage pass at such a critical time in rock music.

He didn’t stay for long, though. By November 1966, just a couple of years after he photographed the Beatles, Bent turned to fashion and opened a shop in Copenhagen. His career in music photography would soon be finished.

“He says it stopped when he got a drink that was spiked with some LSD,” Ny said. “He was very much affected by that. This happened in London. He had two young girls, my sister and I, back home in Denmark. And maybe he got kind of a wake-up call to know that this was not for him. …

“I think he could have made a great career in that direction, but maybe it didn’t interest him. If he had been crazy about music, maybe he would have stayed with it.”

During the ’70s, Bent also bought a farm and got into breeding cattle, Ny said. He later got into the advertising business.

“He was a very good advertising photographer because he could make anything happen, almost no limits,” Ny said. “To him, everything was possible.”

His last photos of The Rolling Stones were taken in 1970, and he never returned to music photography outside of an album cover he shot for an old friend, Peter Belli, in 1980.

“It was not until many, many years later that some of his friends told him, you know, I think you have an archive that could be really substantial from that period of time. Why don’t you look into that as a business idea?” Ny said.

Bent died January 14, 2016, at the age of 75. His daughters, Ny and Mumle, have been carrying on their father’s legacy, exhibiting his work and sharing it with the world.

Ny remembers her father as a modest, hard-working man who didn’t like to talk about himself. Even late in life, he didn’t brag about his work or the time he spent with music royalty.

“Our children, almost grown at the time before he passed, also tried to talk to him about it. He never talked about it,” she said.

Fortunately for us, his pictures speak volumes.

Bent Rej’s book “Musik: The 1960s Photographs” was published by Chronicle Books and is available now.