Interview: Photographer of iconic Beatles photos prepares to sell them and move on











What would make a man who took a collection of iconic photos of The Beatles decide to sell all the negatives to them along with the copyright? Mike Mitchell will do just that on March 24 as his photos of the Fab Four at the Washington Coliseum go under the hammer at Omega Auctions in the UK. When asked in a phone interview why he's doing it, his answer was somewhat philosophical.
“There are many why's to the auction,” he said. “One 'why' is that it seems like the perfect time in my own life to hope for some infusion of major capital for all kinds of reason. But the principal one is to really dig into the work that needs to be put into the world not immediately because the process is going to take awhile. But it's a threshold. It's me creating a threshold in my life. It's not a public reason. It's a fairly internal reason.
“It's also wonderful to have the feeling that the work is no longer something that I have to be responsible for extending the influence of. That whoever buys this with the copyright, etc., can do with it what needs to be done with it. I've done as much as I can do with it.”
Omega is selling all 413 negatives, plus other high-resolution digital files and digitally restored images. Most of the images are previously unseen or unpublished. Prints from the collection were auctioned in 2011 by Christie's. Omega estimates the collection will sell for £250,000 ($354,052 USD) - £500,000 ($708,105 USD).
Will he miss them? “It's just like having a friend who dies. You're very grateful for the time you had with them and you realize they had other things to do. There's a sense of loss, but there's also a sense of turning a corner. And what have I lost? I haven't lost that I did them,” he said. “There's also a kind of a gratitude that I had that experience. And, you know, that was a profound experience in my personal life. It was a huge experience for me.”
Curiously, none of his pictures made it into Ron Howard's “Eight Days a Week: The Beatles Touring Years” movie. But he did.
“I am in the Washington concert (segment). I'm in there three or four times,” he said.

“There's a shot from up behind the stage looking down. And I'm just leaning on the front of the stage. Actually, I was taking in the music. But the interesting thing was how they colorized the footage which was initially black and white. It's funny too that they colorized my coat as gray when in fact my coast was camel hair. And that's no big deal. It's kind of amusing.”
The coat played a role in a later incident, he said. “At the end of the Washington concert, I got up on the stage and that's where I shot the picture of Ringo's drum set. You know I was an 18-year kid. And I didn't know squat. So I sidled over and I slid one of Ringo's drumsticks under my coat. I stole it.
"That was February. In the following September in Baltimore, I'm getting ready to shoot the concert. And I turn around and there's this monster guy standing there looking down at me." It was Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager.
"And he said, 'Don't even think about stealing another drumstick.' I had no idea that he knew that. But I figured it must have been that he saw it happen in the footage from the concert and he remembered the coat,” he said with a laugh. 
 Update: The Guardian reported the photos sold for £253,200 ($357,521 USD) at auction Saturday.