Today I am taking a diversion from interiors to tell you about my day out in London yesterday at the Rolling Stones exhibition at the Saatchi gallery.  I felt this was an exhibition that I had to get tickets for, as I was disappointed when I missed out on the David Bowie exhibition a few years ago.

The Saatchi gallery I think is a beautiful building in a lovely setting near Sloane Square and is Grade II listed and was originally built in 1801 as the Military Asylum for children of soldiers of the regular army.  Around 2005 the plan was for it to be turned into offices, but the Saatchi gallery was on the lookout for new premises and after 2/3 years of redesign to make the interior suitable for gallery use, the Saatchi gallery re-opened in October 2008. I love the mellowness of the yellow bricks, the strong columns and portico to the front.  Internally as a contrast, all is white and minimal – a perfect backdrop for showing off all the art to full effect.

I can’t pretend that this is an in-depth look at the exhibition by any means, but merely just an overview and my opinion.  As the exhibition started only a couple of weeks ago there were long queues to get in as it was a Saturday after all, but once we entered we were propelled into the world according to the Rolling Stones.  The exhibition is broken up into 9 zones – immediately you become immersed in a multi-screen visual and auditory feast – the first zone gives you a taste of how their popularity rose by way of records and albums sold through the decades to how they began gigging across the UK in the early days before gathering pace to sold out world-wide tours.

The next zone gives an insight into how the band members lived together in the early years with an actual mock-up of the flat they all shared – with ripped wallpaper and curtains – they were more concerned with perfecting their craft rather than washing the dishes.

The exhibition follows through to memorabilia from their early days of touring – concert posters, tickets and photographs.  From here you follow through to view numerous guitars and a mock recording studio – all the time with snippets of music in the background and voice recordings.  Upstairs the rooms contain art and design work for their album covers, song lyrics, videos and films made, stage sets, fashion and costume, collaborations and finally in the back stage area we were all given 3-D glasses as we went through to watch the finale with an interactive performance.

I find I do not want to describe in too much detail as I do not want to give too much away for anyone wishing to go but suffice to say I thought this was a fantastic exhibition – although costing more than the average exhibition I have been to, I feel the price was justified as it was on a much bigger scale and with the large multi-screens it took the experience to a different level.  It concentrates on the band itself and their rise to fame; how they crafted their songs and live shows, rather than the lives of the individuals and the sensational media headlines.  It was well thought out, comprehensive, all the important aspects of the group’s history had been shown.  I think I just love absorbing popular culture from the 1960s onwards – as I was born in the sixties, but as a child growing up was really unaware at that time of the cultural shift that was taking place.

Over the decades the Rolling Stones have given us all some of the greatest songs and it has got me thinking about my favourites.  I find it impossible to choose just one but my top 5 goes like this: ‘You can’t always get what you want’, ‘Gimme shelter’, ‘wild horses’, ‘fool to cry’ and ‘miss you’.   Unfortunately I have never seen them in concert but after watching their Glastonbury 2013 performance on TV it is definitely on my ‘to do’ list!

Finally, if like me you are  a huge music fan I would recommend this exhibition – the sights and sounds evoke so many memories of a group that is embedded into our popular culture

Images via Google images