Reelin' In The Years Productions Now Exclusively Representing WDR's Vast Music Footage Holdings

Aretha Franklin performing in germany in 1968

Reelin’ In The Years Productions, the world’s premier footage source for musical artists and entertainers, has entered into an exclusive, multi-year representation deal with WDR mediagroup GmbH, the group responsible for the commercial activities of WDR, one of Germany’s largest and most prestigious broadcasters, to license WDR’s vast archive of music-related footage. The deal, which was announced today, includes all of the music-related footage produced by WDR between 1960 and today, much of which has not been seen since the time of the original broadcast. Reelin’ In The Years Productions is honored to make this archive available for licensing to all forms of media.

WDR’s music footage archive spans six decades, and includes over 2,000 concerts, numerous variety shows containing appearances by legendary artists and one-off specials, amounting to a cache of over 30,000 individual performances. Click here for a 12-minute demo of highlights from the WDR archive.

“We look forward to working with the very experienced Reelin’ In The Years Productions,” says Michael Loeb, CEO of WDR mediagroup GmbH. “They know how to bring high-quality music footage forward to new audiences.”

We had a chance to speak with David Peck, founder and president of Reelin In The Years Productions, about the deal, the incredible footage in the WDR archive and what it means for RITY and their global client base.

Footage.net: This seems like an amazing archive of musical performances. Can you tell us more about what’s in the collection?

David Peck: WDR’s most iconic music TV program is the concert series Rockpalast. The series debuted in 1974, and continues to this day. Since its inception, well over 2,000 complete concerts have been broadcasted. When you look at the range of artists that WDR has filmed for this series, it truly is staggering. To date, thousands of legendary artists have appeared on the show performing full length concerts, including such diverse artists as Bob Marley (1980), Metallica (1997), Lynryd Skynryd (1974), Beastie Boys (1998), Coldplay (2011), Rick James (1982), Tom Waits (1977), Stevie Ray Vaughan (1984), The Grateful Dead (1981), Peter Gabriel (1978), Foo Fighters (1997), The Smiths (1984), Radiohead (2001), Linda Ronstadt (1976) and The Police (1980). Generally, the concerts seem to be around 70-90 minutes in length but sometimes they can run 2-hours long.

FN: What is most exciting to you about this deal?

DP: My company has been representing TV stations around the globe since 1998 and we are blessed to be entrusted with so many amazing and rich archives of music footage content such as INA in France, ITV in England, SVT in Sweden, ABC Australia & ZDF in Germany. I knew that WDR had Rockpalast but I had no idea of how many concerts were filmed or the unique and unseen material they had from the 1960s that had virtually never been licensed before. The other thing that is very significant about this WDR deal is that we also have the rights to license whole programs for streaming and other forms of media.  

FN: Is this a worldwide deal?

DP: My deal is worldwide and we can license for all rights/all media. The only thing we can’t do is license directly to a German based production company but as long as the company itself is not based in Germany then we can license for broadcast within the German territory.

FN: Are you doing the cataloging?

DP: None of the material sent by WDR has been logged. To date we’ve already fully catalogued over 300 concerts from Rockpalast along with many of the other music programs they’ve sent me. We are very detailed about making sure the song titles are correct and besides our knowledge of music history we use many tools at our disposal to figure out the exact song titles.

FN: How much has been digitized?

DP: To WDR’s credit everything I’ve asked for I’ve received. It would seem that they have most of their music archive digitized. 

FN: What blew your mind in the collection?

DP: Where do I start? Perhaps the most amazing item (and there are so many) is footage we found of Bob Dylan from 1969 at The Isle of Wight Festival (which took place on an island located in the English Channel).  In 1966, Bob Dylan was involved in a very serious motorcycle accident and for a number of years he did not perform. On August 31, 1969, he did his first major concert at the Isle of Wight Festival backed by The Band. It was such a big deal that John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and other rock luminaries from England flew down to this show. Now, you would think an event this significant would have been properly documented, but sadly there is very little professional footage of Dylan’s set. There’s a short news clip of “The Mighty Quinn” and other professionally filmed news footage of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but most everything that is known to exist was shot on 8mm (silent) film and by fans with open reel video recorders. Imagine my shock when looking thru WDR news footage I discovered 2 minutes of Bob Dylan beautifully shot on 16mm film and right in front of the stage! In this two-minute clip (with sound from the board) you see him perform “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Rainy Day Women” and “Like A Rolling Stone.” To be 100% sure I had found something unique, I checked with some close friends who are the authorities on all things Bob and none of them had ever seen or heard of this footage. My next call was to Jeff Rosen who has worked with Bob Dylan for 45 years as the producer for every Bob Dylan archival release on CD as well as directing and producing quite a number of films concerning Bob Dylan. I figured if anyone would know if this was a unique find it would be Jeff. Neither he, Dylan’s archivist or the head of The Bob Dylan center in Tulsa had any idea this footage existed and to say they were blown away by my discovery would be an understatement. 

If this was the only unique footage I’d found I would have been satisfied, but that was just the tip of the archival iceberg. In May of 1968, on Aretha Franklin’s first tour of Europe, WDR filmed her in a TV studio performing an intimate set for nearly an hour. On that same tour there’s also a great concert filmed by SVT (that we also represent) which has been licensed many times in the past and it’s great that there’s now two concerts from that era that we can offer for licensing. Aretha did not tour Europe a whole lot due to her fear of flying so to have these visual documents are a gift to history and the community of filmmakers. 

Another discovery is a 45-minute set of B.B. King taped in January 1968 during his first tour of Europe. To the best of my knowledge there is only one piece of footage in existence that predates this performance.

What’s great about WDR’s archive is that it’s so incredibly diverse and covers so many genres of music. One truly unique moment is when the Jazz great John Coltrane was touring Europe with Miles Davis’s Band in 1960 and they were booked to do a TV taping, and at the last minute Miles bailed and John Coltrane stepped in to lead the band. This footage is the first visual document of John Coltrane as a band leader and he is backed by other Jazz legends Oscar Peterson and Stan Getz!

Many times when looking through an archive you’ll find something that is not owned by the archive where the footage resides and while digging deep I stumbled across jaw dropping footage that was aired on WDR but not controlled by them. There was a Dutch filmmaker named Wim van der Linden who from 1969-1971 went on location and filmed a number of amazing moments in music history and we were able to track down his daughter (he sadly passed over 20 years ago). We since signed an exclusive deal with her. Wim shot everything on 16mm film and many of them still exist in that format and last month we transferred the films he had in his vault to Hi-def (2k) and they look stunning!

Here’s a few of the amazing moments he captured on film:

A 30-minute set of Sly & The Family Stone shot in color at London’s Lyceum on September 16, 1970. There is not much professionally shot concert footage of this group during their original (and frankly best) line-up so this was a very special find. 

Rod Stewart & The Faces shot in color at the Marquee Club on December 7, 1970. This half hour show is unique because both The Faces and Rod Stewart only had one album out at this point and Rod Stewart had not yet become a superstar as that would not happen for another seven months when “Maggie May” was released.

In April 1970 Wim filmed Santana, Johnny Winter & Taj Mahal at the Royal Albert Hall.

One of the more unique items Wim shot was in early 1971 when he went to Neil Young’s ranch in Canada during the time he was recording and writing songs for what would become “Harvest.” This footage has been bootlegged to death but is so very historically important and we are very happy to have that important moment is music history in our archive. 

FN: In addition to performance footage, what else is there?

DP: There’s a lot of very unique news footage that seems to be primarily from the mid-60s to early 1970s. Being a proud music geek, which has always driven me and thus my business, I love looking at footage and seeing how it overlaps with other events of the time. A perfect example is news footage I found in WDR’s archive from July 5, 1969. This is an important day in rock history as this was the day The Rolling Stones gave their first concert with their new guitarist, Mick Taylor. It was also the day they paid tribute to their former guitarist Brian Jones, who died two days earlier.  The Stones concert took place in the afternoon at London’s Hyde Park and later that day The Who were booked to play two shows at the Royal Albert Hall (literally across the street) where they would be playing “Tommy” for the first time at a major London venue. In viewing this footage, the first thing I noticed was Keith Richards arriving at the venue. It’s amazing to realize how close-knit the music scene in London was at the time, that Keith could play a massive gig and then go across the street to see The Who play “Tommy.” Then, about 10 seconds later in the footage, you see Paul & Linda McCartney walking up and waving to the camera. To find any footage of Paul at this point in The Beatles career is not a common occurrence. The news camera did capture some of The Who onstage, but sadly, the footage is silent, but still very unique! 

FN: Does this collection fill in any particular gaps in your archive?

DP: Our archive is very unique as it contains jazz of the 1920s all the way through to the music of today. Because we represent many European TV stations, they are still producing new music programming so we automatically wind up repping that footage as well. 

FN: Any last bits we should know about?

DP: WDR also produced a number of variety shows in the 1980s & 1990s featuring many major artists such as Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Eurythmics, Sheryl Crow, The Kinks, Tina Turner, Elton John, Cyndi Lauper, Foreigner, Yes, Rod Stewart, Whitney Houston & George Michael.

WDR filmed an array of Jazz festivals in the late 1960s and early 1970s featuring concerts by renowned artists such as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins and Dave Brubeck.

FN: Well, it all sounds amazing and we wish you the best with the new collection.

DP: Thanks, it is really exciting and we can’t wait to get the word out and to make this footage available to production professionals around the world.