Mick's unreleased album

As these previously unseen pictures of Mick Jagger prove - if it were necessary - he really was the excessive, bad boy of rock.

Thirty years on, he has celebrated his 60th birthday and assumed an altogether more respectable persona.

This month an exhibition, opening as the Rolling Stones are back performing in the UK, serves as a timely reminder of just how inspirationally crazed they were in their sneering Seventies prime.

Photographer Christopher Simon Sykes has released his own photojournal of the band's three-month, 44-gig tour of the Americas from 1975 for the show, entitled The Rolling Stones: An Unseen Diary.

These pictures - seen only by the Stones and their personal circle of friends - reveal the backstage boozing and bickering of the tour. Sykes, a longtime friend and chronicler of the Stones' wildest excesses, said: "Life on tour is not unlike life in a royal court - with all its consequent power struggles, petty jealousies and jostling for position."

Louise Garczewska, director of the Gettyimages Gallery, was the driving force behind the exhibition.

She said: "There are some very personal and private shots, as well as the zappy on-stage images."

An Unseen Diary opens on Saturday 30 August at the Gettyimages Gallery on Jubilee Place, Chelsea. It runs until 25 October.