The Beat at the BBC: A Timeless Collection from Birmingham's Beat

October 17, 2025

The Beat at the BBC: A Timeless Collection from Birmingham's Beat

The Beat at the BBC – Rhino Records 2025 Vinyl Release Showcases The English Beat’s Classic BBC Sessions with Iconic Peter Donnelly Birmingham Photography and Timeless Ska Revival Energy

Chuffed seeing this recently..... with Rhino Entertainment, a record label known for reissuing classic music, my dads shot chosen for the "The Beat At The BBC" album artwork, a upcoming special vinyl only release.

Rhino Records is set to release The Beat at the BBC, a stunning new 2×LP clear vinyl compilation capturing the raw energy and infectious rhythms of The (English) Beat’s BBC radio sessions from 1979–1982. Issued as part of Record Store Day Black Friday 2025, this limited edition features twenty live-in-studio performances recorded for iconic BBC programs including The John Peel Show and Kid Jensen.

About the Album

The collection showcases many of The Beat’s best-loved songs, including Mirror in the Bathroom, Save It for Later, and Ranking Full Stop, performed with the vibrant immediacy that made their ska-infused sound such a defining force in early ’80s Britain. The BBC sessions capture the band’s chemistry at its peak—tight, dynamic, and politically charged.

Cover Photography by Peter Donnelly

The cover image, a haunting street scene from Birmingham, 1962, was shot by photographer Peter Donnelly. Known for his evocative depictions of industrial England, Donnelly’s work resonates with The Beat’s own roots in the city’s working-class landscape. The photograph’s misty atmosphere and urban melancholy perfectly complement the music’s raw spirit and social commentary.

Release Details

Label: Rhino Records

Format: 2×LP Clear Vinyl (Limited to 4,000 copies)

Release Date: November 28, 2025 (Record Store Day Black Friday)

Includes: Fold-out insert with detailed liner notes and session information

Comments

The Telegraph

Peter Donnelly's prize-winning essay offers a brilliant example of how local, and often unprepossessing, backgrounds can provide the material for an outstanding colour story. All his photographs were taken within a few miles of his home in Birmingham, Brierley Hill, at Blackheath, Bilston and Cradley Heath. He took them over a period of several months while on weekend walks along the deserted banks of the local canals. "Most evenings I never met a soul," Mr Donnelly recalls. "There was an air of isolation, and often desolation, over the whole scene, and this is what I have tried to capture in my photographs." The camera used was a Pentakon F and the film Agfa and Kodachrome.

by Dr Carl Chinn MBE

Peter Donnelly was born in Birmingham, educated at Corpus Christi junior school, Stechford and later at the holy rosary, Saltley. While at the Holy Rosary he took and passed a drawing examination for Moseley school of art at which he spent several years tuning his artistic talent.

On leaving the art school he joined Birmingham printers, Sam Currier & Son in brook street, St Pauls square, as an apprentice commercial artist. After completing his apprenticeship he left Sam Currier and worked at various printers and advertising agencies gaining valuable experience before starting with his working associate Bob Burns (typographer). Donnelly Burns Graphic Design studio was in Chapel Street, Lye before moving to larger premises in Cradley heath then Harborne.

Before starting the business Peter entered and won the Sunday Telegraph national photographic competition. He submitted an essay of photographs illustrating the demise of the Birmingham and Black Country canals with fellow photographer Norman Fletcher. To Peter and Norman, Midlands photographers and photographic societies seemingly had ignored the once great industrial arena that surrounded their everyday lives.

What an arena! what powerful exiting subjects for the camera; neglected canals, weed and web woven towpaths, old worn out narrow boats – redundant and half submerged in silted murky brown waters; steam trains rattling, hissing and bumping their waggons into line and the rail men who worked the line at that time.

Old foundries, run down factories and scrapyards – the industrial flotsam of a once great manufacturing region. Many six o’clock early morning starts were walked and many miles covered by Peter and his camera.

Now over 60 years later, photographs taken during those early excursions are being published - looking back at the time, long before the surge of change and reconstruction 1962 - 1965