Amalie R. Rothschild, photographer at Fillmore East, recalls brief but legendary run

 Via Fox 5 New York

June 24, 2021

Photographer at Fillmore East recalls brief but legendary run

NEW YORK - Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the last shows performed at the legendary Fillmore East music hall where the likes of The Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys once played. 

The Fillmore is now a bank but its heyday- as a prime music venue- is remembered by resident photographer Amalie Rothschild.

I was a fly on the wall," said Rothschild. "I really didn’t want to be hit on. I wasn’t looking to hook up and my cameras were shields. I was serious. I was an artist. A photographer. I didn’t have the kind of confidence as a young woman yet, but I had the right mentality."

During its’ brief but legendary three-year run from 1968 – 1971, the roughly 2,600 seat Fillmore East in the East Village played host to a who’s who of legendary performers. Elton John, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Who, and the Allman Brothers just to name a few. 

Rothschild was, in essence, the venue’s house photographer.

"When the Fillmore opened. The tickets were $3, $4 and $5. And when they closed it was $3.50, $4.50 and $5.50, said Rothschild.

Tickets to similar see bands with similar star power today would cost $500.

"And the first tickets to sell out were the last four rows in the balcony, in the top of the balcony," added Rothschild.

Rothschild, who has enjoyed a long successful career as a photographer and filmmaker, captured some of her most famous photos during a Thanksgiving Day Rolling Stones Show in 1969 at Madison Square Garden. Ike and Tina Turner opened and Janis Joplin made an unexpected cameo onstage.

Amalie R. Rothschild

Janis and Tina, Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969

"Before they went on, Janis was just standing at the side of the stage with a few friends and right as I pulled the shutter I saw someone walk into the frame and when I developed the film and developed the contact sheet, I went ‘oh" because the person who walked in was Jimi Hendrix," said Rothschild.

Historical in more ways than one. Once bands like the Rolling Stones made their leap to arenas, making more money playing fewer shows to bigger audiences, the days of smaller theaters like the Fillmore were numbered.

In April of 1971, promoter Bill Graham announced he was shutting the venue.

"No one had any clue. It was a terrible shock for the staff to take in. He could’ve kept it going for a few more years but it wouldn’t be the same," said Rothschild.

The final show was a sendoff for the ages. A June 27 1971 all-night show headlined by the house favorites, the Allman Brothers.

"As you know no one wanted it to end.. and one of my favorite pictures of the Beach Boys is that I was able to catch all of them onstage with Bill Graham behind a speaker column watching them onstage.... it went until dawn and we walked out and the sun was out and everybody was crying and we went to Ratner’s for breakfast and it was a real tear-jerker and real difficult.'

DON HUNSTEIN 1928 - 2017

Don Hunstein: Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, New York, 1963

Don Hunstein died at home on Saturday morning, March 18, aged 88, after a long illness .

New York Times Obituary: Don Hunstein, Who Photographed Great Musicians, Dies at 88

Lebrecht Music&Arts have put out an obituary.

“I have photographed the famous and the not so famous: business execs and athletes and especially musicians – jazz, classical and pop. The resulting pictures have appeared on over 200 LP and CD covers and on promotional flyers and press kits, in magazines and company reports and advertising.”

--Don Hunstein

Don Hunstein’s iconic photographs have become symbols of an era. In the history of music photography, Don’s work during his 30 years at Columbia records is unsurpassed in its scope and breadth. Through his subtle humor and quiet nature, he was able to record many great moments in music history. He photographed the famous and the not so famous. Hundreds of album covers and behind the scenes work. His photographs documented a rare time when musicians spent time on their art, rather than their publicity.

Don Hunstein grew up in St. Louis, MO and attended Washington University, graduating in 1950 with a degree in English. After college he enlisted in the US Air Force and was stationed in Fairford, England, and assigned a desk job. It was this assignment that allowed him to travel around Europe. He began photographing casually, taking pictures to send home to his family, and then with the help of a Leica M3 purchased in the PX, and inspired by a book of renowned street photographer Henri Cartier Bresson’s work, his hobby began to take him on a lifelong path. After a year in Fairford, Don was transferred to a base outside of London.  There he joined a local camera club and took evening classes at London’s Central School of Art and Design, becoming influenced by the artists and designers whom he met there.

He returned to the States in 1954, ending up in New York City, where he eventually landed an apprenticeship in a commercial photography studio. There he honed his photography skills by mastering large format cameras and lighting.  At the time, photography was, as Don put it: “ not a glamorous profession,” but he didn’t have a pull in any other vocational direction and it satisfied his creative side. As chance connections were made, he soon met and became mentored by Deborah Ishlon, who worked in the publicity department at Columbia Records. She offered him a job helping her run the photo library there and supplying prints to the press. As he began to take his own photos for the company, they recognized his talent, and he gradually worked his way into the position of Director of Photography for CBS Records

Don’s most notable role was as chief staff photographer for Columbia Records during its heyday in the realms of rock and roll, jazz and classical music. Fortunately for Don, this was a time when the company was under the direction of Goddard Lieberson, who thought it important to document in photographs the cultural history of the music of their time. So he had the opportunity to do far more than album covers and publicity shots, covering their recording sessions and even visiting them on their home turf.   Don had the ability to listen with his camera. Instinctively he understood that to capture artists at their best moments, patience, trust and humility were needed.  This ability to set both new comers and experienced stars at ease in his presence is evident in his photographs, which captured the intimate personal moments as well as the quintessential portraits.

Don’s access to a broad range of musicians, in a wide variety of musical styles, was unparalleled in the photographic world. Over the course of his career at CBS, he shot hundreds of album covers and documented the recording of many of the great albums in music history.

We were tremendously fortunate to have known Don for many years, and send our condolences to DeeAnn and  his family

“Anything was fodder for the camera with Bill Eppridge”

©Bill Eppridge: Beatles Press Conference, 1964

Bill Eppridge shot 90 rolls of film while traveling with the Beatles in February 1964. Life Magazine published four photos

Ken Dixon: Gazing at history through a long lens
The Connecticut Post
February 13, 2016


Lets all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born …”
John Lennon, Paul McCartney

This column is about “The Beatles - 6 Days That Changed the World February 1964,” photographic evidence of the late Bill Eppridge’s crazy, fun week with the Fab Four and their fans in New York and Washington, with a couple of wacky train rides to boot.

But it’s also about music, memory, history and the role of photography, the scientific process that someone with an eye, interpersonal skills and degrees of luck can use to make artful journalism.

Dozens of photos from the 90 rolls of film Eppridge shot that week are beautifully hung on the walls in the Art Gallery in the Visual & Performing Arts Center at Western Connecticut State University’s Westside Campus. The hours are Monday through Thursday, noon to 4 p.m. and weekends from 1 to 4 p.m. It’s a tour de force that runs through March 13. He’s represented by the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe.

Grandmothers will remember being teens and tweens. Forty-somethings may contemplate the changes the Beatles wrought to music and culture. And millennials can discover a simple slice of 20th Century social phenomena without the chore of too much reading.

My favorite photo was captured outside The Plaza Hotel in New York. An amused black-clad chauffeur is trying to unload The Beatles’ baggage in a scrum of girls. One kid, with a huge smile, is hugging a guitar case as if it were Paul McCartney himself. If she was 14 then, she’s 66 now. Every time I look at the image it makes me laugh out loud.

Eppridge, a famous photographer for Life magazine and Sports Illustrated, died in Danbury about 2 1/2 years ago at 74. When President John F. Kennedy was murdered in November of 1963, Eppridge was with mountaineers in the Alps. He came off Mont Blanc, the tallest in Europe, where a local priest told him of the assassination. In just a few years, as the sassy ’60s unwound in violence and cynicism, he would get extremely close to another Kennedy murder.

On the morning the Beatles landed, Feb. 7, Eppridge got the assignment to meet them at the newly renamed JFK International Airport.

A welcome relief after the president’s murder less than three months earlier, the lads from Liverpool were met by thousands of teenagers. Eppridge called his editor and said he wanted to stay with the band for a few days.

“I liked these guys immediately,” Eppridge recalled in the 2013 book of photos about the week, published by Rizzoli. “Shortly after, Ringo Starr turned to me and said, ‘All right, Mr. Life Magazine, what can we do for you?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘not one single thing. Just be you and I’ll turn invisible. I won’t ask you to do a thing.’”

In the winter of 1964, the United States needed The Beatles and their pop harmonies. On Sunday night, Feb. 9, they took “The Ed Sullivan Show” by storm.

Monday, Feb. 10, was a nasty, cold rainy day in Stamford. It was so horrible that the runny-nosed masses at Belltown School — usually confined to the playground in all weather until school started — were allowed inside, to line up on a stairwell, dripping wet, to await the 9 o’clock bell. All the fourth-grade chatter was about The Beatles appearance the night before and who might be a kid’s favorite.

Alas, we were a “Disney” family on Sunday nights, watching wholesome entertainment on another TV network, rather than the usual cavalcade of nightclub comics and crooners that Sullivan trotted out every week for CBS.

I knew nothing about the Beatles, was drastically behind the pop curve and never really caught up. Maybe that’s why I’m a contrarian newspaper reporter.

Of course, I eventually found the Beatles and their poppy tunes and startling harmonies. You can easily catch their Ed Sullivan appearances on the Internet. Those first 13 minutes, with “All My Loving.” “Till There was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” say almost all you need to know about the innocent, early ’60s.

“Anything was fodder for the camera with Bill,” recalled Adrienne Aurichio, Eppridge’s wife and collaborator, who held a gallery talk the other night at WestConn. Among his 900 assignments were Dr. Jonas Salk, who defeated polio, actress Mia Farrow, President Lyndon Johnson, Woodstock, Barbra Streisand and Vietnam.

In a way, the Beatles were a welcome respite as the remainder of the ’60s played out. By the fall of 1964, Eppridge was practically living with a couple of heroin addicts for Life’s stark, harrowing, graphic “Needle Park” report on drug users at 72nd Street and Broadway. Maybe in 50-plus years we haven’t really evolved too much, as the latest heroin epidemic plays out.

Eppridge is most famous for the iconic image of Robert F. Kennedy dying on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a bus boy by his side, after winning the California presidential primary in 1968. The murder occurred two months after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The ’60s were surely over.

Last week, RFK’s killer, Sirhan Sirhan, now 71, was denied parole for the 15th time.

Ken Dixon’s Capitol View appears Sundays in the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers. You may reach him in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or at kdixon@ctpost.com. Find him at twitter.com/KenDixonCT. His Facebook address is kendixonct.hearst. Dixon’s Connecticut Blog-o-rama can be seen at blog.ctnews.com/dixon/

Steve Schapiro remembers David Bowie, his muse

David Bowie in his dressing room while filming "The Man Who Fell to Earth" in 1975.

(Steve Schapiro)

The Chicago Tribune
By Rick Kogan
January 14, 2016

World-renowned photographer Steve Schapiro, who moved to Chicago with his wife, Maura, in 2007, has in his lengthy career taken millions of photos, many of them collected in stunning books.

He is in his early 80s, and the list of his subjects is almost surreal in its breadth: Marlon Brando, Robert Kennedy, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Chevy Chase (Schapiro and his wife are the godparents of the actor's daughter), Jerry Garcia, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Johnny Depp, Mae West, Satchel Paige, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Ringo Starr, Ike and Tina Turner (together), Buster Keaton, Richard Pryor, Sophia Loren … It goes on.

He also shot David Bowie. One of his photos was used for the cover of 2014's "Nothing Has Changed" and, in the wake of the artist's death, Schapiro remembered:

"It was 1974 when I first photographed David. From the moment he arrived, we seemed to hit it off. He was incredibly intelligent, calm, and filled with ideas.

"He talked a lot about Aleister Crowley, whose esoteric writings he was heavily into at the time. And when he heard that I had photographed Buster Keaton, one of his heroes, we talked about him and immediately became friends.

"Our first session started at four in the afternoon. David would come out in incredible costumes, each seemingly turning him into a different person. I would raise my camera to shoot and he would say, 'Wait just a minute, I have to fix something,' and 20 minutes later he would come out in a totally different outfit.

"We decided to do a close portrait on a dark green background because we felt it would make the worst possible color for a magazine cover. We laughed about it, but eventually it did become a cover for People magazine (in September of 1976).

David Bowie

A portrait of David Bowie, taken by Steve Schapiro.

"That session lasted from four in the afternoon to four in the morning, and the last photograph of David was on his bike, lit by the headlights of a car.

"Over these many years I would find photos of David in my files, photos that I had totally overlooked, unexpected and pleasant surprises. Working with an amazingly talented person can be collaborative, often unspoken. The photographs I took were David's ideas, brought from his imagination into the real world. I was merely the conduit from genius into the light of day."

Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune

Steve Schapiro's photographs of David Bowie are included in the exhibition "The Broke The Mold", on view through February 7, 2016.

THEY BROKE THE MOLD at Monroe Gallery of Photography

Sid Avery: Frank Sinatra With Camera, Capitol Records, 1954, gelatin silver print

©mptvimages

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, 505-992-0800

Via Pasatiempo
The New Mexican's Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment & Culture
Friday, November 27, 2015


In advance of crooner Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday on Dec. 12, Monroe presents They Broke the Mold, an exhibit of classic photographs of musicians, singers, and entertainers by Steve Schapiro, Don Hunstein, Sid Avery, and others. The exhibit includes iconic images of Sinatra, Bob Dylan, The Supremes, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis, to name a few, and coincides with the recent publication of Sinatra: The Photographs by Andy Howick.  They Broke the Mold opens Friday, Nov. 27, with a 5 p.m. reception.

A Rock and Roll Thanksgiving, 1969

Amalie R. Rothschild: Janis and Tina, Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969

"This is possibly my favorite picture and certainly my best known photograph. I convinced one of the security guys to help me get a good position and I used my 300mm lens. It was Thanksgiving Day and Bill Graham, as usual, gave a dinner at the Fillmore East for the whole staff and “Fillmore Family.” Janis was in NY and all alone, so she joined us. We had tickets for the Rolling Stones concert later that evening at the Garden and we all went together. Ike and Tina Turner were the opening act and at some point Tina noticed Janis at the side of the stage and invited her up to sing a number with her. I think this is the only time they sang together and I wish I could remember what the song was." -- Amalie R. Rothschild

 Join us Friday, Nov 27 from 5 – 7 for the opening reception for “They Broke The Mold”, an extensive exhibition of classic photographs of ground-breaking and important singers and entertainers.

Related: Brian Hamill writes about The Rolling Stones

See Civil Rights & Memphis Music through Ernest Withers’ Eyes

Via Tennessee Trip Tales

You’ve seen Ernest C. Withers’ photographs whether or not you know his name. Last October, they showed in Berlin and draped a building façade in Washington, D.C. If you saw Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, his were the images that shook the final scene. Even before his death in 2007, Withers’ work had exhibited internationally and appeared in films (see 2004’s The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington).
But Withers’ daughter, Rosalind, says her father realized the significance of his work much earlier in his career – specifically, in 1955, when his images of Emmett Till – from the boy’s brutally beaten corpse to his murder trial and funeral – were released worldwide and credited with bringing so much attention to the U.S. civil rights movement.

In a self-published “photo story” following the acquittal of Till’s alleged murderers, Withers wrote: “…we are presenting this…not in an attempt to stir up racial animosities or to question the verdict…but in the hope that [it] might serve to help our nation dedicate itself to seeing that such incidents need not occur again.”

And so his career goes, with Withers assuming the charge of telling pivotal chapters of our country’s 20th-century civil rights story in pictures. Today, you can view the most iconic images in The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery, located on the east end of the Beale Street entertainment district in a building that formerly housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995).

The intimate space distills Withers’ vast collection into 10 major “projects.” The school desegregation section shows members of the Little Rock Nine exiting their car (in the background, white students crowd the entrance to their school in protest). A section devoted to Medgar Evers grips you in the faces of Evers’ family attending his funeral. In another section, titled “Memphis and The South,” signs say everything – in a poster held by a young, white man (“Segregation or war!”); in a placard worn by a father strolling his infant daughter (“Daddy, I want to be free too!!!!”). There are moments of triumph, too – when the Montgomery Bus Boycott set that city’s first desegregated bus rolling in 1956, Withers and his camera were there.

Even if you’ve seen these images in other contexts, you’ll immediately recall them – once seen, they never leave your consciousness. Viewed in aggregate, they seem to me even more powerful – as does Withers’ ability to capture the most critical moments at such close range. As for Withers’ near-omnipresence along the civil rights timeline, Rosalind explains simply that her father was a “journalist by nature.” She offers more on the intimacy her father achieved with his subjects, referencing several of his images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – particularly one of Dr. King lounging on his bed at the Lorraine Motel (King was in Memphis to join James Meredith’s 1966 March Against Fear). “It speaks to his character that he was able to get so close,” Rosalind believes.

It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the gallery opens and closes on Dr. King – presenting first the images from 1966 of the man in repose; ordering lunch; looking cool marching in sunglasses and a hat. By the end of the exhibit, it’s two years later, and Withers’ lens is trained on Memphis’ sanitation worker strike (source of Withers’ most recognizable image, shown below) and Dr. King’s last march; King’s blood spilled on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; masses gathered in Memphis and Atlanta following the assassination – and the riots. It’s hard to imagine, under its present-day neon glow, a Beale Street strewn with tanks and evenly-spaced soldiers, propped with their rifles against shattered-and-boarded windows. But Withers’ images show it like it was.

 

Many of the images displayed at Memphis’ Withers Collection Museum & Gallery are the same ones you’ll see archived by the Library of Congress and incorporated into the permanent collection of Washington, D.C.’s in-progress National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian institution. Major purchases by both organizations helped to fund the creation of the Memphis museum and gallery, which opened in May 2011. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.

 

 

The gallery takes two lighthearted turns, driven by Withers’ chronicling of baseball and music – and ultimately giving what I saw as the clearest insight into the photographer’s personal life: His series on the Negro Baseball League grew from the portraits players and fans would pay him to take at the ballpark. Withers had no studio at the time, so he would develop prints in the bathtub of his home and dry them in the family’s oven. “I still remember that smell in our house,” Rosalind laughs, but those prints helped Withers and wife Dorothy raise eight children. They were also what drew Dorothy into business with her husband. “He would print and my mom would count [the prints] and tell him how much money he would have to bring home,” Rosalind recalls.

 

The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery is located at 333 Beale Street in a building that housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995). The now-vacant studio space still bears this window marking.

As for the music, Withers served as Stax Records’ official photographer for two decades. “He loved the blues and B.B. King was one of his best friends,” Rosalind tells me, noting that he also liked listening to Al Green and Isaac Hayes, whose relationship with Withers was so close, the performer called him “Pops.” To caption Withers’ images of Memphis music history through the 1950s and ’60s is to name-drop star after star: Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner – though I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of two of Withers’ images of B.B. King: one of a newbie playing in a club on Beale Street circa-1950; the other of a veteran playing in his own club on Beale Street in 1994.

“’I am a man,’ and Elvis and B.B. – that’s Memphis,” Rosalind immediately offered when we began discussing which of her father’s images should accompany this piece. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.

What’s next for Withers?
Among individual photographers covering the civil rights movement, Withers is commonly credited with producing the largest body of work. Though her father once told her his portfolio was five million images strong, Rosalind has stopped counting (for now, at least) at one million. Of those, only a few thousand have been digitized.

The images sit – some as negatives; others as prints – in a pandemonium of file cabinets, cardboard boxes and card catalog-style units in a space near the gallery. There is some clarity in the chaos courtesy of the Withers’ original subject-matter categorization, but the takeaway is this: The images need to be legitimately archived. Rosalind has a plan for that, but not the money. During our interview, she was preparing for a black tie fundraiser to that end. She also previewed memberships the museum will soon be offering to help offset the costs of archival, and expansion. (An ambitious project will be announced this spring to expand the gallery’s current 7,000 square feet to 28,000 – including an amphitheater for musicians and theater groups and a restaurant.)

Until then, Withers’ images will receive their largest showing since his death (in 2007) during the April 3-7 gathering of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. (Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #419)

You only have to go as far as Beale Street.

While Rosalind and her team work to raise the funds necessary to properly archive her father’s body of work, the images remain in Withers’ original filing system (offsite). “All of this handwriting is my mother’s and father’s,” Rosalind reflected.

Before you go:The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery (333 Beale Street) is open Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4-10 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 4-11 p.m. and Sundays, 4-9 p.m. (Daytime tours are available for groups of 10 or more by reservation.)
With a short video on the photographer’s life and more than 90 images on display, plan to spend around an hour.

Currently, admission is a suggested donation of $5-10. Beginning March 1, 2013, admission will be $10 for adults and $7 for children with membership packages at various levels.

Note that some of the gallery images are sensitive in nature (read: prepare your children in advance – and be prepared to answer their questions during and after viewing the exhibit).

KEN REGAN: “If you’re able to capture an image that nobody else has, then that’s what makes the image important"

Ken Regan (L) with Bill Eppridge (R)

Monroe Gallery Booth, AIPAD 2010

 

"Good friend, formidable competitor. He goes to a better place. I miss that smile already." -- Bill Eppridge

 

 

 

 

 Photojournalist Ken Regan

Joe McNally:  A Pro's Pro: "Colleague, friend, and mentor….Godspeed…."

NPR: Remembering A Rock Star: Photographer Ken Regan

New York Times: Ken Regan, Photojournalist Trusted by Celebrities, Dies


NY Times Slideshow: The Photographs of Ken Regan

Le Journal de la Photographie - In memoriam: Death of Ken Regan


"His real secret was that he was enormously likable, the nicest guy you'd ever meet"

Rolling Stone: Ken Regan, Iconic Rock & Roll Photographer, Dies of Cancer
 

Photo District News: Obituary: Ken Regan, Celebrity and Sports Photographer

 

Courtesy of Camera 5

 

 

 

 

 

National Press Photographers Association: Photographer Ken Regan Loses Cancer Fight

 

Mick Rock Featured on NPR "The Picture Show"

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Photographer Mick Rock in New York City, 2011
Via NPR The Picture Show

Mick Rock is really his name — though he's Michael to his mother — and he is exactly what you might imagine a rock photographer to be: tall and hip with shaggy hair. Shaded Ray-Bans, jean jacket, scarf. Oh, and an English accent to boot — so he can drop words like "bloody" and "shag" with allure (though he doesn't shy from the American equivalents, either).

"In any other era, dogs wouldn't have pissed on me," he says. "Thank God for Mick and Keith," who helped make lanky, messy Englishmen cool. He's referring to the Rolling Stones, of course.
Now in his 60s, Rock remembers the '70s well. Or, parts of them. And it goes without saying that the times have changed.

"The world is swamped with media today," he says. "I go to an event and I get photographed. Shoot the bloody photographer? What the hell is that about?"

On a recent night in Washington, D.C., for example, the cameras click incessantly (guilty) as Rock gives a few words at the opening of his aptly titled traveling photo show, Rocked. It originated in New York City, and it's hosted and produced by the W Hotel chain where, these days, Rock can be found shooting live concerts.

.

Claire O'Neill/NPR

Mick Rock gives a tour of his photographs at the opening of his traveling show, Rocked, at the W Hotel in Washington, D.C.

After his remarks, some high-heeled women and suited men (remember this is D.C.) trickle into a ballroom where they sip on cocktails and politely wait for a band to start playing. Meanwhile, Rock's prints of Iggy Pop, David Bowie and the likes adorn the surrounding walls, watching down, it seems, on what has become of rock. (Bowie would have worn the heels AND the suit, for heaven's sake.)
"Back then," Rock says wistfully in an interview the next day, "well, it was the age of sex, drugs and rock and roll, of course."

 

Full post here with slideshow and audio.

 

Related: Mick Rock, The Man Who Shot The Seventies

Mick Rock Survives the ’70s to Shoot Again

Lee Clower for The New York Times
 
Via The New York Times

By BOB MORRIS
Published: December 14, 2011


COFFEE. Mick Rock, the rock ’n’ roll photographer as famous for his hedonistic lifestyle as for his iconic images of debauchery and excess, was drinking nothing more than coffee. It was 5 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, and while hotel guests drank cocktails at the lounge of the W New York Downtown, Mr. Rock, a slim and youthful man in his 60s in tinted glasses, got his fix.       

NYT Slideshow here

“Sometimes when I really want to go wild, I’ll have two cups,” he said.

It was the night before “Rocked,” an exhibition of his photographs, was to open on Dec. 7 with a big party, featuring a performance by Phantogram and a D.J. set by Mark Ronson. On the walls in the lounge around him, Madonna, Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters stuck out their tongues with confrontational glee. A young Iggy Pop (sweaty and shirtless, of course) worked some gold lamé pants. Lou Reed, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie leered under so much mascara they could have been raccoons.

 Outside, beyond a balcony, the 9/11 memorial-in-progress gaped.

“It’s amazing, what’s going on down here,” Mr. Rock said of all the construction in a downtown he knew more for drug deals, illegal nightclubs and transsexuals, not patriotism and real estate speculators. “But I guess you just can’t keep New York down.”

You can pretty much say the same about him.

Born as Michael in West London, Mr. Rock was a typical good-looking bad boy of his day with a very nice mum named Joan, who sometimes still asks when he’s going to get a real job.

After rocketing out of Cambridge University in 1970, infatuated with Blake, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé and poets who consumed as much opium and absinthe as sleep, he was drawn like a well-educated moth to the flaming scene of Syd Barrett, Roxy Music, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols and all types of punks and glam rockers in London. He then moved to New York in the mid-1970s to continue his career, photographing Blondie, the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Joan Jett and other punk and big-hair bands.

“I was intuitive and lucky to be around,” he said. “I also looked like them, and that made it easier to accept me.”

As much the party instigator as chronicler, he would bounce up and down like a pogo-ing punk rocker while taking pictures, giddy as a child awaiting a gift. One time Andy Warhol pointed out that he was bouncing on a stack of Mr. Warhol’s finished canvases. “I guess you could just say I’m an enthusiast,” Mr. Rock said.

He was trustworthy, too, and did not sell photographs of drug abuse and other unseemly moments that could damage careers. But then, this was before the age of tear-down tabloids and blogs. “Newspapers and magazines didn’t want pictures of musicians behaving badly back then,” Mr. Rock said with a sunny working-class lilt. “Now, because of the Internet, that’s all the media wants.”

In his heyday, as he acquired his reputation as “the man who shot the ’70s,” he partied all night in New York with the stars he shot, dating the same women and sharing the same drugs. Many he knew fell to AIDS and heroin addiction. Others survived, and many thrived. “It’s a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived,” he said.

After bouncing, drinking, drugging and staying up till dawn for 20 years, he hit bottom in 1996, at 48, when he had a heart attack requiring a quadruple bypass. He’d had several attacks right before that, one during a shoot. His lifestyle was catching up with him.

“It was a warning that it was time to stop,” he said.

He had no health insurance. But he had powerful friends who wanted to pay to save him.

He came out of the operation with a faltering career but a newfound determination to stay sober. He was not, to quote a Blondie lyric, going to “die young and stay pretty.”
Industry friends were supportive, as were musicians and galleries who drew from his archives to create books and exhibitions of his work. By the new millennium, he was starting to rebound, and soon was busy shooting Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys and other young stars.

“I did not want to be somebody who lived off his reputation,” he said. “I wanted to continue to be part of the modern music scene.” It seems to have worked out very nicely.

Now he’s smart enough to let others stay up late and carry on, “although these days all they have to do to shock people is light up a cigarette,” he said. Despite his legacy, he isn’t one to live in the past. He adores the young musicians he shoots — Lady Gaga, Janelle Monáe, and Theophilus London among them — and gets only a little weary when asked about the bad old days.

“Back then, to pick up the hottest women you had to wear makeup,” he said.
Today, a denim jacket and a scarf or two make up his uniform. Mr. Rock said he doesn’t preen, drink, smoke or imbibe any drugs stronger than coffee with sugar and (gasp) half-and-half. He lives in a Colonial house with a picket fence on a leafy Staten Island street with his wife, Pati, and sometimes a daughter, Nathalie, 21, who he said is unimpressed with a father who has seen it all. He gets up early and does yoga every day.

“I’ll need to get a good night’s sleep tonight,” he said in the lounge at the W as he finished his coffee, took a quick tour of his exhibition and left to go up to his room. It was massage time.

“I know it’s disappointing,” he said. “But all I am is a retired degenerate.”
Fair enough. It won’t be that long before the man who shot the ’70s will be close to 70 himself.

All Access: The Rock 'n' Roll Photography of Ken Regan

 

 Ken Regan/Camera 5: The Rolling Stones, September, 1977

Rolling Stone Magazine has an article about the new book: All Access: The Rock 'n' Roll Photography of Ken Regan.

"This is the book that closes the book. The best book of rock photography....ever."

GQ interviews the veteran photojournalist, who talked about getting close to Bob Dylan, hanging with Mick Jagger, and his revealing new book.

Mr. Media: Audio interview with Ken Regan

Ken Regan Releases ALL ACCESS Photography Book



Monday, August 1, 2011
BWW News Desk


Ken Regan was there when the Beatles touched down on U.S. soil for the first time in 1964. He caught candid snapshots of their arrival at JFK International Airport in New York City, photographed their backstage downtime at the Ed Sullivan Show and spent a day clowning around with the Fab Four in Central Park.

This is what you call access-the type of proximity and intimacy with artists that have made Regan's images sought-after windows to the most historically significant moments in the last 40 years of rock and roll.

And with his exceptional new book, All Access: The Rock and Roll Photography of Ken Regan, Regan grants you, a little taste of that backstage wonderment.

He palled around with the Stones in 1975 in Montauk. He took Dylan's favorite picture of himself. He hit the gym with Madonna in 1985. He's ridden shotgun with Run DMC in Hollis, Queens.
"I was able to catch many legendary rock pioneers at ease," Regan writes. And as readers will note, it is Regan's "interest in doing more than just photo ops and concert shoots" that delivers some of the most remarkable cultural documents of the past half-century.

All Access is a collection of photographs, but more than that, it is a compilation of memories, stories from the front lines of several revolutions: the rock revolution; Pete Seeger's peace movement and Woodstock ("a photographer's paradise"); and the birth of hip hop.

"As a photojournalist, there were thousands of assignments that I covered over the last four decades," say Regan. "I am forever grateful."
But don't take Ken's word for it.

"You have to know the moment before it happens. To sense it, to feel it," Keith Richards writes in the book's preface. "Whatever this intuitive sense, is what my longtime friend has. Many times I've been onstage only to see Ken's beady left eye drilling through me with that wry grin under his camera and know he's got the shot he was after."

The Stones are generous in their praise of Regan. And Regan is generous with his experience. In the book, he gives readers never-before-heard insider accounts of dozens of events and over 40 artists, for example:

- Woodstock on stage and off
- When Bob Dylan met a young fan named Bruce Springsteen- On and off the road with The Rolling Stones throughout the 70's and the 80's
- Hanging out with his "Big Brother" Bill Graham, who introduced him to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Stones and Bob Dylan
- The Concert for Bangladesh
- Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash in quiet moments at home with their families
- Backstage at Live Aid and Amnesty International

Regan gives the fly-on-the-wall account that only he can give: Just like his photographs, his writing is direct, honest and unclouded by obsequious fandom.

"When you look at the breadth of Ken's work, the first thought is, 'He could not have possibly shot all these'," James Taylor writes in the afterword. "Looking at Ken's remarkable catalog of images, I am reminded of a time when we did not know more about our favorite musicians than we wanted to know. Perhaps that's why we stuck with them  longer."

It certainly gives us reasons--hundreds of them, in both vivid color and intimate black-and-white--to stick with Ken Regan.

About the Author(s):
Ken Regan is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared on more than 200 magazine covers, including Time, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, People, Newsweek, Life, and Entertainment Weekly. He visually documented such extraordinary concerts as The Band's Last Waltz and George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh. His previous photography book, Knockout: The Art of Boxing, earned an Independent Book Publishers Gold Medal Award. Regan lives in New York and Massachusetts.

Jim Jerome has coauthored a number of best-selling memoirs, collaborating with leading figures in popular music, film, television, cable news, and business. He has also profiled hundreds of rock, pop, country music, film, and television artists for People, Us, InStyle, and AARP magazines. He lives in New York.


Read more: http://books.broadwayworld.com/article/Ken-Regan-Releases-ALL-ACCESS-Photography-Book-20110801#ixzz1TtSLoSUc

Looking Back | The Fillmore East

Amalie R. Rothschild: A huge crowd formed around the Fillmore East in May 1970 when tickets went on sale for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.




June 24, 2011, 4:00 pm


Looking Back
The Fillmore East
By STEPHEN REX BROWN

The push to preserve blocks of the neighborhood through a landmark district has, not surprisingly, led to a lot of conversations about the history of the area. The proposed district covers roughly six blocks, and perhaps no property within the tract has hosted more important figures in American culture than the former Fillmore East building at 105 Second Avenue.

Now, the entrance to the building is an Emigrant Savings Bank, and the 2,600-seat theater has been replaced with an apartment building. But the Fillmore’s three-year existence had a lasting impact culturally; Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker and Miles Davis all recorded well-regarded live albums there. The Who played their rock opera, “Tommy” in its entirety for the first time in the United States in 1969 at the Fillmore East. And the first rock concert to be broadcast on television was taped there in 1970.

But the Fillmore’s impact went beyond the performers onstage. Numerous technological innovations during the theater’s short existence were adopted at concert venues across the country.

“I was blown away by what a creative, experimental theater environment there was at the Fillmore East,” said Amalie R. Rothschild, a photographer who was among the many NYU students who landed dream jobs at the Fillmore when it opened in 1968. “It was a real place to do real things. The students had a live laboratory within which to work.”

Amalie R. Rothschild Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore East, 1969.

The man behind that environment was Bill Graham, the rock promoter who first made a name for himself with the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. After his success on the West Coast hosting some of rock’s biggest names, Graham returned to his native New York to open another venue.

He purchased the building near Sixth Street, which had previously been a music venue, a Loews cinema, and a Yiddish theater. Within the first year Graham had booked the likes of Janis Joplin, the Who, and Jimi Hendrix.

“It was the top of the heap, guys were just jazzed to be there,” said Jerry Pompili, the house manager of the Fillmore East for most of the time it was open.

With its top-notch sound system, elaborate psychedelic light shows that accompanied performances, noble, theater-like environment and first class treatment of musicians, Graham’s East Village Xanadu attempted to elevate rock music from mere spectacle to art.

“Bill had hit on it. He gave us dignity,” Pete Townshend of the Who said in “Bill Graham Presents,” an oral history of the rock promoter’s life. “We were dignified people. We were artists.”

But that atmosphere that so attracted the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead — and on one occassion John Lennon and Yoko Ono for an impromptu 2 a.m. performance following a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention — proved unsustainable in the face of arena rock.

“The business began to transform from coffee houses and theater venues to Madison Square Garden and stadiums,” said Ms. Rothschild, author of “Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir.” “Woodstock made it clear that hundreds of thousands of people would come out for this type of music.”

On June 27, 1971 the Fillmore East closed. Of course, there was a heck of a show featuring a lineup that would make the most jaded of music buffs drool: the Allman Brothers, the Beach Boys, Albert King, the J. Geils Band and others.

“The concert went until 6 a.m.,” Rothschild recalled. “Nobody wanted it to end.”

Amalie R. Rothschild The Fillmore East.


More: Slideshow and memories of the Fillmore East

"THE MAN WHO SHOT THE SEVENTIES"

Mick Rock Exposed: The Faces of Rock 'n' Roll


Mick Rock's photo career began with him sneaking his camera into rock shows; it ignited when he started shooting a practically unknown David Bowie in 1972 and then went on to document the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust. Since then Mick's become a legend himself, shooting a who's who of rock, punk, and pop icons and capturing the images of stars right as they became part of the pop firmament. Exposed collects 200 of his best photos across nearly 40 years, including unforgettable images of Syd Barrett, Lou Reed, Blondie, Queen, Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Killers, Lady Gaga, U2, and many more. Featuring a revealing introduction, narrative captions, and an illuminating foreword by playwright Tom Stoppard, Exposed is a gorgeous visual celebration for music fans.

Michael David Rock was born in west London and earned a scholarship to Cambridge where he studied modern languages, graduating in the late sixties. It was the expressive seduction of subversive poets of yore rather than finite imagery that encouraged Rock to explore his own creative expression. "I discovered the lives and works of the great Bohemian poets, like Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Nerval. They were my heroes".


"London in the late sixties and early seventies was a hotbed of creative interchange. The prevalent hippie philosophy united all manner of artists, musicians, film makers, models, designers, actors, writers, and photographers into a unique and fertile community. My timing was excellent. Curiosity and circumstance drew me into the flame of rock ‘n’ roll." -- Mick Rock

Rock became intensely interested in the artists and performers at the cutting edge of their time who were not afraid to cross the line. This was the atmosphere in which Mick Rock began his collaborations with the artists of the new decade. The first band Rock photographed was the Pretty Things in 1969; soon he was photographing the likes of Syd Barrett, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Queen, Roxy Music and Iggy Pop, emerging artists who would rapidly become international stars. “They were all special people to me. They weren’t “stars” when I first met them. To me, they were free spirited visionaries. I was in the right place at the right time, you can't plan that. That's just something you can't prescribe in life.”

He was soon traveling back and forth between London and New York, on tour with emerging artists such as David Bowie and Iggy Pop and capturing the music scene in all its decadent glory. Rock was instrumental in creating many key rock 'n' roll images of the time, such as Lou Reed's Transformer, Iggy Pop's Raw Power and Queen's Queen II, leading to his being called “The Man Who Shot The Seventies”.

In 1977, Rock moved permanently to New York, and quickly immersed himself in the burgeoning underground new wave scene, capturing the nihilistic spirit of the music of the Ramones, Blondie and the Talking Heads. As rock and roll has evolved, Rock has continued to capture the essence of the fresh and new. Mick Rock has been instrumental in creating many key visual images of the last three decades. His photographs have been called as significant as Andy Warhol’s paintings in constructing the images we hold in our minds of the larger-than-life figures of our popular culture. Rock’s accomplishments extend beyond photography and include art direction, music video production and three Grammy nominations.

In recent years, Rock also has published several books, including A Photographic Record. Recently released is his retrospective of the Glam Rock scene titled Blood & Glitter; a retrospective of Syd Barrett photographs titled Psychedelic Renegades; Moonage Daydream, a co-collaboration with David Bowie of the Ziggy Stardust era; and Killer Queen, with a foreword written by Queen guitarist Brian May.

“Many years ago, I noted in my diary: ‘I am not in the business of documenting or revealing personalities. I am in the business of freezing shadows and bottling auras.’ I still like the sound of that” -- Mick Rock

Mick Rock's photographs have helped define the image of rock 'n' roll, and have been featured on numerous album covers and in solo exhibitions around the world. Monroe Gallery is pleased to represent Mick Rock's iconic photography, and was instrumental in his re-emergence in the late 1990's - organizing his first gallery exhibition in New York in 1997.