Historic Rolling Stones photos to be on exhibit through December says Ethan Russell in interview

November 9, 6:13 PMHollywood Concerts ExaminerPhyllis Pollack

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By Phyllis Pollack

Ethan Russell Exhibit Chronicles 1969 Rolling Stones Tour

An Interview With 1969 Rolling Stones tour photographer Ethan Russell     

(Part One)

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the two Los Angeles Rolling Stones concerts held at the Inglewood Forum on November 8. The highly fabled 1969 Rolling Stones tour, held to promote the band’s upcoming album Let It Bleed, was meticulously documented by acclaimed photographer Ethan Russell. Among his many credits, Russell is the only photographer to have shot album covers for The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who. There would be the music, itself, the film Gimme Shelter and Russell’s photographs, through which fans would gather indelible visual imprints in their minds signifying the tour. Through Russell’s photographs, fans would not only become familiar with much of what happened on the tour, but they would also become aware of the tour’s importance and its significance. His photos have long been a primary reference point for those wanting to know more about the Rolling Stones 1969 trek, as much as any written journalism written about the tour.

Among his highly resplendent work, one of his most noted photographs is the satirical 1972 photo of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, standing next to a sign that says, “Patience please…A drug free America comes first.” Arguably, for many of Richards’ fans, this image is as much a staple part of Rolling Stones imagery as is the band's internationally anthemic tongue logo.

Russell’s famed work is currently on exhibit at the San Francisco Art Exchange, located at 458 Geary St. It will run until December 31. This is the fourth show that Russell has done there. His past exhibits held there displayed his work only. Russell says that this time, however, it was his idea to mix with other artists for this show. Russell explains the reason for the exhibit, noting “Because it is the 40th anniversary of Let It Bleed, the tour, the release of the album, and the concert at Altamont, I thought it was a nice way to mount this show for them, because I have some material I can bring to it. But I think there is so much other great material. So it was trying to be a little bit celebratory towards the music and the photography that went with it.”

Russell’s legendary photos can also be seen and on his self-titled website, www.ethanrussell.com, and are available for purchase.

Russell, who is also a writer, wrote the essay in the hardbound liner notes book that is part of the 40th anniversary issue of the Rolling Stones live album Get-Your-YaYas-Out!, recently released by ABKCO Records.

There are several versions of his stunning book Let It Bleed that feature countless classic images that he shot during the tour, as well as some of his personal reflections. Exhibitions surrounding the release of his legendary 2008 Let it Bleed book, which featured many of its photos, were held that year in Los Angeles, New York, London and Rotterdam. The exhibits were held, Russell says, “to tell the story.” They drew a large number of visitors, both nationally and internationally.

In this interview with Examiner.com, Russell discusses his 1969 Rolling Stones photos, adding more insight into his experience shooting the tour.

What is the story behind photograph you have of police officers that you shot at the Rolling Stones 1969 show in Los Angeles at The Forum? That is one of those hidden treasure photos.

I’m glad you like it. It’s not a photo people generally mention. It’s a phalanx of police offices (from behind) wearing riot helmets, and anticipating a riot. But they’re facing the wrong way, looking out at an empty parking lot.

I was told later that the Rolling Stones had a rider in their contract that prohibited uniformed police from being seen with them. They weren’t to be seen standing in front of the stage, for instance. Police uniforms were like a red flag to a lot of people, some of whom were certainly Rolling Stones fans.

What was the reason for that?

Well, I think you have to remember this was after the 1968 Chicago the Democratic National Convention where the crowd was clubbed and gassed by the police. Plus the Rolling Stones had a lot of trouble with the police, themselves. They only marginally managed to get out of England without being put in jail, and the police were not the good guys. And this was pre-Altamont, so there was no particular concern that the crowd could be a threat that hall security couldn’t manage.

And it’s also a dis to the police.

They can take it. They earned it. (Laughs.) Far be it from them not to show up. So they’re all out there in their riot gear, staring at an empty parking lot. (Laughs.) So I like that picture.

It’s absolutely absurd.

Of course, it’s absurd. (Laughs.)

Inglewood Police at the Rolling Stones show at the L.A. Forum, 1969 (Photo: Ethan Russell)

Being that Tina Turner’s performance was so intense, if not at times overtly sensually explicit, how did that performance effect your shooting her?

The sad fact is I have almost no material of her, because I always backstage with the Rolling Stones. I tended not to be out front for the other acts, except on a sort of minimal basis. I wish I had. One of my regrets, and I don’t have a huge number of regrets, is not to have not gotten more of Tina, because she is so fabulous. But as consolation, I’ve got such a lot of the different materials of The Stones I do, because I pretty much stayed with them. A lot of photos were taken of the Stones backstage while the other acts were performing.

When you were working on writing the book that was written solely for, and is included in ABKCO’s recently released commemorative box set for Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, along with featuring some of your 1969 photographs, you wrote about the tour in context of what was going on at that time. When you wrote that retrospective commentary, which was the backdrop to the album, what was going through your mind when it first hit you that this had been forty years ago now?

There are two iterations of Let It Bleed, the book. It started as limited edition collectible book, 420 pages, over 400 photographs. It also includes interviews with eleven of the sixteen people that made up the touring party. That was followed by an international photographic exhibition of over 100 photographs. That book took me six years to do. It was a long, hard, involved project. But I thought it was both an unknown and an important story. That book, I call the “Big Book” now, to contrast it with the Trade version that was just released. And it really is big. The version that came in a box with a print weighed twenty-six pounds. The “Big Book” was really the DNA of everything to follow, as you might imagine.

But the idea of writing the liner notes, nevertheless, was more than a matter of just condensing the original material, because the music in Ya-Ya's was from the Madison Square Garden shows, which were before Altamont, which is why the title of that essay included in the Ya-Ya’s set is titled “The Best of Times.” That has multiple meanings. The YaYa’s album is still considered the best live album from the Stones, maybe the best live album, period. Placing that event in time, it was only a few months after Woodstock. And our entire generation seemed to be on some kind of rocket-propelled ride upward. But the line itself, “It was the best of times,” comes from Charles Dickens, of course, and there it is, immediately followed by, “It was the worst of times.” So it has a foreshadowing quality. But we didn’t know that, of course.

In the essay, I was trying to at least highlight something for the 40th anniversary, and what it meant. In doing research I found an article from Slate Magazine in 2000 where the writer calls the last week of 1969 the greatest week ever in the history of rock and roll based on the Billboard Top Ten. There was Let It Bleed, Abbey Road, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater. It’s an impressive list. And when I interviewed Mick Taylor for the Big Book, he was very aware that this music – from 1969-70 - was still being played and being enjoyed by young people now. He considered that proof of its inherent quality.

You are still very much emotionally attached to this.

Well, there’s a personal piece to it, of course. I still remember being a kid in college and reading the liner notes on albums, looking at the photos and listening to the music. So to have been that kid in college, reading a Rolling Stones’ sleeve, and to now be writing the liner notes for a Rolling Stones album, I felt good about that, to be honest, in just sort of the obvious, simple way that you would.

And I agreed with Mick Taylor about the quality of the music and the work. I thought how apt it was that this music is still alive. There is absolutely a quality to my photography and to the music that is genuine, that it is real. What I like about my photography, and what others will also say about it, is that it is unposed, and lets you feel like you were there.

Exactly. A lot of the younger fans don’t realize the fans back then didn’t have live TV broadcasts, concert DVDs, YouTube videos, all of that, to keep abroad of a tour. The only connection that you had back then with the bands, as a fan, were the albums, reading the interviews, seeing the photographs, the books, and the actual tour dates. And that was it. There were not all these other avenues they have today to find out what happened, was happening, or going to happen on a tour, like the Internet. So the photographs were the only visual connection the fans had with the band. Those and the album cover photos. Some of the photos back then ended up in the books, but that is all there was. I think the fans back then had a lot more appreciation for rock photography maybe at that time, than the younger kids coming up now, as far as what they see coming out today in rock photography.

I think this is important. I have spent a reasonable amount of time thinking about it. I’ve lived it.

The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan, Dylan the least of the three, perhaps, grew up outside of mainstream music. They had their record companies, of course, but most of the people that were working at the record companies missed their importance entirely. When I went to London, and this was also true back in America, the people in the record companies were still trying to find the next Elvis. They had been since Elvis joined the Army. And they were packaging the people they did find in much the same way record companies package artists today, which is they sort of dress them up like the thing that was just popular. It’s really just product. In fact, at some point in the seventies, I think, maybe it was the eighties, I remember hearing people describe acts and music as “product.” As a corollary, what you get today in the photography of it is largely product photography. There really is no other word for it. The artist is treated in much the same way that any new product would be treated. Pretty it up. Remove the flaws.

Now the Rolling Stones were outside of that. They defined a new genre. It wasn’t that they weren’t marketed, although “positioned” – to use a modern word – is probably more accurate. They were. And the Beatles were. It helps people, on a very simple level, understand them. Which oversimplifies matters, you know. But let me put it this way. They weren’t packaged by people who weren’t very bright. (Laughs). So they were interesting. And I felt – this was huge for me - like the singer songwriters were talking directly to me. It felt like a very personal expression of art. That’s what worked for me.

At that time, what you were doing was somewhat new, wasn’t it? Chronicling an entire tour to the depth that you did?

I don’t think anybody else had done it. I’m not aware of it anyway. You can thank Mick Jagger for that, because he’s the one who asked me to do it. And why he let me do it is maybe as much of a mystery to him as it is to me. I don’t know why he did, but he did.

Those photos have become very legendary, because they were not just posed photos. Because you shot so much else that was going on, you captured things that let people see more of what went into a Stones tour. You let the fans have glimpses of what it was like, beyond solely the performances on stage. Can you comment on that?

I think it was the only thing I really knew how to do. There is just no other way to put it. It came naturally to me. I had no interest in being more intrusive. Even though they were always perfectly nice to me, they were still big stars as far as I was concerned. Anyway, it was not my nature to say, ‘Stand over there, and do this.’ And I think I found them intrinsically interesting enough to wonder, ‘Why you would want to change what they were up to anyway?’

It was just my default behavior to try and shoot what was in front of me, and it was also my default behavior not to want them to react to the camera. Add those two facts together: the viewer gets to be there.

Mick Jagger is obviously such an intense performer. Did it ever seem there were times when he played to the camera for you? Or was he totally unfazed by the camera, just oblivious to it? Was there ever a photo you shot where you could say Mick reacted to the camera?

That he did it for the camera? The answer would be I think he is aware, but he doesn’t play to the camera in a way that would earn that description of it. I think he’s way too sophisticated to do that, and let him catch you at it anyway (Laughs.) And yet, I think he’s very aware of what is going on around him.

What was the publicity machine like at that time?

It’s hard for people to comprehend how small a group we were. By the time we went on the road there were only 16 of us: five Rolling Stones, and eleven others. There was no full-time publicity man. The Stones’ main person was Les Perrin in London. And his job most of the time was trying to keep them out of the papers.

But there was one fellow. He could have been the inspiration for the song “Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man.” His name was David Horowitz, the publicist. He showed up, and was a true Sunset Strip, old school publicist with loafers, and a baby blue jacket, and short hair. The poor guy. And he just sort of showed up and hung out. And he was with us periodically, a little out of his depth you felt. He was with us at Altamont. God knows what he thought. I don’t know what ever happened to David Horowitz. But he was the “publicity machine.” Of course, there were two writers on the tour: Stanley Booth and Michael Lydon. But David Horowitz had nothing to do with that. (Laughs.)

You quote Keith Richards in the liner notes saying, “I wonder what they are like now. I mean do they watch TV or turn on in the basement?”

Stanley Booth was the writer who had that quote, but I reprised it. All of them were wondering what the kids are like. That’s another wonderful quote, that’s similar. And it’s one that Mick Jagger used after a press conference in 1969. When the Stones toured America in 1966, it was all Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, right? That was American youth. When they came back in 1969, we kind of looked like them. The journalists had long hair. And Mick Jagger’s quote about it at the end of a press conference is, “You can’t tell any more by looking,” which is the same thing that Keith is saying, really. Which is, it’s hard to tell what is going on, right? (Laughs.)

Then later on they had Paul Wasserman.

In my view, the world changed radically between1969 and 1972. As far as the Rolling Stones were concerned, completely. Then they had Gibson & Stromberg. And they were every bit as hip as the Stones, you know. I mean, we’re talking hip, hip, hip everywhere. We’re all hip. It’s cocaine, and it’s diamonds. I’ve got a picture of Bob where he’s wearing a diamond pin shaped like a dollar bill.

When you were shooting the 1969 Stones tour, was there a point when you thought, “There is this one shot I want to get?”

No. I never thought like that. Maybe because of how it happened for me.

So you were more documenting everything, rather than having specific pictures in mind that you wanted.

Michael Lydon, who was one of the writers on the tour, asked me what I had in mind. (Laughs.) And I didn’t have anything in mind.

That’s interesting.

Maybe because I was working for them (the Rolling Stones). I didn’t have an editor. Nobody knew. Nobody ever talked to me about what the pictures would be used for.

Did you have a lot of freedom when it came to what you could shoot? I’m not necessarily talking about the sex, drugs and of that.

I had as much freedom as I would take. I come from a sort of well-to-do, well-bred family, if you will. And I have manners. (Laughs.) And so the limiting factor was probably my manners. Mick knew that. He’d been to my home. He was probably aware somewhere inside him that I wasn’t rapacious and that he could trust me.

You respect where peoples’ personal boundaries start.

Yeah. I mean I had no interest in doing otherwise. I mean if they didn’t want me to take a picture, I didn’t want to take a picture, you know. Why would I want to do that? The world has changed certainly. That seems a common occurrence now. And there are business reasons for it, to which the artists contribute. So it’s a bit of a mess. I’m sure there were people in 1969 who would have behaved differently. But it just didn’t fit into the kind of person I am. Besides, as Michael Lydon said, the Rolling Stones demanded respect. And they deserved it. The quality of their work was so high.

THIS IS PART ONE OF A TWO-PART INTERVIEW.
PART TWO OF THIS INTERVIEW MAY BE READ HERE.

For further information:

www.ethanrussell.com
www.sfae.com
www.rollingstones.com
www.abkco.com
www.micktaylor.net                                                                                                     http://www.thelaforum.com
www.keithrichards.com
www.mickjagger.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0915115                                                                                 http://new.umusic.com/flash.asp                                                                                http://www.billwyman.com

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