If, like me, you’ve spent enough of your youth geeking out over photos of your favorite musicians you may find yourself, 30 years later, with jaw dropping over an image you’ve never seen before. I spent countless hours of my youth looking over photos of The Beatles in whatever rock book or magazine I could get my hands on. Although I was never a giant Wings fan, I probably saw my share of solo McCartney shots in the process. I’d never seen this shot…until now.
What does it mean? Not a thing, most likely, but I never knew Linda smoked – cigarettes. Where did David Gilmour get that wholly inauthentic Dallas Cowboys shirt, in Central Europe? And I either didn’t know or forgot that Paul brought back his Sgt. Pepper’s moustache. Nice.
Did you ever spend hours gazing at photos of a favorite artist? What’s the most recent previously unseen photo of a favorite musician that you’ve stumbled across? What did you learn from it?
My wife’s great uncle worked for Kodak and took thousands of photos. We were going through his archive and found photos from a trip he and his wife took to Amsterdam in 1964 or 1965. By coincidence, the Beatles were there at the same and he has several slides of the crowds of people lining the canals and one which looks like the Beatles getting off a canal barge. I’m not sure what I learned from the photos (that the Beatles were really popular, maybe?) but it is an interesting document of the times.
Has he ever published those photos, bostonhistorian? If not, any chance he’d want to debut a few here?
I love that McCartneys/Gilmour photo. You know what they’re doing there? They’re brainstorming Rockestra lineup ideas.
Most likely, Oats. What strikes me is how comfortable Gilmour seems in his peak rock star skin while Paul seems to be grasping at the straws of his once-cool persona.
Just a few days ago I was looking at these photos:
http://www.rollingstones.com/galleries
I was familiar with some of them but there were some cool ones that I’d never seen before.
Oh, yeah, then there’s this:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/09/01/arts/design/20100905-MAXS-2.html
Here’s a cool early photo of The Rolling Stones that I found somewhere out in cyberspace. I’d never seen it before.
file:///Users/ibook/Desktop/5768_1192007170543_1539311224_507451_2968762_n.jpg
He’s been dead many years, Mr. Moderator, so copyright is vague 🙂 I made a print of one and I’ll see if I can scan it. They’re not earth shattering by any means.
Hilarious…just last night I was wondering how we ended up with a picture of the Beatles (minus drummer) on a roof in Hamburg with cowboy boots on. My wife has always had it and just broke it out again over the weekend. I’ve never seen it anywhere else and was wondering if we had something special. It is framed and I’ve never opened it up to look at the back or anything. But a quick search revealed:
http://indorock.pmouse.nl/Hamburg_boots60.jpg
Not so unique I guess but it’s a great shot and is the Beatles I really like. The writer at this site says they tried to sell the boots because they were broke.
A friend of mine recently loaned me an out of print book published in 1980 of Pennie Smith’s Clash photos. Given the emphasis the band placed on their look, it was a fascinating look at the early years of the band.
Funny. I never saw this one of George serenading Patti Boyd (on the set of Help?) before a few days ago:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5gwE623U2mM/Sj9r1KrE8fI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/nWTGdQof-14/s1600-h/91449_large.jpg
I wonder if that Clash book is the one I remember and was just trying to find a specific photo from. I plan on speaking to an old friend and lurking Townswoman in the coming weeks who appears in some of those candid Clash shots.
Even as a, if not the, staunch McCartney partisan at RTH, I have to agree. Gilmour has a pretty cool pseudo-Southern Rock look going here. McCartney seems to be strangely trapped exactly between his Pepper look and his London Town look. I don’t think he’d look that bad in a different shirt, but that terrible airbrushed number combined with the slightly too long ‘stache and hair bring up unfavorable comparisons to Doug Henning.
What if McCartney had kept the excellent beard he had going on Let It Be and the (unfairly maligned at RTH) McCartney album and cultivated it through the ’70s?
As for the picture itself, Oats is probably right about visions of Rockestra dancing through their heads, but the way McCartney and Gilmour are staring off in wonderment and confusion reminds me of that Bill Murray/Steve Martin “What the hell IS THAT?” sketch from SNL.
An old acquaintance of my brother’s recently sent me (via E-mail)some pictures of the Kinks in concert in Boston in March 1972. It made me wish that I got to seem them back then instead of the 80s.
Not to beat up on the deceased and beloved Linda too much, but was she already a vegan while smoking? I never get that mix. And not to beat up on teenage smokers too much, but this photo captures her in a classic Insecure Teenage Smoker at a Rock Concert moment.
Alexmagic is right to criticize Paul’s t-shirt. Had he worn a Central European knock-off Oakland Raiders jersey, in the team’s traditional blue and gold colors, he would have looked a bit more in tune with the times. (The year my wife and I lived in Hungary we saw some of the most outrageously inauthentic knockoff sports jerseys on the planet, including jerseys that managed to mix up colors, sports, and cities in one fell swoop, like the “Chicago Falcons” baseball team, with the color scheme of the Montreal Canadiens.)
That Penny Smith book is call “The Clash: Before & After”. I’ve got it on a bookshelf right behind me. It’s really good. Photos from ’79 tour of the U.S.A., mostly, with commentary from various members of the band (mostly Joe) under each photo.
diskojoe,
I have Kinks show from April 1, 1973 in Boston. This is what they were playing at that time:
VICTORIA
ACUTE SCHIZOPHRENIA PARANOID BLUES
UNTIL THE END OF THE DAY
MEDLEY (THE LAST TIME I SAW YOU/LITTLE QUEENIE/SHAKIN ALL OVER/WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN GOING ON, ETC)
MAYBE BECAUSE I’M A LONDONER
LOLA
DEDICATED FOLLOWER OF FASHION
CELLULOID HEROES
HERE COMES YET ANOTHER DAY
PICTURE BOOK
PEOPLE TAKE PICTURES OF EACH OTHER
ALCOHOL
SKIN BONES/DRY BONES
GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY
YOU REALLY GOT ME
ALL THE DAY AND ALL OF THE NIGHT
Well as far as I’ve seen, most people who drop the meat don’t do it for health reasons Mr. Mod. Linda was more of an animal rights type. So smoking cigarettes or other substances isn’t as hypocritical as you might be suggesting… although supporting the tobacco industry isn’t the greatest thing in the world either.
That makes sense, douqep. I didn’t mean to charge anyone with hypocrisy, necessarily. My focus was on the inconsistency with healthy living. Of course, there are many ways in which we contradict our efforts at being somewhat healthy. You have addressed my question. Thanks.
I’ll have a triple bacon cheeseburger, fries, chocolate cake, and a LARGE diet Coke, please…
TB
Over the weekend, Mr. Royale and I went to see “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child.” Not only was it a great movie, there were many photos as well as some interviews and movie footage from musicians of the era. Debby Harry on her pogo stick (maybe footage from “Downtown 81”?), Madonna, interview with Thurston Moore, Grey, none of which I had seen before so a nice surprise in a movie about a painter.
back when everybody smoked.
i have to say, in the “staring for hours” category, it’s either gonna be this one herb ritts photo of madonna, or the inside cover of kiss’ “double platinum.” i actually did pencil rubbings on it to see if i could discern their real-life look. this was around the time gene was dating cher, possibly just before “unmasked” came out, and when they were in people magazine getting out of limos with gene wearing a bank-robber bandana. Can you imagine that happening nowadays? The closest we get is Lady Gaga not leaving the house without a new Look.
Debbie Harry on a pogo stick sounds like it’s from “TV Party,” Glenn O’Brien’s old NYC public access show. Basquiat is in it, too. There’s a great documentary about the show on DVD with tons of footage.
Speaking of unseen photos, I just ran across this album of photos from CBGB in 1976:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=164218&id=698832867
bostonhistorian, I have a bootleg DVD of the Kinks doing an BBC In Concert show from early 1973 & they played many of the songs that you listed. To me, it’s the most satisfying Kinks show I’ve ever seen, even including the times I’ve seen them live.
That Kinks BBC in concert from ’73 is indeed tremendous. The performances of the more recent material is so very good–why waste time on oldies medleys? Hard to figure.
Did you see that Elton John recorded an album with Walt Whitman?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003TWP5JC/
Looks like Linda is smoking a fag, though Gilmour is probably sharing a joint with Paul.
Gawd, for all the money they had made at the time their clothes look like thrift store purchases.
Yeah, I thought Gilmour’s smoke was a little thinner than any cigarette I’ve seen.
It’s video, not photos, I stumbled across:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4635358462167956692&hl=en&emb=1#docid=-9055591193692405779
It’s Warhol’s 64-minute film The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound. Man, Nico looks bad.
One of our RTH Facebook friends tipped me off to a Patti Boyd photo exhibit he saw that was loaded with previously unseen photographs. I just found this Patti Boyd page here, which delivers the goods:
http://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/photographer/default.aspx?photographerID=29