Oct. 17, 2012 - Issue #887: Dedfest
It’s only rock ‘n’ roll (but he likes it)
Ethan Russell's camera lens captured the likes of the Stones, Joplin, Morrison
» Keith Richards on tour in 1972 / Photography © Ethan Russell
If you ask Ethan Russell how he became one of the most celebrated photographers in the world of rock 'n' roll he'll take you all the way back to his childhood.
To Russell's pre-teen years, to be precise, when he lived on a ranch in California and often stalked errant blue jays with a .22 calibre rifle. It was a solitary experience, one that taught the young boy the value of silence, stillness and fast movement when it counted.
"That's where I picked up most of the knowledge I needed as a photographer," he explains. "If I was shooting I was quiet, stood in the corner, and never got people to pay attention to me; when I saw something of interest I took a picture and drifted off to the side again when I was finished."
Russell didn't necessarily want to make a living with a camera around his neck, though the world of music was immediately appealing to him. After college he found himself in London in 1967, trying to be a writer, working with autistic children and roaming the streets taking photos, drawn by the burgeoning music scene as well as the lure of "Swinging London" as seen in Antonioni's Blow Up. A year later a friend of a friend introduced him to Mick Jagger, who took a liking to Russell; for four years after he was the official Stones photographer, whether for album covers (Through the Past Darkly, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out) or simply as a fly on the wall during their endless touring.
"They liked me, and they truly didn't know that I had no reason to be there," Russell says with a laugh. "I think it was also partly because Americans were taking them seriously when their own country wasn't."
The images that came out of the Stones tours that Russell participated in are as intimate as you can get without actually being there. He lived and worked with the band, documenting them in good times and bad; both are in evidence in Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones 1969 Tour, a book he wrote in 2007 that touched on the band's concert in Altamont, which ended in the death of a young fan.
"When I went back to talk to people like Bill Wyman, Mick Taylor, the sound man, the business guy, I found out that they remembered Altamont as if it was yesterday, which is how I imagine it would be for people who went to Vietnam. They know it in great detail, because it was a very traumatic experience."
Russell went on to work with many other musicians, coming up with album covers for The Beatles (Let It Be) and The Who (Who's Next), as well as countless portraits of icons like (to name a few) Jim Morrison, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin all the way up to current bands like Audioslave. It's his time spent among these musicians that make up the show he's bringing to Festival Place, where his famous images will hang as he recounts stories of being among the legends of '60s rock 'n' roll.
"I believe that the singer-songwriter is an important artistic figure in our time," Russell states. "I can't think of a novelist who was as important as John Lennon or Bob Dylan were to our lives. They were weaving tales and changing the world around us with their music. In the end I simply wanted to be around that music, and photography gave me a way to do that."
Sat, Oct 20 (7:30 pm)
Ethan Russell–The Best
Seat in the House
Festival Place, $32 – $36
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