Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The Day The Music Died

Ethan Russell's tribute to John Lennon ends with a special offer of signed prints to support PAX "Real Solutions to Gun Violence."
The Day The Music Died
By Ethan Russell
If you've worked with the famous and the very famous, as I have, who they are can seem defined by the moments when they've touched your life, and it's easy to lose perspective that, really, you only have a tiny glimpse of them. 
But I'm grateful to have known, photographed, and filmed John Lennon at times that were pivotal for him: when he was falling in love with Yoko, during the last days with the Beatles filming and recording Let It Be, and then in New York City in 1980. 
My story with John begins when I walked into a flat on Montague Square in London in 1968 and took my first pictures of him.  I was barely a photographer, and that I was there was unlikely beyond measure.  But I was already - like it seemed all of my generation - entirely under the influence of music, which at this time was the music of the Beatles and the Stones.  (My particular immersion into rock 'n' roll began with Elvis and Chuck Berry. Later I would learn this was the identical experience of John Lennon and Keith Richards.  But as I stood on John Lennon's doorstep, Elvis had been pushed so far back into the shadows as to be invisible.)
The rest of this reflection at Huffington Post