Photo 45s

 

I finally got a chance to read Paul McCartney's new photo book, Paul McCartney 1964 : Eye of the Storm. In the introduction he writes:

This kind of traditional photography has more relevance to music and the recording process than you might think. Nowadays, some people will come into the studio without a song or without an idea of what they're going to do and they'll just jam around until something appears. I often think that this can grow to be a great waste of time and I advise people to have some idea of what they're going to do before they come in and make a piece of music. But just as with phone pictures they'll record various pieces of music, mix them and choose later.

Essentially, he's describing the process of taking pictures as a metaphor for taking sonic snapshots of ideas in a studio. They are similar in some respects. Photography is somewhat easier than recording an album of songs. You could make a photo book like this one which might take as long as it would take to make an album, and probably longer.

There are some really great photos in the book, all taken in the moment, although some are staged. Since there are very few available on the internet I'll have to describe them. (There was an installation I went to once that were just the descriptions written on the backs of Polaroids, and this is similar to that).

Page 48: A photograph of George Harrison posing in front of a mirror sitting in a chair with his arms held close.

Page 50: John and George with John holding what appears to be a picture of Elvis but you can only see half of it, and the foreground where George is standing is out of focus. John is in focus but the photograph of Elvis is out of focus.

Page 54: A shot of Billy Kramer at the mic on a stage in the spotlight with the background entirely black. (There's a number of those photographs where McCartney is off-stage, which is slightly ironic).

Page 59: A picture of their publicist Tony Barrow (apparently a heavy smoker) and the photograph has a little puff of smoke in front of his face;

Page 117: Another “staged” photograph in which the spotlight and shadow create a dramatic image of Billy Kramer. Again it's just his face vignetted in front of the mic.

Page 149: A photo spread apparently taken in a hotel room. The photograph on the right is of John Lennon with a guitar. In the foreground are some tulips in-focus. John is in the background out-of-focus. On the opposite page is their road manager, "looking at" John. It was probably taken at the same moment, left-to-right, Neil then John. A great diptych.

Page 150: A photo spread of the French actress Sophia Hardy, posing on the left, smoking a cigarette on the right. Very 60s cool.

Page 224: A young girl, perhaps 10 or 12 years old with a scarf on in a car with her mother and sisters or other family members, looking directly at the camera, and perfectly in focus. Everything is perfect about this shot.

Page 237: A photograph from the window of the 707 of the wing and engines. The 707 was the new technology that made the success of the Beatles possible. The old jets looked cool then and they still look retro cool. A study in levels of gray.,

Page 239: Another picture out the plane window of the ground crew, one of the guys holding his hands as if playing a guitar.

Page 247: A photo taken in Miami of a cop wearing a gun, something he said he never saw in England. Usually when you arrive in a new place you really see it.

Page 269: The piece de resistance. A color photograph of George holding what is probably a rum and coke, wearing sunglasses, and there's a girl in a yellow bathing suit, cropped at the head. It's one of my favorite all-time photographs, redolent of William Eggleston. Icon status.