When a young Ethan Russell saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 iconic film “Blow-Up,” he decided he wanted to be a photographer.
After his father bought him a camera, Russell began exploring the rock scene in his hometown of San Francisco before decamping for London. He didn’t discover the swinging scene he’d hoped to find there but after a long dry spell, he lucked into an assignment: Photographing John Lennon and Yoko Ono. His pictures captured their love for each other and soon after, Russell was in the studio, snapping pictures of the Beatles as they recorded the album that became “Let It Be.”
Those photos (along with pictures by Linda McCartney) are now included in a glossy newly released book “The Beatles: Get Back,” from Callaway Arts & Entertainment. The tome is a companion piece to Peter Jackson’s Apple+ docuseries, which revisits unseen hours of band footage that captures the band as they were breaking up. Russell also did the final photoshoot of the group.
From there, the photographer moved on to other rock legends, shooting tours and album covers and books for the Rolling Stones and The Who. In addition to the “Get Back” book, his pictures (which also capture Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and others) are in his new book of photographs. (https://shop.ethanrussell.com/).
Russell, who opened a now-defunct gallery, The Best Seat in the House, in San Anselmo in 2017, says he never took a photography course.
“There’s a low barrier for entry to photography but sometimes you can tell the person operating the camera cannot see what is there,” he says in a Zoom interview. “The central act is seeing the picture. If you don’t see it you can’t shoot it.”
He credits his success in capturing the moment to a childhood spent hunting blue jays on his parents’ ranch. “You gotta be really quiet, you can’t move quickly, you have to look for where you might see something, you have to be able to sight it and you get one shot.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q How did you get this job?
A I was there one day talking about earlier photos I had taken of John and Yoko. I said I was going to go down to the studio. They told me they had no need for me, but I went down anyway. When I got down there, Neil [Aspinall, an Apple executive] showed up and said, “We’ve decided to let you come down.” So then I went and got my cameras. Nobody ever told me what to do.
Neil had said, “You can come for one day.” And I said, “I won’t do less than three days.” I don’t know why these things come out of my mouth. After that, I was showing the photographs to Derek Taylor, the press agent, in [Apple executive] Peter Brown’s office. I was projecting the pictures against the wall, and they looked good—it was a hell of a location for photographs, and I used it well, taking big wide shots.
Suddenly Paul McCartney walks in and then John with Yoko and then George Harrison. After they saw the photos they hired me for a longer period of time. Then somebody said, “We should do a book” and I went for the balance of the filming. [The book was released in the English version of the “Let It Be” album but not in America.]
Q You’ve talked about being impressed by the band’s work ethic yet of being aware of the tension. Were you trying to capture both truths?
A Photography is representational. It’s not an abstract process. You can try to use photography to represent a mood, but you’re sort of swimming upstream against what the technology does. The technology just says, “There it is.” I sensed the mood, but I wasn’t trying to capture it. I’m just taking the pictures. The biggest value I deliver was not, “Look at this cool picture,” it’s making you feel like you are there in the room with The Beatles.
Q You were in the room. What was it like hearing them create new music?
A Rather pathetically, I didn’t listen. My gift is all here in my eyes. Put a camera there and it’s like I put earmuffs on, too. It is absurd that I was sitting there and the Beatles were making records right in front of me. Later on the Stones’ tours, people would say, “That was a great show.” and I would just shrug. I wasn’t listening.
Q Did you have favorite shots of the Stones from all your time with them?
A One is Keith Richards in rehearsal bent over his guitar by an amp with Charlie Watts blurred in the background. It’s 100 percent natural, I didn’t light it. And it’s Keith before he’s a druggie, so it’s also him doing what he loves the most.
I have a famous shot of Mick [Jagger] and Keith from behind on stage, which is when I realized that’s a great angle because then you are seeing what the band sees.
I also love the shots of Keith and then Mick talking to their hero, Chuck Berry. Stanley Booth, who wrote a book about the Stones, wrote that Keith was so adoring he looked like “a little English schoolboy.”
Q You love capturing the moment but you also proved willing to stage a shot, like the one in an airport of Richards standing beneath a sign about “a drug-free America” or the cover of “Who’s Next.”
A As a working photographer, you do what you think works. As a rule, I never changed anything but we were waiting in customs and I saw that sign and said, “That’s too good to miss.” I called for Mick and Keith both to come. Keith was closer and came first and after a shot or two a customs official said, “Stop or we’re confiscating your film.”
The “Who’s Next” cover was totally improvised. They had no cover and had almost finished the album. One day, we’re driving in the rain and Pete [Townshend] is going 100 miles an hour so when we pass these shapes I don’t say anything, but then there’s a roundabout and he slows down. No roundabout, no Who’s Next cover—at that moment, he says, “Have any ideas” and I tell him about these shapes, so he zips around and speeds back.
The minute you see that monolith thing, you think about “2001.” [Roger] Daltrey and [John] Entwistle started acting like the apes from the movie. In my book, I have a whole contact sheet of the band doing the apes. But it was no good for the cover.
Then I looked up and Pete had [urinated] on it. That was real. The others couldn’t so I poured water on it to make it look like they had. It’s show business. And then we’re down the road at 100 miles an hour again and I’m just saying, “I hope this works.”
But the real sky was grey that day so the sky in the photo was taken a different day.
Q Tell me about the book of black-and-white photos you created to help tell the story of the Who’s iconic rock opera “Quadrophenia.” [It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Album Package.]
A Even before I went to England, I loved “A Taste of Honey,” a black and white English film, and of course “A Hard Day’s Night.” The black-and-white photos of the English photographer Bill Brandt were also very evocative to me. But in England, I was doing rock stars and had worked in color, so for this book I decided to use black-and-white.
I believe the songwriters were the most important writers of my generation, so I wanted to figure out what Pete was saying and then bring that to the photos. When I delivered the artwork which was eighty boards. Pete says, “I thought you said it was going to be six pages.” [Russell shrugs and laughs] I said, “I might have, but here’s what I’ve got now.”
The book wasn’t glossy—the paper was purposely newsprint-y– so they could make it as cheaply as possible. The English didn’t care about it because they knew the mods and rockers story, but I’ve been told that the book helped Americans appreciate the album in a way they never would have otherwise, so at the end of the day it ended up working out for record company and The Who.
