![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Ethan_Russell_Stones_Altamo.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAmong the compelling cast of characters in Peter Jackson\u2019s sprawling Get Back<\/i> documentary is an American photographer. The dazzling and unlikely odyssey of Ethan Russell is the subject of a new presentation, Best Seat in the House<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Growing up in San Francisco during the early years of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, Russell was drawn to the sounds and style of Elvis Presley. But he says that rock and roll \u201cwent away\u201d in pop culture for several years, and when it returned, a fundamental shift had taken place. \u201cBy the time I was in college, everything that was important musically was coming from England.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Russell was restless. \u201cI asked my dad to borrow some money to buy a movie camera,\u201d he recalls. His father was skeptical, questioning whether his 22 year old son was using his time well. Ethan replied that learning to make movies was more practical than flying around the world. His father called his bluff. \u201cWell, why don\u2019t you do that?\u201d Ethan got on a plane and flew to London in 1968.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspected that England would be like Haight-Ashbury, only further out,\u201d Russell recalls. \u201cEverything would be about The Beatles and The Stones.\u201d But he discovered that London wasn\u2019t like that at all. The Beatles had ceased touring, and they were rarely seen in public. Russell took a job in a hospital working with autistic children. \u201cI didn\u2019t know quite what I was doing,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I was happy enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
A friend from America came to visit Russell, bringing along a copy of a new book, Family of Man.<\/i> \u201cIt was a Museum of Modern Art exhibition and then a book,\u201d Russell explains. \u201cIt\u2019s a very moving book of photography.\u201d Seeing Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s groundbreaking film Blow-Up<\/i> had already inspired him to start thinking more about working behind the lens. He recalls thinking, \u201cThat\u2019s cool! Maybe I could do that!\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell picked up a few photography jobs, and then one day a journalist friend asked if he\u2019d like to come along on an interview and shoot photos. Russell agreed, and asked who was being interviewed. \u201cMick Jagger,\u201d he was told.<\/p>\n
The session went well, and Russell thought that was the end of it. \u201cThat was the peak, you know?\u201d he says with a laugh. But six weeks later, the journalist friend invited Russell along on another interview. This time the interviewee was John Lennon.<\/p>\n
Things took off from there. His subjects liked Russell\u2019s working method: he didn\u2019t get in the way. He captured images that reflected the essence of his subjects. In quick succession, Russell went on to take photos during the making of The Beatles\u2019 Let it Be<\/i>, the Rolling Stones\u2019 1969 tour (including the Altamont concert), the Beatles\u2019 final photo shoot, the cover of Who\u2019s Next<\/i> and other iconic subjects.<\/p>\n
Russell would eventually amass a portfolio of photos of many American and British rock and pop culture figures. By the late \u201870s he had moved into the field of the then-new field of music video production. And in the mid 1980s, the multiple Grammy award nominee published his first book of photography, Dear Mr. Fantasy: Diary of a Decade \u2013 Our Time and Rock and Roll<\/i>. He would eventually follow that with another book, Let it Bleed: The Rolling Stones 1969 Tour<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Now \u2013 well into the 21st<\/sup> century \u2013 Ethan Russell has put together what he describes as a slideshow. Voicing the perspective of a potential attendee, he asks a question: \u201cWhy would I go to a slideshow<\/i>?\u201d And then he answers it from his own point of view. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\n But The Best Seat in the House<\/i> is vastly more than a slideshow. \u201cThere\u2019s a story carrying along with all these pictures,\u201d he says. \u201cThe trip to England, meeting Jagger, meeting Lennon, shooting the Rock and Roll Circus<\/i>, doing Stones tours in \u201869 and \u201872, working with The Who [shooting evocative black-and-white photos for the cover and booklet of Quadrophenia]\u2026<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n The presentation follows Russell\u2019s adventures right through to his video years, when he made a music video for John Lennon\u2019s \u201cWoman.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s the arc of time covered in the show: 1968 to \u201880,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Russell remains slightly in awe of his set of experiences. \u201cI never understood why I was there, or why anybody would pay any attention to me,\u201d he admits. But that attitude served him well as he photographed some of rock\u2019s biggest names. \u201cI didn’t want them paying attention to me,\u201d he insists. \u201cIf people were saying, \u2018Hi, Ethan,\u2019 then they were looking at the camera. I wanted to be outside of all that.\u201d<\/p>\n And so he was. But with The Best Seat in the House<\/i>, he returns to those days, and this time, he brings the audience along. And with Ethan Russell, they are<\/i> inside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Among the compelling cast of characters in Peter Jackson\u2019s sprawling Get Back documentary is an American photographer. The dazzling and unlikely odyssey of Ethan Russell is the subject of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62,74],"tags":[4782],"class_list":["post-22653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","category-visual-art","tag-ethan-russell","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","cat-74-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22653"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22736,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22653\/revisions\/22736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}