Saturday Night NORMAN SEEF: Fifty Years in Exile
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Keith Richards, Exile in Color
(Detail)
© Norman Seeff
24x36 Archival Pigment Print
RECEPTION SATURDAY
NORMAN SEEFF:
FIFTY YEAS IN EXILE
Thank you to everyone who came out last weekend. It was so much fun we've decided to host an impromptu reception on Saturday night (tomorrow) for our RPM email blast subscribers who have not yet had a chance to see
NORMAN SEEFF: FIFTY YEARS IN EXILE
May 14 - June 12
Currently running at our Special Exhibition Space in Glendale, the show features an incredible array of rare and vintage photos and several fascinating artifacts from Norman's legendary 1972 session with the Rolling Stones.
Norman has made a number of new prints specifically for the show, including the massive 12-foot wide larger-than-life mural in our front window. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to enjoy these photos, many available for purchase for the very first time.
WHEN: Saturday, May 21st from 6-9pm
WHERE: Rock Photography Museum Special Exhibition Space
ADDRESS: 123 N Artsakh Ave, Glendale, CA 91206
PARKING: 90 minutes free in the adjacent parking structure
Refreshments served.
Admission is FREE but this is a private event and you must RSVP to attend.
If you can't make it Saturday night, visit the show during our regular hours:
Sunday 11-4
Wednesday / Thursday 11-6
Friday / Saturday 11-8
We will be open tomorrow during the day, prior to the reception.
The show runs through June 12th.
Find out more about Norman's session with the Stones from the man himself in this fascinating recent interview from LA Weekly by Lina Licaro.
Exile on Main Street celebrates its 50th anniversary this week. It is widely regarded as the Rolling Stones’ most important album, but even if it isn’t your favorite, if you’re a Stones fan, you know it’s special, especially as representation of the time when Mick, Keith and the boys were at their coolest and most creative. Coming off the sexy Americana-tinged grit of Sticky Fingers, Exile saw the band at a melodic high point in songwriting and stylistic output, evoking hedonism, wistfulness and defiance as they had “exiled” themselves to avoid exorbitant UK taxes. The year was 1972, and music in general had an effortless excess about it. (The Black Crowes just released an EP celebrating songs from the year, and it opens with Exile’s first track “Rocks Off”). Photographer Norman Seeff was privy to much of the creative planning for the iconic record, as he worked with Mick Jagger and John Van Hamersveld on art direction and photography.
Seeff shares rare images and ephemera from the project with “50 Years In Exile" exhibiting images from his 1972 photo session with the Stones. Vintage photos and the paste-up layout used to produce a set of postcards included with the original pressing of the album will be on display. Seeff shared some memories and background on the project and the band with LA Weekly.
LA WEEKLY: How did you come to work with The Stones?
NORMAN SEEFF: Well, it’s kind of a very broad story and I’m going to just add some history in there. I was a medical doctor working in emergency medicine in South Africa in Soweto. I had to get out of the country because I didn’t like the South African apartheid system and they didn’t like me. I ended up in New York with one little camera in my hands and, never having been trained in the arts, but in the hubris of youth, thought “I can do anything I want.” I started walking the streets of New York and bumping into interesting people, asking them if I could photograph them. I’d bumped into people like Patti Smith or people from The Factory and I built up this portfolio in New York of what you could call “the subculture.” Suddenly, to my surprise, I ended up as this rock photographer in New York! I didn’t even know when I came from South Africa, that there was a business called the music business where you can take photographs for album covers. I met a man in New York–he was considered the top graphic designer in the music world. He became my mentor and opened up all the doors for me.
After about three years in New York, he recommended that I come to Los Angeles because they were looking for an art director for United Artists Records. Suddenly, you know, from a few years earlier, just walking the streets with a camera, I’m now a head of United Artists, the graphic side. Somehow, my reputation must have reached London. I get a call from someone about The Rolling Stones. They’ll be in L.A. and would I do the shoots. The two biggest projects you could get were shooting either Beatles or The Rolling Stones. I would have been happy with the Beatles as well, but the point is, once you shoot one, you can’t shoot the other. It’s like doing a commercial for Coca Cola. They won’t let you do one for Pepsi.
What was the conceptual idea behind the postcard imagery?
Mick Jagger was pissed off about the tax situation in England and they decided that they needed to leave and go and work in another country. Mick had seen a picture of the Ballet Russes, which was the Russian National Ballet Company. They were traveling the world and what happened is the whole ballet company defected to the States. He’d seen a photograph of them, I think, coming down the ramp of an airplane. The story that I was told was Mick wanted to do it coming down the ramp of a boat, and more kind of period looking–Titanic days, that kind of look. We checked out the Long Beach docks and realized that if we brought the band to Long Beach, we would have 1000 people on the docks and that wasn’t going to work. Then the idea was can we build a set? I found one of the big stages in Hollywood and we had to work quickly. I got my crew and we took one day, starting early in the morning to build the set.
To read the rest of the interview visit LA WEEKLY.
https://www.laweekly.com/photographer-norman-seeff-on-his-iconic-exile-on-main-street-images/
