Hey Elterman, Oh leave me alone…
Photographer Brad Elterman has an exhibition running through to the end of the month at Equator Books in Venice, California, to promote his book: Like It Was Yesterday.
Brad is responsible for the intriguing picture above, which you may be familiar with via the pages of CREEM magazine back in April 76. I’ve superimposed that original CREEM page onto Brad’s wonderful shot which he talks about below…
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I Was A Teenage Paparazzo 1975 by Brad Elterman
This was my first Paparazzi photograph, but I would never consider myself a true Paparazzo. I was incredibly “in crowd” when it came to getting access to parties, backstage and concert photo passes. Sure there were times when I could not resist and I would take a photo of a celebrity on the street without permission. The PR that I would work with would just laugh when they would see these types of photos on mine in the magazines and newspapers.
On the day that I took this photograph of David Bowie I had a tip that he was having a late night recording session at Cherokee Recording Studios on Fairfax Blvd in Hollywood. I got there really early in the morning and waited for Bowie to emerge. The guy seated in the car next to Bowie is Man Who Fell To Earth producer, Paul Buckmaster. Keep in mind that no one was really doing Paparazzi style photography back then and both Bowie and Buckmaster thought my approach was incredibly hysterical.
Creem magazine ran this as a full page for their section “Stars And Their Cars” and the photo was published in a couple of other magazines around the world. I can still feel the adrenaline rush today!
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Below is the caption from the original CREEM page in a more legible form…
I’ll leave you with another of Elterman’s shots taken that morning and published in Circus magazine a few weeks later than the CREEM shot.
The Circus caption read: Bowie delivers tapes for his sound track to “The Man Who Fell To Earth” to L.A. studio.
This account makes less sense than the original CREEM caption as it’s clear from Elterman’s account that Bowie was leaving Cherokee, not arriving with a delivery.
It also seems likely that Bowie had worked through the night as the Silly Billy was so tired he put his jumper on inside out!
Still, wouldn’t mind hearing those tapes if Circus magazine was right about what was on them.
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