Photography

Brad Elterman’s golden rule of concerts?

“There’s always a party.”

And if anyone is an authority on this, it’s Elterman.

Around a curtained corner in the posh Le Parker Meridien hotel on Manhattan’s West Side, under a neon burger sign, I sit down with prolific rock photographer, Brad Elterman. The Burger Joint is a crowded hole-in-the-wall in the middle of this luxury hotel. Elterman has suggested this place for dinner, which turned out to be apropos for the man himself.

Elterman is a sort of Everyman – a completely unpretentious, quality guy, who just happens to seat himself in the middle of decadence. At sixteen, he borrowed a friend’s camera and snapped a shot of Dylan performing on stage, launching a whirlwind career that has given him backstage access to just about every rock/punk/pop legend to grace the stage and my high school bedroom walls. He has partied with the best, and he has spent his life chronicling these adventures.

As we talk, I realize how genuinely interested Elterman is in hearing my perspective on his photos: why do I like them and what do they mean to me? He talks about music, his disgust for today’s pop culture, why he likes Lindsey Lohan.  He appreciates a good burger, a good beer, a good whiskey. He just also happens to be good friends with Cherie Currie, used to party with nude girls at The Mega Mansion in Beverly Hills four times a week,  and still has dinner with the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones.

Elterman’s new, limited-edition, signed, seventy-two page book, Like It Was Yesterday, which has graciously included Discosalt in the intro, is a personal collection of fifty-five provocative black and white and color glossies. Pop culture aficionados are transported back to the long gone, but not forgotten, rock-and-roll renaissance of the seventies and eighties. It’s a collection of raw, candid, often intimate snapshots of celebrities at a point in time when celebrity meant something very different than it does today.  Brad’s unadulterated images manage to capture and transcend something beyond the guise of the lens: a loner slacker Joey Ramone in a parking garage; a workaholic David Bowie hustling to his car at 6am; Steve Jones showing off his “sex pistol” in a swimming pool. These are moments that can never be reproduced in a studio.

As we chew the fat about his prolific career and the book, I realize that Brad’s rule for concerts, doesn’t only apply to concerts. It’s sort of his life mantra.  There is always a party, if you are looking for one. And Brad is always looking, thankfully right behind a camera.