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| © Allan Tannenbaum |
| Click photo for more images from John & Yoko: A New York Love Story. |
AP: Didn't your 1980 images start out as a piece about Yoko for the SoHo News?
AT: Intially, yeah. That was the approach that the music editor I worked with at the SoHo News took to get in with them. They called the piece "Yoko Only," and ironically that was the cover line that was on the newsstands when he was killed. I had photographed her for that story and and I asked if John and Sean could come. And she said, "Not Sean, but I'll call John," and he came in and he remembered me from five years earlier. And I ended up spending a lot of time with them. We went downtown to a gallery in SoHo where they had a bedroom set up for a video shoot. So then when they started coming in and taking off their clothes and getting into bed, I was just astonished.
AP: Did they tell you that's what they would be doing?
AT: No, they just started doing it, for the film camera. And I was just kind of a fly on the wall, keeping out of the way of the crew but getting those shots. And occasionally getting something on my own in between setups. They took off their street clothes, put on kimonos, and walked into the bedroom set and took those clothes off, for the video.
AP: How far did they go with the lovemaking act?
AT: I would say it was more tender and loving than erotic. I wouldn't call it X-rated. It was discreet.
AP: That video was for the song, "(Just Like) Starting Over," right?
AT: Yes. Although pieces from that shoot wound up being used in different videos for different songs.
AP: Most accounts describe John as being very happy at that time. Was that your impression?
AT: Oh, yeah. They were in a good place, so he seemed really happy, really up, optimistic. It sounded like he had found himself, and conquered his demons, and he had a lot of creative energy going. He seemed content in his relationship with Yoko and happy about his 5-year-old son. And I envisioned, because we were getting along and working well, that we would do more things together. I knew that they were planning to go on tour with this new album, and I was hoping to be a tour photographer with them, and so a lot was happening and John was just great. He was so easy to be around. It was like talking with your oldest best friend.
AP: But I did read one photographer's comments from that time, saying John looked like he hadn't been out in awhile. Like he was reemerging.
AT: Well that's what I've heard, and it's no secret that they were fairly secluded. When we were walking around in the park, he didn't have that aspect to him, because that's one thing they did do was go out in Central Park often. What is now Strawberry Fields was their favorite place. Around there he didn't have that aspect of just being "released."
AP: So you were actually working on some pictures of John and Yoko at the time you heard that he died?
AT: I was making prints, because I had seen them a few days after our last session and I had shown them contact sheets. They'd marked the contacts and told me which ones they liked. And John would joke around about how difficult it was to pick pictures when he was with the Beatles. So I knew what they wanted, and I had made an appointment with them to bring pictures to the Dakota, and I was working on the last things in the darkroom. That's when I got the news that he had been shot. I left everything in the darkroom and grabbed my cameras and ran uptown.
AP: You described it as being "on autopilot."
AT: I really switched modes from darkroom to news photographer. And it was surreal, going to the hospital first and hoping that he would somehow still be alive, then realizing he didn't make it. And then you just find out what's going on. I was numb and shocked, and I went to the precinct and I was there when they walked [gunman Mark David] Chapman through. They had it set up for the press, so there was a lot of media inside. I had a New York City press card so it was not a problem to get in. But it was very strange. I was in shock for a long time.
AP: When did you go back with Yoko, after his death, to shoot pictures around town?
AT: That was a couple of months later. And I saw her just a couple of days after -- she wanted to talk with me about taking a picture for something she was working on. So I was with her when she was in the depths of her grief. Extremely upset. I mean, you can imagine.
AP: In some of your photographs of her, from early in 1981, she looks sad but also strong.
AT: Yeah, that was it. She had to be strong, she had to survive, she had a 5-year-old son, so I guess that's a good way to put it.
AP: Then you made more pictures of her and Sean a few years later? They look much better there.
AT: Yeah, that was at the Dakota two or three years later. Life had gotten a little bit more back to normal for them.
AP: Are you friendly with Sean now?
AT: I run into him occasionally.He always recognizes me and gives me a hug. I'm going to go to the Imagine Peace Tower opening in Iceland. It's on Sean's birthday as well as John's, and I'm sure Sean will be there.
AP: Do you have special hopes for this project? Is part of your motivation to show unseen outtakes?
AT: Well, it's to put my collection of John and Yoko pictures in one place, and to not only show pictures that people are familiar with but also to show photographs that people have never seen before. And it's almost as if I had never seen them either, because I had just passed over them. There were little subtle things -- when Yoko and I looked at the contact sheets together, there were a lot of nice pictures that we noticed.
AP: And they bring back memories.
AT: Yeah, which is bittersweet. As you can imagine, because it was such a heady time and it was so very exciting. John was a hero to me, and I love music, I love rock and roll, and I loved John Lennon. He was such an all-around artist and character. So it was very very exciting to be around him and to be photographing him and Yoko. And to have that terrible evil tragedy happen, right then and there, and just coming from the heights all the way down to the depths -- it's a bittersweet memory.
AP: Do you think that sadness may be part of the reason it took awhile to pull this together?
AT: Well, yeah, it might be. In fact I had trouble listening to Beatles music and John Lennon music until very recently. I couldn't even listen to it. Because it would make me so sad to hear his voice. Until very recently. Now I can listen to it and I enjoy it. But it took me a long time to recover. It was strange: When he was killed, I was in such shock and I didn't really cry; a few tears would come and I would get choked up, but I was thinking, you know, "What's wrong with me?" And when things calmed down a bit, and it was the first Saturday after he died, it was like the dam broke. The floodgates were opened. I could not stop crying for hours. And then I finally pulled myself together. In a similar way, it took awhile to come back to these pictures.
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