Beginner’s Luck?

This Hall & Oates 1982-1983 Gallery contains the top 50 images that I took at six sold-out concerts between  June, 1982 and March, 1983. The concerts were the first I ever photographed, so beginners luck may have played a part in getting these amazing photos.

However, in reality I have to thank my friend Mike Klavana for the Full Access Photo Passes that allowed me to take pictures and move with relative freedom around the stages. Mike started out as a roady for H&O, but his own impressive musical talents eventually landed him a part in the band and credits on several H&O albums, and he has since had an impressive career working with a wide variety of bands. Last time I saw him on stage, he was playing synth and keyboards for Billy Joel (top that!) during Billy’s record-breaking tour at Madison Square Garden. Through Mike, I was able to show H&O band members the shots I had taken at several concerts, and that led to multiple print sales to drummer Mickey Curry and the late, great Base-guitar player T-Bone Wolk. (T-Bone used to carry a shot I took of him in his guitar case–and I know that because he showed it to my brother before a concert in Houston, TX.)

While I sold a few shots to band members, several attempts to show and sell these photos to magazines like Rolling Stone met with closed-doors. Years later, as a magazine editor, I discovered why. First, I was a rookie with no publishing credits, and second–I wasn’t using slide film. In fact, I often got chided by other concert photogs when I told them I was shooting with 400 ISO color and B&W negative films.  Unfortunately, in those days and right through the mid-90’s most publications only accepted color slides for submission (how did I know?) even though color negative film had superior contrast, shadow detail, and much lower grain at higher ISO’s.  As a result, none of these photos were ever seen by the public until now, with some notable exceptions: in Oct. 1994 a shot I took of H&O’s sax player Charlie DeChant (Mr. Casual) at the New Haven Coliseum appeared on the cover of Popular Photography Magazine. It was one of two illustrations I used for the story “How To Take Concert Photos” that I also wrote as an Associate Editor at Pop Photo (and the 5th of the nearly 3 dozen cover photos I published during my 17-year stint at that magazine.)

 Click on the article below to read.

After that story ran, I tucked most of my H&O negatives in a closet at work under dozens of film-storage boxes that I filled up over the years, and actually forgot where they were. Can’t tell you how happy I was to re-discover several books of H&O negatives and boxes of prints after I left the magazine in 2008, and also can’t tell you how happy I was when Hall & Oates got nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2014!

For me, the band members (and roadies!) of H&O were the most entertaining and talented group of musicians I’ve ever photographed or had the privilege to watch in concert. I only wish my kids (all big H&O fans) could have seen them back then, or that my old Canon A-E1 film camera could have captured HD videos and stereo sound like my phone does now!

Concert photos in the gallery shown below are from New Haven, CT as well as Queens, Rochester, and Buffalo, NY. All the photos were captured on 35mm color negative (Kodak Gold ISO 100-200) or 35mm b&w negative films (Kodak Tri X and Ilford XP1, ISO 200-400) using my first SLR, a Canon AE-1. I had two lenses at the time, a Canon 50mm f/1.8, and a Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm f/4-5.6. The web-optimized images here were downsized from high res scans made by a Plustek 7600i Film Scanner and saved as 3600 ppi resolution, 32-bit TIFF. Stay tuned regarding the availability of archival-prints  from select images in this set.