Allan Tanenbaum

NYC in the 1970s

There were ripples of excitement around John Lennon’s re-emergence on vinyl with Yoko. I found out how to get in touch with her and Peter Occhiogrosso, then music editor at the SoHo News, called and went to see her about doing an interview with her alone. A great idea, because people always used her to get to John. She agreed and Peter started the interview. Next, I spoke with her about shooting the cover photo.

I picked up Yoko early morning of November 20, 1980, and drove her to my studio. Reluctant and aloof in front of the camera, gradually she relaxed and we came up with a cute shot. From not wanting to remove her leather jacket and shades she moved to a coy smile with a hand on her jeans zipper. I took the film to the lab after dropping her off, and arranged to return the next day for approval and to shoot some black and white. On November 21st I was up at The Dakota very early and Yoko and I went out for bacon and eggs. I suggested that we do a picture with John and their son Sean. Yoko said not Sean but that she’d ask John when we got back. She did, and he came downstairs to her office from their 7th floor apartment. He looked great, really happy, and was quite friendly as I reminded him that I’d met him in 1975 at a taping of ‘A Salute to Sir Lew Grade’. He laughed, and launched into a story about how much the audience hated him.


John and Yoko and I left The Dakota and crossed Central Park West into the park. We walked around, John keeping up a constant banter, until we found a bench which seemed to be the location. We did some shots, then walked back to The Dakota, stopping to make a few photos with this mysterious building in the background, including those fateful gates. Inside Studio One, we made a few more: John autographing ‘Double Fantasy’ albums and Yoko on a ladder with her banks off file cabinets.


I overheard her speaking about an upcoming filming session for a video, and asked if I could shoot stills during the filming. “I’ll think about it,” was all Yoko said. I left, satisfied with the morning’s photography.


A few days later, on November 26th 1980, there was a call from Studio One – Yoko wanted me to photograph the filming in Central Park for “Starting Over”. Just the park, not the studio, she’d said. So we met at The Dakota early that morning, and John, resplendent in a fur-lined silver jacket, Yoko, also in a fur jacket, and I went for coffee at a little café around the corner. John was so friendly, so easy to be with, as if he craved contact with people after 5 years of self-imposed house arrest.


After coffee we headed to the park to meet the film crew. It was a beautiful Fall day with crisp sunlight. John and Yoko were filmed walking through the park together. When the take was completed, Yoko said to me, “You can come to the studio. John feels comfortable with you.” We piled into a limo and headed downtown to SoHo, to a gallery on Greene St. It looked like a small soundstage. A corner of the gallery was completely white, with some white pedestals, a white stairway going nowhere, and a bed covered with their favorite quilt. The basic scene was this: John and Yoko enter the ‘white room’, disrobe, and make love on the bed. First in street clothes, then in beautiful Japanese kimonos. My photos, needless to say, were quite special, quite precious. John was a lot of fun on the set, very easy to talk to and be with. I only felt self-concious when I remembered that I was talking with John Lennon, Famous Ex-Beatle. Otherwise, we carried on about everything – sailing, TV, marijuana…Even when he was tired of the prolonged setting up of shots, he kept his humor. “What is this, Ben Fucking Hur?” he asked.

When filming was completed, we got back into the limo and headed uptown to The Dakota, where I picked up my VW and headed back downtown. The next day was Thanksgiving. I brought the processed color transparencies and black and white prints to The Dakota the following Sunday for John and Yoko to view. Yoko liked the photos and sent them upstairs for John to see. John came down while I was setting up the slide projector. Not seeing me as he entered her office, he waved the prints and said, “Hey Yoko, these are great!” Then he noticed me and said, “Oh, there you are. These are wonderful. You’re the only one to show Yoko’s beauty.” That made me very happy. We looked at the slides, John saying how he always hated editing slides from The Beatles days, because no one could agree on which slide to use.


I left The Dakota that evening feeling quite excited, happy that they liked the photographs, full of ideas about the future. I never saw John again.


On Monday, December 8th, 1980, I was working in the SoHo News darkroom after the evening’s production. I was finishing some black and white prints for John and Yoko that I should have finished Sunday but didn’t due to a cold. I was to bring the prints to The Dakota that Monday evening and was on the last print when Josh Friedman, then editor-in-chief of the SoHo News, walked into the darkroom to tell me that John Lennon had just been shot and was dead.


Stunned with disbelief, I turned on the news, which had erroneously reported that he had been wounded, giving me false hope. I went to Roosevelt Hospital, but by then everyone knew that John Lennon was dead, the victim of a mad assassin’s bullets. In shock, I drove to the precinct house where Mark David Chapman, a node at the intersection of the force of Evil and Our Reality, was being held. The police walked him past the press, his jacket over his head. Still in shock, I went to the Dakota gates, where fans were holding a candlelight vigil. The SoHo News had come out on the prior Wednesday with the Peter Occhiogrosso interview, my portrait of Yoko, and the cover line “Yoko Only.” The week of his murder the paper used my portrait of John on the cover with only “1940-1980” for type, along with Peter Occhiogrosso’s piece.


I hadn’t been able to cry until then, but as my shock turned to grief, the depth of my despair brought tears without end.


I imagined that we would be doing a lot of work together, perhaps I would be there tour photographer. SO I went for the highest of the highs to the lowest of the lows.


It would be redundant to describe what John Lennon meant to me and my generation. For many months the sadness overwhelmed me and I felt unwell.

But life goes on, although working with these photos now makes me feel strange. I still wish futilely that the clock could be stopped at that terrible moment, the attack prevented, and that John would still be alive.

JANIS JOPLIN

Photographs by Barry Feinstein

We have in project, with our agent in New York Jesse Blatte, the use of the contact sheet of the last photo shoot of Janis Joplin created by Barry Feinstein

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