The Band, outtake from the cover session of The Band album. Photo by Elliott Landy.
Landy tells a favorite story.
“I’m very much into spiritual, metaphysical things, I share energy, I do energy work with people, sometimes healing happens. It’s what I do, rather than shipping boxes, but you do what you’ve got to do.
“Kickstarter had predicted $300,000 but I didn’t think, it would go that high. As it was going up and getting close to the end of the process, I said let me see if I can manifest $200,000…so I did that in my meditation, to see if I can affect physical reality with mental stimulation, if I can tickle the universe a little bit…so I did that and I tried. At the end when we were watching it stopped at $193,626, and I was surprised, I really thought I could manifest that — because I don’t ask for money when I do this stuff, I look to give, to share…to help people. I ask for clarity for myself not for money. But I thought, why not? If I have too many material things, there are plenty of people I can give to. So after it closed, ten, fifteen minutes later I hear from a guy who was a print buyer from some years back — I hadn’t heard from him in five, six years — and he said I’m going to write you a check for whatever the difference was. He wanted to make it go to $200,000. That tells me the universe is listening.”
The funding freed Landy to make the book that he wanted.
“It gave me carte blanche…I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to pay my assistants, do all the printing, proofing…”
The book ended up being 160 pages, on fine quality paper. “I spent way over the $200,000 in terms of time,” Landy says. “But that’s what I do. I don’t add, I don’t subtract. I had the money, so I did it.”
Why the continuing interest in The Band? Of course, that’s a rhetorical question here in Woodstock, where the stories are told and retold around the Thanksgiving table; where drummer Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles from the early 2000s until his death in 2012 put the music community back on the world map and rekindled interest in those long ago days. But The Band never sold like Sinatra or the Beatles, had a run of less than a decade as artists on the big stage, though post-Last Waltz editions of the group in the 1980s and 90s, minus guitarist Robbie Robertson, made some burning music. Three — Levon, bassist Rick Danko and pianist Richard Manuel — have passed on. Organist, multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson still lives in the area and can occasionally be seen performing. Even Robbie Robertson doesn’t have what Hollywood would call a high profile.
Landy explains his attachment.
“I think in music, and amongst music aficionados they’re considered one of the best and most original bands. Taplin explains that [former Band road manager Jonathan Taplin also contributed an essay to the book.] See, I don’t know anything about this at all, the nomenclature of music. What I say is that this is organic music, they were very natural people, they were not affected at all, they treated everybody with equal kindness, whether they were a record company executive or whether they were the deli guy making a sandwich for them. You were all equally respected.
“What they created together, the harmony, the connectedness of their music, the feeling space and life, touched people.
He talks of his own connection.
“Actually, I was never able to take pictures of people playing music unless I liked the music. In the early days at the Fillmore and other concert halls, if I didn’t like the music, I just put the camera down. My visual connection, perception, is very deeply connected to my auditory experience.
“Before I photographed them I hadn’t heard their music. When a musician plays, he’s putting vibration out there into the universe — art is a manifestation of a person’s inner being — so I felt immediately comfortable with these guys, and they with me. They invited me in, they never minded me being there and taking pictures.
“I’m very sensitive about taking pictures and if I felt that somebody didn’t like having their picture taken I wouldn’t take their picture. I’ve never, that I can think of, forced a picture on anybody, I’ve never been a paparazzi type person. That’s blasphemy to me, that’s breaking a holy covenant, using a camera that I try to create beauty with, using it to harm somebody, to make somebody feel bad — that exactly the opposite of why I do this stuff. I hadn’t heard their music when I started doing it, that didn’t come until later, and of course I loved it.
“I was inspired. The music is like food, you hear it and it feeds my desire to take pictures of them. I don’t do concerts that much anymore, once in a while.” Landy was spotted recently, shooting video at a Tom Pacheco concert. “Yeah, well, he’s fabulous, that’s why. I want to make sure his work is remembered, is captured because it’s so special, what he
Next for Landy?
“I’ve got another Band book, maybe two. That’s what it is. I was feeling the pictures around me, I’d look at them and I’d say, I have to do something with this — not want to, I have to. So I have at least one more Band book. I want to do a book of my Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix photos, maybe one or two.
“My newer work, my photographs of Linda (Landy’s wife) for the last 15 years…She’s called it Love at 60…She’s written the text to inspire women not to be afraid of change.”
He says he’s sent copies of The Band Photographs out to Robbie Robertson, one to Richard Manuel’s family, Rick Danko’s niece. He said he hasn’t reached Garth Hudson, but he did send one to Levon’s studio.
“Because I was able to control [the entire process of creating the book]…the size of the pages, the quality of the printing, I didn’t have to stop because there was a deadline. I stopped because I was done. It really is the book I always wanted to do. For me, it’s one picture against another picture, you’re looking at the photograph, uncropped for the most part. It’s a photographer’s book, it’s about photography of this group. The art of the photography is as important as the subject matter. I was able to do that because I controlled it myself.
“I have 12,000 pictures — but not 12,000 good ones…see I’m more a failure than a success. I’ve got more bad pictures than good pictures. What I say to people is that photography is not baseball, your average doesn’t matter, it’s only the good ones that matter. If five percent are good, that’s fine.”
The Band Photographs, 1968-1969, by Elliott Landy is available at the Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock, and at www.thebandphotos.com.
