Toronto has been a destination for my photography for the last 12 years, several times to teach Silver-printing workshops for Bob Carnie.  In my opinion, Carnie is one of the 5 best Silver printers on the planet, so, it’s an incredible honor to be asked to teach a silver printing workshop for Bob Carnie.  During May 2011, my good friend and fine large format photographer Gene LaFord, formerly of Massachusetts, accompanied me. Gene and I were out before dawn one morning long before rush hour where I was set up to make an image of what would soon become a busy intersection. Gene snapped a picture of me as I made the above image. The sweeping random shapes of the overhead trolley cables and the actual trolly tracks repeating those shapes in the pavement is what drew me to make this image. Pitted against a seemingly uninhabited Toronto skyline makes for an unusual image.

    During that same visit in May 2011, I had a solo show myself at the 918 Bathurst Cultural Center and Gallery during the Contact Festival shown below. Gene LaFord was with me for the long weekend to help setup the show and enjoyed the opening night festivities. The Contact Photography Festival is a month-long feast of all genres of photography by some of the biggest names in the world. Always the entire month of May, it is said the festival draws over a million people from all parts of the free world to take in over 250 photography exhibitions.

    On an earlier visit to Toronto during the 2009 Contact festival, good friends Jim and Carrie Kipfer from Maine joined me. Jim is an accomplished large format photographer himself and both he and his wife Carrie were equaling looking forward to the weekend in Toronto. Joining me in Toronto with the Kipfer’s was Paul Paletti who represents my work here in the States at the Paul Paletti Gallery in Louisville, KY. Paul, not only has a wonderful gallery space in Louisville where he exhibits the best photographers working today.  He is a resource for anyone involved with serious photography, his knowledge, energy, and enthusiasm for all things photography is second to none, it is all my honor to call Paul a dear friend !

    The four of us along with Bob Carnie visited the prestigious Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto. As it happens, the Bulger Gallery was preparing for the 40th anniversary of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono week-long “Bed-In” in Montreal during the last week of May 2009. The gallery would be showing the works of Gerry Deiter who is the only photographer with complete access everyday to John and Yoko during the “Bed-In”. To further bring the experience closer to me, my friend Bob Carnie was commissioned by the Bulger Gallery to print the negatives that Deiter made of John and Yoko during the full 8 days he had access to Lennon and his new wife. Here is a short video where Bob Carnie talks about the photographs for the ’09 Bulger Gallery show Give Peace a Chance. The Bulger Gallery remained opened 24 hours a day for 5 straight days to commemorate John and Yoko’s initiative for world peace, known simply as the Bed-In ! 

    I asked Bob what memories he had in printing the iconic images of John and Yoko. He offered the following “like any project, one has to understand the scene you are about to print and then put the tonalities and emphasis where one believes it should be. When working with negatives of importance, one works quickly to get the negatives back in the hands of the owner. There are many published images of John and Yoko so there is a lot of reference on how the work should be rendered”.

      During the ’09 visit to the Bulger Gallery, I purchased the book of Deiter’s photographs he made during the Bed-In of May 26 – June 2, 1969.   Back when I started this blog 2.5 years ago I knew I wanted to write about and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Montreal Bed-In. Three suites, rooms 1738, 1740, 1742 would become known as Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal and is the real reason behind this month’s Story Behind Every Photograph. Today, it is possible to stay in this very room seen below @ $599.00 per night.  

A bit of history on Lennon

    In my humble opinion, Lennon was destined to be someone very special. Perhaps the best Lennon quote I ever heard came from 5-year-old John. “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life !  When I went to school, they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote down “happy”. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life !”

    John Lennon would start a band called the Quarryman named after Quarry Bank High School in 1956. Stuart Sutcliffe, the first bass guitarist, and Lennon are credited with inventing the name “Beetles”, as they both liked Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets. The band used this name for a while until Lennon decided to change the name to “the Beatles“, as he liked the double meaning of the new name. As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometimes referred to as the “Fifth Beatle.” Almost 2 years his junior, Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join the band in 1957. McCartney would soon suggest they bring on 14-year-old George Harrison as rhythm guitarist. Lennon at 17 years old thought Harrison was too young until he heard him play.  

    Pete Best, the original drummer was short lived and ultimately discharged by manager Brian Epstein at the direction of John, Paul, and George following their first recording session at Abbey Road Studios in London. Ringo Starr was brought on as the new drummer on August 16, 1962, and the rest is history as they say ! Much of the timeline and anecdotal information was sourced through Wikipedia and the BeatlesBible.  

    The working class band from Liverpool couldn’t get any interest in Britain so they traveled to Hamburg Germany and played in clubs from August 1960 through mid-1962. Harrison was still 17 and under age by Germany’s standards and the band was asked to leave. See this photo of the band performing in Hamburg’s Red Light district.    

     When the Beatles returned to Liverpool and the Cavern Club they were near unrecognizable in leather jackets and mop-topped haircuts. In little over a year’s time, the Beatles would experience a meteoric rise to become the most popular band in the world. They became so popular Lennon made an ill-advised statement early in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. The quote was part of a much broader narrative and taken out of context and caused a huge backlash here in the States. Lennon heard radio stations in the Bible Belt were orchestrating events to burn Beatles records by angry listeners. Though it is unclear how many such events really took place, the story of the burnings definitely reached the Beatles. “When they started burning our records…that was a real shock,” Lennon said years later. “I couldn’t go away knowing I’d created another little piece of hate in the world, so I apologized”.

     I once heard an explanation as to why the Beatles became so popular so quickly. With the end of WWII and the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation by the early 1960s, there were exponentially more teenagers on the planet than any time before or anytime since ! Like so many other kids in the USA, I first saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964, at about 12 years old. I grew up in a fairly strict household, certainly by today’s standards. I’m still a bit surprised my Dad let me watch the Sullivan show, I can’t help but wonder if he was a bit caught up all the hype himself !!  Sullivan show clip, I Saw Her Standing There. Two months later on April 4, 1964, the Beatles had 12 hits in Billboards Top 100 and astonishingly the top 5 hits were all Beatles tunes, a record never equaled before or since !  

     By my high school years, the majority of music I listened too was British and. While I respect all the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney stood out as musical geniuses. Lennon and McCartney went on to top the charts 27 times with each writing or singing lead split almost down the middle. I was drawn to Lennon’s going outside of the mainstream thinking and followed his music much more closely than other artists of the time. When he finally broke off from the Fab Four it seemed every lyric he wrote had a profound meaning. One of my favorites is from Beautiful Boy, a song he wrote about his son Sean he fathered with Yoko. The song was released on the Double Fantasy album just three weeks before his death. “Life happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. As complicated as life can be, how much more succinct could an overview of life be ??

    Lennon met Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery where she had a show on November 9, 1966. Lennon was struck by a tiny painting on the ceiling — visible only at the top of the ladder with a magnifying glass. It was the single word “Yes.” From that day forward Lennon was smitten with Ono and some would say, so began the decline of the Beatles, though no one knew it at the time.    

     On March 20th, 1969 Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar, traveled onto Paris and then drove to Amsterdam where they would honeymoon. Their weeklong honeymoon evolved into the first Bed-In to bring attention to their quest for World Peace and ending the Vietnam war. Their first Bed-In ran through March 31st at the Hilton in room 902.

   Less than 2 months later the couple would travel to the Bahamas on May 24th, to stage another Bed-In at the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel in Freeport. The couple found it much too hot in the Bahamas and too far from the United States where they hoped to draw significant publicly. Lennon was banned from the United States so they flew to Toronto and eventually cleared customs. The next day they flew to Montreal and the Queen Elizabeth Hotel where they would take suite rooms, 1738, 1740 and 1742 to what would become their most famous World Peace initiative. This Bed-In began March 26th and ran thru June 2, 1969.   

  

    Every few days the couple also had to report to the consul in Montreal, because they were only there on sufferance. They were in fact deported from Canada at the end of the bed-in because their appeal against not being allowed in the country had failed. They’d done the whole bed-in during an appeal period !         

    Interestingly, one of the poster boards in large letters “Bed Peace” and signed by Lennon from suite 1742 was sold at auction for $154,000.00 !! Photographs from room 1742, 50 years ago this week !

    When one considers there is no debate, The Beatles are the greatest band of all time, then without question, my generation grew up in the greatest period of music. From Doo-wop to the British Invasion and of course the Motown influence. The beat and music is the common thread, with Lennon it was always about his lyrics and message, and for me that puts Lennon at the mountaintop of all the Brits…“oh, what could have been”!!  

    I’ve thought long and hard how to end this departure from my Story Behind Every Photograph monthly blog posts. One can not deny the tragic and senseless night of December 8, 1980. However, it is especially poignant that every year since that fateful night two dozen roses, half red and half white, are left by the door of the suite 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth hotel.

 No one has ever been able to determine who sent them — or seen how they get there.

  Tune in next month for the extensive darkroom techniques I used for the Story Behind Every Photograph seen below: