This past Wednesday, classic rock photography buffs united under one roof at the newly minted Roxy Hotel in Soho to celebrate the works of Henry Diltz, Joel Bernstein and Graham Nash, one man in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
The event was lubricated by some wine and anti-pasta before the three men got into their presentation about some of the most famous pictures they have taken over their careers. It primarily focused on new pictures from Bernstein and Nash.
They flipped through individual pictures and explained the back story behind them.
Bernstein recalls the pretty incredible story of how he met Joni Mitchell for the first time as a young 16-year-old kid in high school and managed to become her professional photographer. He would go on to shoot her and Neil Young for many more years even while in college at the University of Wisconsin.
The famed picture on the cover of Crosby, Still & Nash came to be as the group were recording their album and decided to take a walk. They came across this house on Santa Monica Boulevard, which they felt represented their music down home, intimae, funky and close to you. Nash recalls how they were still coming up with the order of the group and took the picture with each man in the wrong order after deciding that night. They went back to the house the next day, but it had been demolished, so the group remains in the wrong order forever.
Bernstein and Diltz are both responsible for album covers and famed pictures of famed rockets like Neil Young, Joni Mitchel, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Tom Petty and more.
The individuals in the audience were primarily photography buffs who asked questions about which type of lens was used for a certain shot or older individuals who were present during the height of Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Neil Young in the 1970s and 1980s.
