“Bonnie Raitt, Cambridge, MA 1974”
This photo was taken during the sound check one afternoon. Dick Waterman, her manager, liked it so much he wanted Warner Brothers to use it for an album cover. Unfortunately the tonality of it was a little to dark to reproduce well. Dick was very kind in letting me know they really gave it a shot. Oh, if the only had Photoshop then!
“Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne at sound check, Orpheum Theater, Boston 1974”
This was the first time they played together and remained friends over the years following.
“Something Special in the Night” Bruce Springsteen, Cambridge, MA 1974
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were to play 45 minute sets that night, opening for Bonnie Raitt. A couple of weeks earlier promoters Ira Gold and Geoffrey Hersch had met with Bruce in a bar about opening for Bonnie. There had been no plans for an opening act. Bruce’s first set lasted well over an hour. Between shows, the promoters asked Mike Appel, Bruce’s manager at the time, to please keep the set to the agreed upon limit. In the second set, Bruce knowing that Jon Landau was in the house, decided to play even longer. Bonnie and her band had returned from dinner between shows, expecting to get ready to go on. But it wasn’t to be just yet. So they waited. While members of her band fumed back stage about the delay, Bonnie just watched from the wings. As much as she was ready to play, she couldn’t help but notice, something very special was happening that night and she wasn’t going to interrupt it.
This shot is actually a crop of a wider shot that had Gary Tallent in it is well. I usually don’t try to crop my photos, often looking to capture the image in the frame. But closer inspection, and a little cropping, saw something special here as well.
“It’s midnight in Manhattan. This is no time to be cute”
When I was living in Boston in 1974 a friend brought home Bruce’s second album, “The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle”. He said he had heard this guy was pretty good and we should go see him ‘cause he was playing in a bar in Cambridge that week. Well, we did and I swear that night I heard rock n roll like I had never heard it before. I immediately called my promoter friend, who’s acts I photographed, and said you got to book this guy because he is incredible and if anything else I just got to hear him again. He borrowed my album and decided he should give him a try. Well to make a long story short, he went and saw Bruce at Charlie’s Place and asked if wanted to open for Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theater. To which Bruce simply replied, “Yeah, sure.”
Jon Landau was in the audience that night covering the show for the Phoenix and following the show wrote that famous line in his review where he said, “ I have seen the future of Rock n Roll and his name is Bruce Springsteen.” And dear friends, you know the rest is history.
