there doing my presentation on the band. But I figured the band members are dying off, the fans are dying off so if I don’t do this now, there’s not going to be a market for this book at all.
The up side is a lot of us fans passed our love for the Allmans onto our kids. That’s true. Yeah me too, I exposed my son to it, my son is in his 30’s and he loves the band. But for the most part, there’s a lot of people who’ve never even heard of the band or famil- iar with their music. Like that song “Hey 19,” ya know, by Steely Dan. I’ve got girlfriends in their 20’s and 30’s who have no idea. When I have somebody come in my house that’s younger, I spend a lot of time with people that are younger, and the conversations are vastly different.
Yeah, No kidding But when I have a younger person come into my home and they see all the photos on my walls and they can tell me who these people are without me assisting them, then I am im- pressed. But the kids in their 20s and 30s that know about the band and appreciate the band are usually, like you just said, have been raised by parents who were fans of the All- man brothers and so, they’ve been taught well.
Yeah, that’s right. I saw on your web- site You mentioned McCartney a while ago, you shot a lot of great rock stars and stuff like that. Tell us a little bit about that and maybe what have been some that you would consider what have been some of your highlights that you’ve experienced for you personally. Meeting Paul McCartney hands down. That was both the best and worst experience of my life. I’ll tell ya why. I was a Beatles fan from the time I was 10 years old, I lived the Beatles, I bled the Beatles, I sweated the Beatles. I
mean, I thought they were sent down from Heaven. So, between 10 years old and 20, I was just a massive Beatles fan. Then at 20, George Harrison came to New Orleans to do a concert and I went there just as a fan, and lit- erally the tears were rolling down my face, I was having an experience. It was like my youth was unraveling before my face, and 3 months later they announced on the news that Paul McCartney was coming to New Or- leans to record an album and I thought oh my God, somehow I got to get close enough to the studio to take a picture of him walking in or out. I made phone calls to all the different magazines that had printed my photos in the past in the hopes that somebody might get me some kind of access or whatever. I didn’t hear back from anybody and it was announced on the news that McCartney had arrived in New Orleans and he was staying in an undisclosed location and he will be here for a few weeks doing an album. I just figured, it just wasn’t meant to be. Then my phone rings and I’m 20 years old and my phone rings and it was this woman in New York named Lisa Robin- son. she ran a thing called the Pop Wire serv- ice.
Oh God! And she had things in likeHit Parader and these different magazines.
I remember her very well. And she used my photos from time to time, in Rolling Stone or whatever, and she calls me up and she doesn’t know if I am 20 years old or 60 years old. She calls me and she says, very matter of factly, “Sidney I’m not sure where but not sure if you are aware of it, but Paul McCartney is in New Orleans for a few weeks to record an album, do you have it in your schedule to work with him?” And I was just silent. (Buffalo laughs) Then she said, “Hello?” And I said,
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