Few photographers captured 1970s rock culture as expertly as Richard E. Aaron, whose career exploded after he shot the iconic cover image for the multi-Platinum album Frampton Comes Alive!, released in early 1976.
In November that year, Aaron was assigned to shoot a record company party for Lynyrd Skynyrd at a Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs restaurant in midtown Manhattan. This image that he shot that night image perfectly encapsulates the wild unpredictability of life in that decade’s rock and roll circus.
The evening was winding down and Aaron had shot numerous rolls of film with his Nikon camera, which was fitted with a 35mm wide-angle lens and Nikon flash. As he was heading for the door, he spotted Skynyrd electric guitarist Allen Collins and drummer Artimus Pyle in a corner, polishing off a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
“I’m thinking, ‘That’s a good shot,’” the photographer recalls, “but there’s something missing. I looked around and saw an organ grinder with his roller-skating monkey, who were hired to entertain at the party. I asked the organ grinder, ‘Can I borrow your monkey for a moment?’ He said, ‘Sure.’”
“I took the monkey over to the booth and sat him down with the guys. It was a funny shot, but there was still something missing. I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the table and gave it to the monkey. The guys started laughing, and that’s how I got the shot.”
But did the chimpanzee actually take a slug?
“I don’t think so,” Aaron says. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
Aaron was later invited to join Lynyrd Skynyrd on the fateful tour that claimed the lives of several band and crew members in a plane crash on October 20, 1977. An assignment to photograph members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in New York prevented him from accepting Skynyrd’s offer and possibly losing his own life in the crash.
With some justice, Aaron can claim Monty Python saved his life.
