Andrews offers 'Dose and a Pinch' at exhibit

State museum photo exhibit offers 'Dose of Rock 'n' Roll, Pinch of Country'

Photographer Nancy Lee Andrews shares rare glimpse into era of rock music

BY BILL FRISKICS-WARREN • Staff Writer • August 17, 2008

As a fashion model working for Manhattan's Eileen Ford Agency in the '60s, Nancy Lee Andrews was the subject, among other pieces, of a LIFE magazine centerfold done by Milton Greene, the renowned photographer best known for his iconic images of Marilyn Monroe.

Before long, though, Andrews found herself taking photos of her own, dozens of which, including disarming candids of Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton, are on exhibit through August under the title A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll and a Pinch of Country at the Tennessee State Museum.

Andrews moved behind the camera not long after she did the LIFE shoot with Greene. She was helping Greene rinse prints in his darkroom, peppering him with questions about photography, when he handed her a Nikon and urged her to shoot whatever struck her fancy.

"I loved it," recalled Andrews, who has lived in Nashville since the mid-'90s and, who, in her modeling days, posed for everyone from Irving Penn to Richard Avedon.

"I remember (Greene) looking over my first contact sheet and smiling, giving me praise and telling me, 'You've got an eye.' "

Greene's encouragement was critical to Andrews' evolution as a photographer, a hobby-turned-profession that really took off after she met and began a six-year love affair with Ringo Starr in 1974.

"Nancy Lee's life with Ringo was flamboyant and larger than life," said Lois Riggins-Ezell, executive director of the Tennessee State Museum. "It enabled her to capture a space in time in popular culture that few people were able to capture.

"She didn't make appointments with these people; she was having dinner with them and going to clubs with them," Riggins-Ezell added, referring to rock 'n' roll stars such as George Harrison, Donovan, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon.

Photographs of all four men, along with those of Harry Nilsson, Kim Carnes and a 2-year-old Angelina Jolie, appear in Andrews' exhibit at the museum. They also can be seen in her forthcoming book, A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll, to be published Sept. 1 by Dalton Watson Books.

'You try to connect'

The circumstances that led to the publication of Andrews' book were serendipitous, to say the least.

"I hadn't really planned on doing a book at all," she explained. "A really dear friend of mine, Ken Mansfield, who was the head of (the Beatles') Apple Records in America, was working on The White Book and looking for pictures.

"When his editor saw the photos of mine that Ken used in his book, he said, 'You know, in the last 30 years, I think I've seen all the pictures and the variations of the pictures of Harry (Nilsson) and Ringo. Whose are these?'

"Ken said, 'Oh, those are Nancy Andrews',' and his editor said, 'Nancy Andrews who was between (Ringo's first and second wives) Maureen Starkey and Barbara Bach?' Within two weeks I had an editor and a publisher sitting in my studio here in Nashville."

Shot mostly with a 35mm camera, Andrews' photos certainly benefit from the remarkable access she had to her subjects. What distinguishes her work, though, is the empathy it expresses. Whether it's Duane Allman snuggled under a blanket on an airplane or a cherubic Bob Dylan backstage at The Last Waltz, the humanity that her images convey is undeniable.

"Everyone loves this picture because anyone who knows Bob, or doesn't know him, knows that you never get him with a real smile," Andrews said of her photo of Dylan during a recent walk-through of her exhibit. "It's the only picture I've ever taken of him.

"I try to either get them out or get in," she said of how she approaches her subjects. "You try to connect, not force it. If they won't let me in, I try to see if they'll just be themselves for me."

After commenting on a series of playful photos of George Harrison, Andrews turned to an unguarded shot of the Beatles' guitarist she took when she and Starr were at his house for dinner. "Here's George with his favorite little guitar," she said. "I love this picture. He's really open. It's like he's saying, 'Hi, Nan. What do you want to hear?' "

'We were camera-crazy people'

A separate room of publicity, magazine and album cover photos of country stars ranging from Martina McBride to Big & Rich, all of them shot after she moved to Nashville in the mid-'90s, comprise the rest of Andrews' exhibit at the Tennessee State Museum.

At the heart of her show, though, are images from the six years she spent with "Richard," the Beatle better known to the rest of us as Ringo.

"Besides being a really cathartic passage for me, it was just so hard to pick and pare it down as to what went in the show," Andrews explained.

"This is from the Ringo the 4th album, the first cover I did for him," she said, pointing to a picture of a mock-serious Ringo with a woman's bare legs wrapped around his neck.

"This one is of Central Park. We were at The Plaza when I shot this. It was the snowstorm of 1977 and that was outside our window."

Other shots were taken on one of the couple's flights on the Concorde, on the veranda of the home they shared in Los Angeles and on trips they took to Japan, Monte Carlo and the Sahara together.

There's also no shortage of madcap photos of Ringo, either in candid settings, such as when he and Andrews were staging a fairy tale with his kids, or on the sets of his movies and TV special.

"I call this the Ringo wall," Andrews said of the series of photos immediately on your left as you enter the exhibit.

"It starts with the first time I went to England with him. It was 1975. We were just running around like tourists. It was a winter day and we were overlooking the Thames River and he just sat down on this bench and just sort of leaned his head over. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'This is Beatle on Skid Row.' I said, 'Yeah, you really look it with those shiny shoes.'

"This one is in Chichen Itza, deep in the Yucatan," Andrews added. "As you can see, Richard's got a camera in his lap. We were camera-crazy people. Imagery was very much a part of what happened between us, and our friends."

To order a copy of A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll, go to www.daltwonwatson.com.

Andrews headlines Beatles Celebration

Orillia Beatles Celebration - Orillia

September 19, 2008

to

September 21, 2008

The Orillia Festivals Committee today released program details for the second annual Orillia Beatles Celebration to be held in Orillia on September 19, 20 and 21, 2008.

The largest Beatles festival in Canada, this year’s line-up features two former life partners of John Lennon and Ringo Starr. May Pang was the personal assistant to John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York. Following their separation in 1973, May became John’s loving partner over the highly productive 18-month period known as “Lennon’s Lost Weekend.” May will be featuring her new book on her life with John, Instamatic Karma, and her Feng Shui Collection of jewellery and apparel.

Nancy Lee Andrews of Nashville is a former international model and an accomplished photographer. She met Ringo Starr through John Lennon who introduced them in May of 1974. She shared her life with Ringo for six years. (1974-1980) Nancy will feature photographs from her new book, A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll, a spectacular photographic essay about her life with Ringo Starr.

The Celebration features three concerts by Canadian Beatles tribute artists HELP! A Tribute to the Beatles, and FabFour; 24 hours of free street performances by Beatles artists, including a live performance of the 40- year old White Album in its entirety; the Trevor Hosier Beatles Collection from the Youngtown Museum; free appraisals of customers’ Beatles memorabilia; and the Saturday Night Street dance – the biggest Beatles singalong in Canadian history.

A portion of Mississaga Street will be closed for a street festival featuring Orillia retailers, vendors, and beer gardens. Bars, clubs, and restaurants throughout the City will feature Beatles performers.

For information, please visit www.orilliabeatlescelebration.com.

Contact: David Goyette, Artistic Director. 705-652-0163, davidgoyette@bellnet.ca.
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'Green Jazz' series to benefit Valley families

'Green Jazz' series to benefit Valley families

Jazz artist Althea Rene will kick off a Green Jazz Series in September that is designed to raise awareness about the environment while benefitting low-income families in the Valley.

Arizona State University Online and the Herberger Theater Center will host Rene as part of its Green Jazz Series at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 4.

The first of six concerts that will run through April 2009, the Green Jazz Series combines the blue sounds of jazz with “green” concepts for sustainable living.

Proceeds from the concert series will support the Green Survival Initiative, a Phoenix-based sustainability project. Through the use of cost-effective green technologies such as compact fluorescent lights, low-flow shower heads and water heater blankets, GSI seeks to mitigate increasing energy costs for approximately 7,000 low-and-income fixed households in the Phoenix-Metropolitan area.

“Just as ASU is expanding access to its academic programs with ASU Online, we are using the Green Jazz Series to expand the benefits of green concepts to low-income households through the Green Survival Initiative, using the music of jazz as the vehicle to spread the idea and to generate support for the Green Survival Initiative,” said Mernoy E. Harrison, Jr., ASU Online and Extended Campus vice president and executive vice provost.

“The GSI recognizes that there is a cost to convert to a green lifestyle and those who need it most might not be able to make that conversion,” said George Brooks, publisher of Southwest Green Magazine and one of the concert series’ sponsors. “We believe that once these conversions are made, each household could save anywhere from $300 to $500 annually.”

An educational component will also be incorporated into the concerts, including information booths and giveaways.

A full-time performing artist, Rene is regarded as one of the nation’s premier solo improvisational flautists and has recorded and performed with jazz greats Al Jarreau, Nancy Wilson, Norman Brown, Boney James and George Duke. Rene will perform an assortment of urban contemporary tunes with a rhythm and blues twist and showcase songs from No Restriction, her latest CD.

Tickets are $20 for general admission and $40 for VIP seats. Call the Herberger Theater box office at (602) 254-7399 or visit www.herbergertheater.org.

McQueen's main main releases new book

ROBERT RELYEA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: BEHIND THE ... Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s

When I first moved to Los Angeles about a dozen years ago, the one person I wanted to meet was Robert Relyea. Now, this may seem like an odd choice since his is hardly a household name, but Bob Relyea’s credit was on just about every one of my favorite movies growing up. And if you’re reading Cinema Retro, the odds are these films are favorites of yours as well - “The Alamo,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “West Side Story,” “The Great Escape,” and “Bullitt,” to name a few of the classic movies he worked on.

His nominal title on a picture like “The Great Escape” was assistant to the producer but this hardly begins to describe what he actually contributed to that film. He scouted locations, he was the production manager, directed all the night scenes (because John Sturges didn’t like working nights), he even flew the plane that James Garner piloted in the film and was courageous enough to take on the hazardous job of stunt pilot when the plane needed to crash. Oh, and that immortal shot of Steve McQueen jumping the barbed wire fence on his motorcycle? Yup, Bob Relyea directed that.

They say it’s best not to meet your heroes, that they will only let you down. Well, as usual “they” are wrong. I finally got to meet Mr. Relyea and it has been one of the great pleasures of my life to be able to call him my friend. A finer, more decent man I have never met and he is also one of the best storytellers I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Now, with the publication of his memoirs of a life in the motion picture industry, “Not So Quiet on the Set,” you, too, have the opportunity to meet Robert Relyea and I urge you to do yourself a great favor and read one of the funniest and most moving books about the movie industry I have ever read. The style of the book perfectly captures the voice of the man I know - understated, honest, slightly amazed at the things he has seen and been a part of, and full of a puckish wit that infuses the incredible goings on.

And what a cast of characters! Grace Kelly, Marlon Brando, Elvis, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, June Allyson, Yul Brynner, Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Cliff Robertson, David McCallum and Peter Sellers, even the Beatles make an appearance.

And the directors he’s worked with are here as well - Vincente Minnelli, William Wyler, Robert Wise, Blake Edwards, Peter Yates, Mark Rydell and his mentor, the great John Sturges. In fact, the story about how Sturges happened to make “Bad Day at Black Rock” is worth the price of admission alone, as they used to say. It’s hard to pick out a favorite anecdote, they are all so well told, but there are a couple of stories about the making of “The Alamo” that are priceless, including one about Relyea having a conversation with John Wayne as a horse proceeded to bite the Duke on the ass. Wayne turned around and socked his equine attacker squarely on the snout without missing a beat in the conversation with Relyea. And this was years before Mongo in “Blazing Saddles!” “I realized then,” Bob once told me, “He wasn’t acting. He really WAS John Wayne!”

John Wayne with director John Ford, who visited the set“The Alamo” provides the book with some of its funniest moments as well as one of the most dramatic. During the long, arduous shoot, Relyea developed a bleeding ulcer that came within minutes of killing him. Thanks to the blood transfusions of the many stuntmen on the film, he survived, thanks to the massive infusions of stuntmen’s blood, almost all of it laced with copious amounts of tequila, Jack Daniels and Scotch. In fact, there’s a funny story that Bob Relyea once told me about that film, that isn’t in the book so I won’t be giving anything away if I recount it here.

“On the first day of shooting, one of my responsibilities was to watch Duke play the scene, since they didn’t have video monitors in those days for him to look at after the shot was completed. Well, I got so pre-occupied with the set-up and and everything that I didn’t notice until we all saw the dailies that because he had lived so long with this project, Duke not only knew his lines, but knew every other actor’s lines in the scene as well. And when we saw the dailies, there he was, silently mouthing the other actor’s lines as they were delivering them. I was so focused on everything else, I missed it, and I can assure you that I caught hell for that one!”

Relyea was such a consummate professional that top directors like Sturges and Wise and Wyler clamored for his assistance on their films. In fact, one of the dramatic highlights of the book is when he is forced to choose whose company he will become a part of - Wise, who offered him a signed contract to become partner of his production company, or an identical proposal from John Sturges, his mentor. He had agreed to both men’s requests, figuring that it was unlikely that either proposal would pan out and yet when offers arrived on the same day from both directors, Relyea was forced to choose. It goes to show how a good man can find himself in an untenable position and I know that Bob Relyea still smarts over his own perceived shortcoming in the affair. In a highly charged scene in the book, he visits the man he is forced to turn down and receives a devastating dismissal. It just goes to show that the choices that the business forces to make can test the moral resolution of even the most upright man. I think that Relyea is too hard on himself in the matter but his own moral code doesn’t let himself off the hook any easier than it does anyone else in the book.

One of the interesting concepts of the book is the twin narrative than flows through the pages. Relyea’s son Craig introduces many of the chapters by placing the films in a social and familial context and though it is a concept that is fraught with hazards, Craig Relyea pulls it off superbly. His introductions are concise, well-written and illuminate the innate decency of his father. The book is a tremendously entertaining read and more knowledge on the inner workings of the American movie industry can be found between its covers than that in any undergraduate film school.

The petty politics, the logistical challenges, the studio machinations, the human emotions that all go into making a motion picture are delineated here with utmost precision.
Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape" I have had the great pleasure over the years to interview and in many cases, befriend, great directors like Frank Capra, Billy WIlder, Robert Wise, Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone, to name a few, but I have learned more about filmmaking from Robert Relyea than the lot of them combined. There is wisdom here aplenty but it is never didactic; simply the hard-earned truths of a man who has done it all. The last section has an elegiac quality to it, starting with the sale of Warner Bros. just as “Bullitt” was commencing principal photography. And if I had any nitpicking's about the book, it is that stops in 1971, after the debacle of “Le Mans,” and the dissolution of Relyea’s partnership and friendship with Steve McQueen. I understand his reason for doing so, but ending such a wonderful tale on such a sour note felt a bit awkward. Would that he had continued a few more years to the wild tales of “Day of the Dolphin” with Mike Nichols and George C. Scott, or how Relyea chose Michael Cimino to direct his production of a Vietnam script that became “The Deer Hunter,” only to walk away from the project in a bitter dispute with the young director.

Bob Relyea understands the old show biz maxim of always wanting to leave the audience wanting more and this book certainly does that. Alas, he has said there will be no sequel, this is the story he wanted to tell and I urge you not to miss it. This is a book, rich in anecdotes and wisdom, so do yourself a favor and buy a copy and then do your friends a favor and buy them copies. To borrow a couple of adjectives from the two classic John Sturges movies he worked on, this is a MAGNIFICENT book, written by a very GREAT man. - Mike Thomas

To order a copy of "Not So Quiet On The Set," visit http://www.notsoquietontheset.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/.