NOT FADE AWAY Fifty years ago, the Rolling Stones were photographed by a young Linda Eastman as they partied in New York to celebrate their appearance on the June 1966 cover of Town & Country. Catriona Gray retraces the story of a photoshoot that defined an era Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards aboard the Sea Panther on the Hudson River in 1966, photographed by Linda McCartney (at the time Linda Eastman) Sometimes a photograph both encapsulates a moment in Although it was Chace who made the cover, one of the time and resonates for decades to come. When the Rolling other debs in the photoshoot already knew the Stones. Stones appeared on the cover of Town & Country 50 years Christina Berlin was not only employed at Town & Country ago this June, it not only marked the beginning of their but her father was the CEO of its publisher, Hearst. At the transformation from long-haired rebels to members of the time, her sister Brigid Berlin was one of Andy Warhol’s new establishment, but also illustrated how the revolutionary favourite superstars (coincidentally, Warhol also posed influence of pop culture was disrupting American society. inside the magazine for the same feature), who had The man behind the shoot was the New York photographer appeared in his iconic film Chelsea Girls. Jerry Schatzberg, whose connections with the in-crowd ranged Several days after the issue was published, the Stones from Park Lane Princesses to avant-garde artists. Having organised a boat trip around Manhattan to promote their been told by David Bailey that he ‘needed to meet this new new album Aftermath. Town & Country duly received a pair English band’, Schatzberg was introduced to the Stones on of invitations: Christina Berlin went along, accompanied a trip to England in 1963. When the group first arrived in by the magazine’s receptionist, an aspiring photographer New York the following year, he threw a party for them, named Linda Eastman. So many other guests arrived that which was co-hosted by a young Nicky Haslam and Andy it was decided that all the photographers should be left Warhol’s protegée ‘Baby’ Jane Holzer. behind. Eastman, who had brought her camera, charmed ‘We had 4,000 people in my studio – when they all her way onboard and made a bee-line for the band. ‘The started dancing, you could see the floor bouncing up and Stones were notorious for being unco-operative with photo- down,’ Schatzberg recalls. One of the guests, Tom Wolfe, graphers, but they did everything Linda asked,’ says the was so impressed by the party that he made it a central part biographer Philip Norman, who has written several books of his essay ‘Girl of the Year’, in on the band. ‘She had a funny quality which Holzer excitedly describes the – you couldn’t call her convention- Stones as ‘pure sex’. ally beautiful, but she had an aura Schatzberg realised then that jux- that made people assume she was taposing America’s richest young part of New York’s aristocracy. She women with the raw, classless attrac- came across as carefree, yet very tion of the Rolling Stones might WASP-y.’ Later that night, Eastman make a compelling premise for a ended up at a party with the Stones, Town & Country cover story, and set where Mick Jagger asked her out up the shoot to accompany an eight- on a date. page feature that paired The details of what exactly hap- debutantes with their male pened between Eastman and Jagger idols. ‘Earlier on that year, I’d The June remain a mystery, but her photo- Above: Keith shot the Stones in drag for the 1966 cover graphs of the Stones aboard the Sea of Town & Richards, Mick [US] cover of the single Country Panther – the only visual records of Jagger and “Have You See Your Mother, that much-written-about voyage – Brian Jones Baby, Standing in the launched her career. In her 1992 Shadow?” he says, ‘so I knew that book Linda McCartney’s Sixties, she they’d be perfect, as they exuded so noted that ‘Mick was very aware of Christina Berlin, Jagger much energy.’ being photographed, even when he and Linda Pictured alongside the Stones, was doing apparently casual things McCartney beneath the coverline ‘Sex and the deb’, was the 16-year-old like chewing the arm of his sunglasses. Charlie Watts, on SHATZBERG JERRY RESERVED, RIGHTS ALL CARTNEY, C (then Eastman) Alexandra Chace, now an artist living in rural Italy, who the other hand, couldn’t be bothered to pose and spent had surreptitiously taken the day of from her Upper East most of the time quietly sitting at the stern of the boat. Brian Side private girls’ school to participate. ‘I was crazy about had an incredibly sea-worthy face, and it was this shot of rock ’n’ roll,’ she says today. ‘The interview says that I loved him lolling back with his legs apart that, 12 months later, ballroom dancing, but that wasn’t really true.’ Of the shoot caught the eye of Brian Epstein and led to my first meeting itself, she remembers that ‘it felt like we were taking a class with the Beatles.’ picture, except that I had an enormous quantity of tissue This remarkable chain of events enabled her to become paper stufed down the front of my dress to make it fit prop- a professional photographer, known for her images of rock CARTNEY/PHOTOGRAPHER: LINDA M LINDA CARTNEY/PHOTOGRAPHER: erly. At one point, Mick Jagger peered over my shoulder ’n’ roll’s celebrities; it also, of course, introduced her to Paul C and spotted it. And Brian Jones ofered me a fag, but I had McCartney, her future husband. As Eastman concluded: no idea what he was referring to. When the June issue came ‘That one afternoon was to set the course of my life.’ Thus, out it was huge. One of the girls in my school actually asked the ripples of that Town & Country shoot and that day on the for my autograph just because I’d had my photo taken with Hudson River can still be felt half a century later. Not only the Stones.’ The rapturous reception reflected the change did it consolidate the fame of the Rolling Stones, it illus- in the zeitgeist; the liberalism of the decade was infiltrating trated the social change of a revolutionary decade whose even the traditional world of New York’s elite. cultural legacy lives on today. M PAUL 1966 © PHOTOGRAPHS: Tow n & Cou n t ry * 142.