Introducing Western Rock, Pop and Punk Pictures to Japan
Brad Elterman is a renowned photographer from California’s San Fernando Valley who captured iconic shots of 1970s rock, punk and pop musicians including Robert Plant, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols, The Runaways, Bay City Rollers, ABBA and Leif Garrett. Although his gritty, snapshot-like photographs have appeared in such publications as Rolling Stone, People, Hit Parader and the New York Post, Brad made a name for himself sending his photos overseas long before the days of digital cameras and FedEx. He went on to launch one of the first West Coast celebrity photo agencies, California Features International, Inc., in 1980. In 1992, he co-founded Online USA, Inc., which was sold to Getty Images, Inc., in 2000. Tokyo Journal’s Executive Editor Anthony Al-Jamie spoke with Brad Elterman about his early days in Japan and how social media launched a resurgence in his career.
TJ: When was the first time you visited Japan?
ELTERMAN: 1979. It was great! It was cheap! The yen was 242 to a dollar. I stayed at Hotel Okura and we went to Lexington Queen, which was the hot nightclub. We went to KIDDY LAND. I was there with Leif Garrett, who was a god at the time.
TJ: Do you speak any Japanese?
ELTERMAN: I took a class at UCLA when I came back in 1979. I was just fascinated with Japan and Japanese. I started selling my pictures to Music Life in Japan in 1977 and it looked like an encyclopedia. It was so cool and the pictures just popped, but more importantly Shinko [Music Entertainment, the publisher] paid a lot of money... well, back then it was a lot of money for a 19-year-old photographer. They paid for my lavish teenage lifestyle back then and they published everything. CREEM magazine would print a little picture and pay me $25. Music Life would do four or six pages and it was all the bands I was shooting like the Bay City Rollers, KISS, Queen, ABBA and Leif. Then they came out with Rock Show Magazine because the whole teen thing was exploding. They embraced my pictures, me and my style.
TJ: Were you able to introduce a lot of Western musicians to Japan through that?
ELTERMAN: Yeah, I was shooting all these experimental new wave and punk bands. A lot of them were by Kim Fowley, who was the legendary record producer who discovered The Runaways and Joan Jett. Kim had all these different bands like The Orchids and Venus and the Razorblades. Haruko (Rock Show’s editor) published everything! The bands’ management certainly appreciated the Japanese exposure because Japan was a massive market for these bands.
TJ: What do you like about Japan?
ROCK: I have been there probably about five times. The first thing I noticed [about Tokyo] was how little rubbish there was on the street. I’ve never been to a city that’s so clean. My first wife was Japanese-American. I had a couple of other Japanese girlfriends, so the ladies I also find very attractive. [In] Tokyo, there is an amazing blend of the futuristic and traditional. There are all these modern shops and buildings, and then you go around the back streets and you find all this traditional stuff. I do love Japanese temples. I remember going to Kyoto, meditating [at the foot of some mountains] and that was a fantastic experience.
