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other jazz musicians at a festival in London. It was photographs of these musicians that I later showed to the
Beatles. ... I contacted their press agent in London. He referred me to Brian Epstein, their manager, who asked me to send samples of my work to Llandudno, in Wales, where the Beatles were playing at the time. I put together a portfolio of large black-and-white prints, most of which were portraits of jazz musicians—Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvin Jones, Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane. The Beatles' response was positive, they liked the photographs and, as a result, Brian arranged for me to meet them in Bournemouth a week later where they were booked to play several evenings at the local Gaumont cinema.
489:". No evidence for this claim has been presented other than Drane's own claim to Norman—made for the first time 43 years after the alleged event. Her claim to have inspired the song was not based on any conversation Drane had with Lennon subsequent to the song's composition—just her supposition. Freeman has made no public comment on his ex-wife's belated claim. However John Lennon stated that "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" was inspired by an affair he was having at the time, but he didn't state with whom.
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ignored me and said he wanted to talk to John. They all disappeared into the living room. When John came back into the kitchen I asked him what had been going on, but he shrugged and disappeared upstairs. It was never mentioned between us again, but not long afterwards I heard that Bob and Stacy were divorcing. I couldn't escape the conclusion that she'd had an affair with John".
351:. McCartney recalled: "The album cover was rather nice: Robert Freeman's photos. It was easy. We did a session lasting a couple of hours and had some reasonable pictures to use ... The photographer would always be able to say to us, 'Just show up,' because we all wore the same kind of gear all the time. Black stuff; white shirts and big black scarves."
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This claim is further substantiated by
Cynthia Lennon in her 2005 autobiography. According to her claim, sometime after the couple moved to their estate in Kenwood, they were confronted by a furious Bob Freeman accompanied by his wife who appeared in tears behind him. Cynthia Lennon stated that "Bob
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He arranged us in a hotel corridor: it was very un-studio-like. The corridor was very dark, and there was a window at the end, and by using this heavy source of natural light coming from the right, he got that very moody picture which most people think he must have worked at forever and ever. But it
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and other magazines. I'd recently been on assignment in Moscow to photograph
Khrushchev in the Kremlin, and earlier that year had shot the first Pirelli calendar. This was a big hit and, in later years, a media event. But my favourite assignment during that period was photographing John Coltrane and
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In
September 2009, whilst on holiday and staying with his sister in Reigate, Robert Freeman suffered a severe stroke and was admitted to hospital in Redhill. Afterward, he recuperated in a nursing home in Reigate. His family sold a copy of one of his John Lennon portraits online as a way to pay for
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However, the truth is the photo does not spell any message at all in semaphore. Robert
Freeman confirmed this: "I had the idea of semaphore spelling out the letters HELP. But when we came to do the shot the arrangement of the arms with those letters didn't look good. So we decided to improvise and
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label in the UK, as well as on several albums on
Capitol Records in the US and on various labels in other countries. Freeman designed the end credit sequences for their first two films and some of the graphics and photography displayed on the films' posters and promotional materials.
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In the 1960s, Freeman was married to a German-born model, known at the time as Sonny
Freeman, with whom he had two children; her maiden name is Spielhagen, she remarried John Drane. He was later married to author Tiddy Rowan with whom he had a daughter.
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The original idea was to print the picture from edge to edge, with no border or title, but the studio vetoed it, on the grounds that the
Beatles were not yet famous enough to carry a nameless cover. (The first album to carry an edge-to-edge cover was
144:, shooting some of the band's most recognizable images featured on several of their album covers. From 1963 to 1966, he worked extensively with the group and did the photography and design on five of their album sleeves released consecutively on the
453:. Photographer Bob Freeman had taken some pictures of the Beatles at Lennon's house. Freeman showed the photos to the Beatles by projecting them onto an album-sized piece of cardboard to simulate how they would appear on an album cover. The unusual
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During the weekend of 14–15 December 2019, more than a month after the photographer's death, someone broke into his apartment in southwest London, where he had spent his last years. The unknown perpetrator stole his entire photographic archive.
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album cover came to be when the slide card fell slightly backwards, elongating the projected image of the photograph and stretching it. Excited by the effect, they shouted, "Ah! Can we have that? Can you do it like that?" Freeman said he could.
331:, released a few months later.) The studio also tried to pull the cover, because the Beatles were not smiling, and it was only after George Martin intervened that they won the day. Freeman was paid ÂŁ75 for his work, three times the normal fee.
181:, where he graduated with a degree in modern languages in 1959. While at Cambridge, Freeman pursued his interest in photography, edited the university magazine, and attended lectures given by the famed historian of English architecture,
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They had to fit in the square format of the cover, so rather than have them all in a line, I put Ringo in the bottom right corner, since he was the last to join the group. He was also the shortest.
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and the
Beatles themselves and led to his first commission in August 1963 to photograph the group. He was selected to photograph the entirety of the first ever
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his care and help him financially to work on preserving his archive while he was recuperating. This was supported by Paul McCartney's official website.
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appeared to feature the word 'NVUJ'. However, it may be argued that some of the members of the band were not only re-arranged but reversed as well.
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The album also features a gatefold cover, the photo inside the gatefold cover showed the
Beatles standing in front of a montage of photos.
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Later, following his collaborations with The Beatles (see below), Freeman turned his hand to making films. He directed the
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Evening Standard, 17 March 2015: Family selling portrait of Beatle John Lennon to support star photographer Robert Freeman
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In the summer of '63. I'd been a photographer for two years but had already established a reputation through my work for
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827:"The late Robert Freeman was the Beatles' favourite photographer – and now his entire archive has been stolen"
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According to a claim in Philip Norman's 2008 biography of Lennon, between 1963 and 1965, Freeman's then wife,
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The Line of Best Fit, 20 March 2015: Robert Freeman — The Greatest Forgotten Photographer of the '60s
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The following semaphore characters show the correct spelling of "HELP" as seen if facing the flagman:
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cover appears stretched. McCartney relates the story behind this in Volume 5 of the documentary film
200:. He had also become noted for his black-and-white photographs of several jazz musicians including
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release featured the word 'NUJV', whilst the slightly re-arranged United States release on
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According to McCartney, Lennon lived in the same London building as Freeman "for awhile".
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Freeman first came to prominence as a photo journalist working for the British newspaper
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Freeman died on 6 or 7 November 2019 in London. The cause of his death was pneumonia.
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Paul McCartney 20 March 2015: Help Preserve Robert Freeman's Photo Archive
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was only an hour. He sat down, took a couple of rolls, and that was it.
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was shot by Freeman on 22 August 1963 in the Palace Court Hotel,
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and David Anthony, and featured music by the British band
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ended up with the best graphic positioning of the arms."
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shows the Beatles in an autumnal setting photographed in
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album cover features the group spelling out a word in
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681:. Barnes & Noble. pp. 8–9.
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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