November 4–11, 1999

music

Shooting the Boss

How Conshohocken’s Phil Ceccola made it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his camera.

by Nicole Pensiero

He was a kid, really — just 18 and still learning how to take a decent picture. His subject — or his "guinea pig," as Phil Ceccola calls him — would soon become a larger-than-life rock star. But back then, in 1973, the person at the receiving end of Ceccola’s attention was a scrappy, bearded 24-year-old rocker from New Jersey. In those days, you might have caught this guy, Bruce Springsteen, backstage having a soda (yes, soda), or strumming his guitar wearing shoes that didn’t match or sharing a laugh with Jackson Browne and David Lindley.

Ceccola, now 44, caught all of those things and more: about 20,000 shots of Springsteen taken between 1973 and 1981’s The River tour. While his relationship with Springsteen is conducted at a distance these days, Ceccola still takes pictures at nearly every Philly show The Boss plays. "Security’s so tight nowadays," Ceccola laments. "They only let you shoot during two songs."

A self-taught photographer, the easy-going Ceccola got his first taste of rock photojournalism in 1966 when, as an 11-year-old boy, he snapped The Temptations performing at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier. By the time he was a senior in high school, photography was his passion and he was known for carrying his Pentax 35mm with him nearly everywhere.

Ceccola heard Springsteen’s "Blinded by the Light" on WMMR sometime in early 1973. "It’s a very clear memory to me still," he recalls. "The DJ was Johnny Kraft."

The song stunned him. "I was amazed that one person could put all those words in one song. It blew me away. I was instantly a fan."

Around the same time, Springsteen played his first gig at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, a seven-minute ride from Ceccola’s West Conshohocken home.

"That was the start of it," Ceccola explains. "I started traveling around taking pictures at as many of his shows in the area I could get to." (Ceccola was able to get close access to Springsteen as managing editor of the long-defunct Philly alternative paper The Drummer).

Ceccola took thousands of black-and-white shots of Springsteen between 1973 and ’76 — leading up to the supernova career explosion triggered by those dual Time and Newsweek covers and the release of Born To Run. Ceccola made countless trips to Springsteen’s then-home, a little "shoebox of a place at seven-and-half West End Street in West End, New Jersey," Ceccola says. "I gave him copies of a lot of the pictures I took."

His work during those years gives an intimate look at the singer Ceccola says became so desensitized to his frequent presence that "he’d forget I was there. Which, of course, made for a better picture."

"People often refer to my work as being of Bruce in ‘the bearded years,’" Ceccola jokes. "I was a just a kid having fun, but he was one, too."

One of Ceccola’s shots of Springsteen, taken in the fall of 1975 backstage at Bryn Mawr’s Main Point, ended up as the cover for the recent 18 Tracks CD. But there’s a noticeable difference between the album cover and Ceccola’s original shot: A pack of Marlboros on the table next to a bedraggled looking Springsteen ("He was really sick with the flu," Ceccola recalls) is missing from the album cover.

"Bruce bought the negative so he can do with it what he wants," he says. "They digitally removed the cigarettes — they weren’t his; he never smoked — and also redesigned the lamp that’s in the original. I’m fine with it, it’s still the same shot. To me, it was just such an honor to have had my picture chosen."

That photograph is significant, Ceccola says, because it was one of the first gigs where Springsteen "started tuning in to his image."

"All the early shows, he was just in jeans and a T-shirt," Ceccola says. "You look at that picture, and you see he’s wearing a stage outfit. He was on the verge of making it big and he was becoming conscious of how he appeared."

Ceccola’s photos of Springsteen in the early ’70s have shown up periodically in magazines and books, (including last year’s Songs), as well as the CD booklet for the Tracks box set. But it wasn’t until he was approached by local music merchandiser/historian Denny Somach that Ceccola realized there could be a mass market for his work.

"Our paths have crossed frequently over the past 20 years," recalls Ceccola of Somach. "A few years back, he really started tracking me down, then we finally connected and it’s taken off from there."

The "it" in question is a partnership in which Somach’s Havertown, PA-based music collectibles company, Music Art LLC, began selling limited edition, signed prints of five Ceccola Springsteen shots. It is doing this via its Web site and through an exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which begins in early November.

"The Phil Ceccola Collection of Photographs," as it’s being billed, debuted in late September at a private party at The Point in Bryn Mawr. There, an unassuming and decidedly unaffected Ceccola chatted with well-wishers and, when pressed, did his best to remember the circumstances behind specific photos — like the one of Springsteen peering out from behind a door. "He was between shows and undressed," Ceccola recalls. "The next shot on the roll was of him nude." Another — which Ceccola discovered the negative of just days before the photos were rolled out — shows the Boss wearing mismatched shoes. "My guess is that he was just too distracted to realize it," Ceccola explains. "Or maybe he was too broke for shoes back then."

Somach, for his part, is excited to "get these tremendous pictures out to the public."

"It was Phil’s time," says Somach, a former WYSP disc jockey and longtime rock historian. "Ninety-five percent of this stuff had never been seen before."

Somach — who has an extensive background producing syndicated radio shows as well as authoring two books on The Beatles — hopes to eventually publish a coffee-table book about Springsteen illustrated with Ceccola’s photos. But, for now, he’s launching the first in a planned series of signed Ceccola photographs of Springsteen. (The 16 by 20 silver gelatin prints are hand numbered — there are 195 of each — and signed by Ceccola. Unframed prints cost $295 each; framed prints are $395 and are available by calling 1-800-219-6874 or via the Music Art Web site: www.musicartllc.com)

Ceccola, for his part, says he never imagined that his behind-the-scenes views of Springsteen would eventually "amount to something important in rock history."

"I was just a fan and a photographer learning my craft," Ceccola says. "Things haven’t really changed that much. I’m still doing rock photography, and especially enjoy shooting shows of bands who are new and hungry. Those are the ones where the energy comes through the lens onto the film."