Doug Elbinger
Doug Elbinger of Detroit became fascinated by photography after studying Matthew Brady, the U.S. Civil War photographer, in school. He soon won a National Scholastic award for photography and at an award ceremony in Detroit, he met two newspaper photographers, Tony Spina of the Detroit Free Press and Bob Benyas, a freelancer.
Elbinger, 14, jumped at the chance when Spina asked him to be an assistant at the Beatles’ concert set for the 15,000 seat Olympia Stadium in Detroit on Saturday, September 6, 1964. Mostly lugging film, flashbulbs and equipment Elbinger was near the stage when the Beatles played their 11-song concert, which by then did not include “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.
“Once it started you couldn’t hear a thing,” Elbinger said. Screaming girls who routinely drowned out the Beatles’ live music are often cited as a reason the Beatles quit touring after 1966.
“Everything that wasn’t nailed down got tossed. I got hit in the back of the head with a flash cube,” he said.
In one of the great lost-in-translation moments, American fans tossed jelly beans at the foursome; a fad started by British audiences when George mentioned he liked jelly beans, with one distinct difference: British jelly beans or Jelly Babies were more of the gummie bear variety in consistency.
The 1964 Beatles concert helped Elbinger choose a career in photojournalism and photography.
“Here I was 14 and a budding photo journalist,” Elbinger said.
He laughingly tosses the practiced line, “My career went downhill from there.”
After the concert, Elbinger was hustled back stage to a press conference where he recalls the Beatles had what he thought were “very thick accents.”
“They were smoking cigarettes and making phone calls,” he said.
Although Elbinger snapped some of his own photographs, he’s adamant no one will ever see them.
“They are too blurry to show,” he said.
He corrected that problem two years later at the Beatles’ third performance at Olympia, where he took some iconic photos of the Beatles that have been reprinted in a number of books including “Some Fun Tonight: The Backstage Story of How the Beatles Rock America: The Historic Tours of 1964-1966”. The book contains six pages of Elbinger’s photos of the Beatles and retails for $175.00. Read more about the book here.
Those photos also will take a prominent place in his own book “Encounters with Remarkable Men”, which will be available soon on Amazon. Read more about the upcoming book here.
Elbinger who ran a Lansing photographic studio for three decades now lives in Bloomfield Hills and works for an alternative energy company
