Growing up in Pauls Valley, did you have any sense of what you wanted to be or what you wanted to do at that point? Kitty was the person that kept me together she kept me together on every level. Whenever we went on a film shoot, Kitty took care of all the logistics: travel, money, hotels, all that stuff. At Turner Broadcasting, I hired Kitty to be my production road manager. Kitty was my sister, she was my best friend and business partner. Unfortunately, she died of a very rare disease about ten years ago. But I've always dreamed of going back, setting up a funky little studio in The Pecan Barn, and just photographing the wonderful people and things in Pauls Valley - I wouldn't have wanted to be born in any other place or to have any other background. Now I've moved to Saint Lucia in the southern Caribbean, and I'm here for good. He bought and sold chickens and eggs, broomcorn and pecans. My grandfather had a little shop called The Produce House. They deserve the credit, my mom in particular, for giving me the ability to see a future for myself. We'd go down by the river for campfires and cookouts. We had hayrides, where we got in a big old wagon behind a tractor I learned to drive on a tractor. Roy Orbison was and still is one of my favorites - when he sang "Only the Lonely," he was talking to all of us. We danced to all those songs when they first came out. We were so lucky to have grown up with that rock 'n' roll music. I was a very good dancer with a great dance partner, Mickey Warren - we won contests together. I missed my high school reunion, which is a darn shame because I love those people. Have you ever seen The Last Picture Show? We had one movie theater, the Royal, and Bob's Pig Shop, our local hangout. It's been historically preserved with two original, wide brick main streets. We were dragging Main, going to the drive-in, hanging out at the Dairy Queen, just like in the movies. Take Happy Days and put them in the country! It couldn't have been more fun. What was it like growing up there?īarbara Pyle: If you've ever seen Happy Days, that was Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. With the anniversary of Born to Run upon us this week - as well as Springsteen's autobiography by the same name due next month, and the historical marker just erected at the site of 914 Sound Studios - we take you back to the Born to Run era with The Meola/Pyle Backstreets Interview.Įric Meola: Let's start back in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. As she tells Meola: "I was born to run, and I'm still running." But the work itself stands tall, and the impact Springsteen's music had on her in the mid-'70s is still apparent today. In the grand scheme of her fascinating life and career, Pyle's time shooting Springsteen and the E Street Band - what might be the pinnacle of another life - is just one of many stops along the way. She was there for the founding of CNN and went on to co-create Captain Planet, a defining achievement in her ongoing environmentalism. She worked as an undercover photographer for NBC News, a marine photographer shooting the America's Cup, and a documentary filmmaker at Turner Broadcasting. While in college at Tulane she met Allen Toussaint and immersed herself in the New Orleans music scene. Out of their conversation comes a portrait of a woman "driven," as she puts it, to pull out of Pauls Valley and follow her dreams. Meola and Pyle met in 1974 as fellow photographers in New York City, but soon they were bonding over the music of Bruce Springsteen, taking in shows together on the Jersey side, and visiting the Record Plant where labor continued on Springsteen's third album.įour decades later, to mark the arrival of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 1975, we asked Eric to interview Barbara and reminisce. So it made perfect sense to sit the two down together. In traveling with the band on tour that fall, Pyle was able to corral them into posing for this shot in her hometown, in front of the very coffee shop where she ate with her grandfather as a child.Ī captivating record of the Born to Run era, Barbara Pyle's images of Springsteen and the band in the mid-'70s are as indelible as her friend Eric Meola's cover shot for the classic 1975 album. Pyle describes the locale as "Americana squared." And she ought to know: Pauls Valley is the "postcard-perfect town" where she grew up. The cover of Barbara Pyle's recent book of photography, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band 1975 (Reel Art Press), shows Springsteen and the band in September of that year, in front of the Coffee Cup Cafe in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. Barbara Pyle, author of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band 1975, looks back with friend and fellow photographer Eric Meola
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