The Vancouver man who managed Paul Revere and the Raiders 40 years ago stumbled onto a not-so-golden oldie this week: the Berlin Wall.
As the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the toppling of the barrier, Roger Hart is looking at his photos of the wall that separated the free world from a Communist dictatorship.
Hart was in Europe in 1968, doing promotional work for the band’s 1969 tour of Europe with the Beach Boys. While in West Berlin on March 5, 1968, he decided to visit East Berlin.
Armed with the necessary paperwork, he found a driver who would take him into the Communist zone. Hart grabbed his camera and climbed into the taxi.
Before entering East Berlin by way of Checkpoint Charlie, Hart took a photo of the Berlin Wall: On one side of the barrier are modern buildings; on the other side is a cleared strip, a wire fence backed by a guard tower and a shabby city sorely in need of an urban renewal project.
It was a great big camera, Hart recalled, and, “The shutter sounded like slamming a laundry room door.”
After they entered East Berlin, “The taxi driver reminded me that they’re very sensitive about cameras,” particularly when it came to soldiers and government buildings.
Hart and his driver — a Brit who’d stayed in Germany after the war and married a Berlin woman — stopped at a park festooned with wreathes.
And that’s when a convoy of military trucks drove in and offloaded a few hundred Soviet troops.
“We were wondering what was going on, and the taxi driver wanted to leave. I said no, and I took a couple of hip shots (with the camera) as I opened the door,” Hart said.
Still packing his camera, Hart and the driver headed into the park, which turned out to be a Soviet War Memorial, and the destination of that Red Army contingent.
“Then came the troops, all around us,” Hart said. “The poor driver is going, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’”
Eventually they headed back to the taxi, working their way through the Soviet soldiers.
“These guys are lined up like May Day in Moscow, all looking at me,” Hart, a longtime radio personality, said.
“I looked and smiled, they nodded their heads. We had to pass a group of high-ranking officers who watched us closely as we left. I just smiled and kept walking. I didn’t know why they didn’t stop us just to ask what we were doing.”
Holding the camera at his waist, Hart surreptitiously snapped a few more photos as they walked toward the taxi.
Before heading back to the West side, they stopped at a restaurant to use up their East German currency. And that’s where they learned what the event was all about.
“Someone said it was the anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s death,” Hart said. (The Soviet dictator died March 5, 1953).
“I was wearing a black trench coat, a suit and tie, and I looked like I was there on business. It was a professional camera, out in the open, and we realized that they probably thought that we were supposed to be there, probably from the East German press.
“They must have been surprised when no photos appeared the next day in the newspaper,” Hart said.
“I was just taking a few days to see something different. It could have ended up in an extensive stay.”
