"I had the awful task of watching people die and having to document it. After a few more jumpers, I just couldn’t take it anymore. All I could do was lock off my tripod; set my camera recording the event on a medium shot, turn my head and pray."
Much of America can remember where they were and what they were doing when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. Colorado resident Jeff Scarborough, 60, not only witnessed the terror of that day first hand, but also filmed it for the world to see. The images of that assignment still haunt him.
Scarborough, a cameraman working in New York for WNBC on Sept. 11, 2001, had his camera crew at Ground Zero within two minutes of the second plane hitting the North Tower. Scarborough said it was an election day, so all the camera crews were at the precincts covering the election. His crew was the only one immediately available. Scarborough has written a book titled September’s Camera about his experience on 9/11. (Buy It online)
The book details his life as a cameraman for 27 years in New York City, which is probably the biggest news-breaking metropolis in the world. He won an Emmy for his coverage of the 1977 New York City Black Out. Scarborough says he was in Harlem filming looters. At first they liked the camera light, which gave them sight in the pitch black, until they realized the incriminating evidence being filmed of them. Soon, Scarborough and his crew found themselves being chased by an angry mob, which they narrowly escaped.
Within a month, Scarborough would get the life-long shot of Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz, with his sickening grin, in the back seat of a police cruiser. Other shots Scarborough filmed that are widely used are the 1985 murders of mob boss Paul Castellano and his driver, by rival mob boss John Gotti. Scarborough arrived at the murder scene just after it happened. By the time other news agencies arrived, the bodies had sheets covering them.
Right time, right place, has been the key to many of Scarborough’s opportunities for getting the life-long lasting shots. Such was the case when US Air Flight 5050 ran off the runway and slammed into the water at LaGuardia Airport in 1989. Scarborough shot the passengers being rescued from the planes wing. He also filmed New York City Mayor Koch sleeping while then President Jimmy Carter was giving a speech on the 1980 presidential campaign trail.
Scarborough was the only cameraman allowed into the garage to film the crater left by the truck bomb in the 1993 garage bombing of the Twin Towers. NBC had to share Scarborough’s shot footage with other news agencies. It was here that he learned information that was off the record and instructed not to inform the public about. The information was that had the truck bomb been driven 10 feet closer to the corner support, both towers would have immediately collapsed, killing all 50,000 in the towers and 50,000 to 100,000 in collateral damage.
An excerpt taken from September’s Camera reads:
"Jeff pulled out of an emergency convoy just short of the WTC as he and reporter Rob Morrison approached the burning towers. Taking charge at the scene, Jeff ordered live-truck engineer Eddie Alonzo to stay 500 feet away and told all responding crews to back-off-dangerously becoming NBC’s sole cameraman broadcasting live from Ground Zero. He permitted only the live-shot reporter to join him at his camera position-and during their live broadcast, the South Tower collapsed. They ran for their lives; Jeff rescued Eddie and stayed to videotape the panic and the North Tower collapse."
"I was told by officials not to tell the public that the 1993 Al-Qaeda truck bomb almost immediately toppled both World Trade Center towers," Scarborough said. "This information saved my life on 9/11."
Scarborough did lose his friend Bill Steckman - NBC’s engineer, who was stationed at the base of the big TV transmission antenna on top of the North Tower. All the New York TV stations had a person working at the top of the tower, and they lost six lives that day.
Scarborough retired in 2002, and in 2003 he decided to start writing down what he experienced that day. His book, September’s Camera, was completed in March 2007. The book can be purchased from the website www.septemberscamera.com or at Amazon.com.
Jeff said at first he wanted to just get his story down on paper, and then he decided his personal story might belong to history.
"It was very difficult and emotional to write, and sometimes I would have to stop because I was so upset," Scarborough said. "It took a year and a half for my breathing to return to normal, and time has helped to heal all my wounds. 9/11 will be with me always and I am a hawk on the war on terror."
Scarborough now makes his home in Colorado, where he lived as a child. He is also doing something else he is passionate about: playing music. This was how Scarborough made his living prior to becoming a cameraman.
Scarborough grew up in 11 states, living in Colorado from 1955 through 1962. It was in 1955 that he saw Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. From that day on he knew all he wanted to do was play guitar, and asked for a one every Christmas. Finally, in 1959, his Uncle A.F. got him a guitar and showed him a few chords.
Scarborough’s early musical influences were Elvis, Scotty Moore, Chuck Berry, Duane Eddy, James Burton and The Ventures. He was also influenced by the British bands, the 60’s Motown soul explosion and rock guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. However, his overall biggest influence has been the Beatles. He still remembers the date the Beatles came out, Feb. 9, 1964.
By 1964, Scarborough was living and playing guitar in Van Nuys, CA.
Scarborough said Andy Bennett, a guitarist friend of his from Grant High School, introduced him to guitarist Davie Allan and pianist Mike Curb. Curb later on became Lt. Governor for the state of California.
"Mike and Dave invited me to their recording sessions at American Recording Company in Studio City, California," Scarborough said. "Mike formed his own record company, Sidewalk Records, and brought me in to replace guitar and bass parts on various bands he was producing."
Scarborough began recording guitar parts for a band called the Arrows, who had a number one hit, "Blues Theme", in LA in 1966. He would record on eight Arrows albums.
In the summer of 1966, Curb landed a gig to record the sound track for an outlaw biker movie called "The Wild Angels," staring Nancy Sinatra and Peter Fonda. This was before Fonda’s famous "Easy Rider," role. Scarborough was hired to play guitar. The sound track "Theme from the Wild Angels", went to number 11 on the nationwide album charts.
"The Wild Angels session lasted 19 hours," Scarborough said. "I got paid 90 dollars, and no royalties, even though I wrote the chord patterns. Mike Curb wrote the melodies."
Scarborough said he was a ghost guitarist for most of the artists he recorded for, never meeting them. The music tracks were either recorded before they got there or fixed after they left.
He remembered one session in particular where Crossfire, a young teenage band from Texas, recorded at the studio.
"After they laid down their tracks, Mike had me replace all their guitar and bass parts, and he only kept the drums," Scarborough said. "When the kids and their folks came back the next day to hear their two songs and add vocals, they all thought it was recording studio magic that made them sound so good."
Scarborough was grateful for that opportunity, but his favorite time playing guitar from that era was with a band called The Thunderballs. The band went to England to do a tour, but could not get paid. They ended up getting a German agent and toured Germany.
"Playing in Germany in 1966 in the wake of the Beatles was awesome," Scarborough said.
Scarborough said playing six nights a week from 8 p.m. to three in the morning made the band tight. This landed the band a USO tour to play for American GIs in Vietnam. They toured Vietnam for 20 weeks in 1967.
"Vietnam was an incredible experience," Scarborough said. "How can you beat playing kick-ass rock n’ roll for thousands of war-weary GI’s who carry you off the stage on their shoulders and pour beer down you throat when the show is done?"
Scarborough said there were several times when they were shot at, encountering what GIs went through all the time. On one occasion they had to spend the night in a bunker because the fire-base was under attack. They were under a sniper attack while riding in the back of an Army truck. A bullet went through a speaker in one of their PA columns.
"One time a VC mortar knocked out the power while we were playing," Scarborough said. "Our drummer did a 20 minute drum solo in the pitch-black while the GIs procured a generator for us. The scariest was when the plane we were in got peppered with bullets on its landing approach. In spite of all the smoke, the hero pilot managed to land the plane and we all rushed out the cargo ramp."
After Scarborough left the Thunderballs, he was in a band called August Blues. This band was together from 1968-71, and came close to making it big. But in the end, Columbia Records decided not to release their album because they either sounded too much like their other bands, or not enough like them to be commercial.
In 1969, Scarborough briefly met Janis Joplin when they were at the Columbia Records office. When Hendrix played the Hollywood Bowl in 1968, he stayed at a house a few doors down from where August Blues practiced. When the band saw Hendrix relaxing on the back deck, they quickly moved their gear to their back deck and broke into "Foxy Lady,". Hendrix waved at them, and soon his band set up on their deck to practice. Scarborough said Hendrix bassist Noel Redding came by later in search of Thorazine for Hendrix’s bad LSD trip. Scarborough said even though drugs were in wide use at this time, it was one thing he never got into.
Of all the gigs Scarborough performed, the ones in Vietnam are his most memorable.
"The big outdoor Vietnam ones were the greatest." Scarborough said. "We almost always flew in by choppers - one for us and one for our gear. The one that stands out the most was when we had to play on a hastily built stage because a VC terrorist bomb blew up the one we were supposed to be on. Lucky our previous show at another base ran late."
Scarborough also got to hear personal stories of his heroes while on tour in Vietnam.
"We played a few gigs in Vietnam along side the Tony Sheridan Trio. We all hung out together and Tony and his manager Hhorst Fascher, the bouncer at the Star Club, told us personal stories about their time with the Beatles in Hamburg," Scarborough said. "He was still very bitter because they made it so big without him. As an NBC cameraman, I later met all four Beatles separately and talked the longest with Paul, who gave NBC an exclusive interview after John’s murder. Paul invited me to lunch with his entourage, but I was still on the clock and couldn’t just stop working."
Scarborough did stop working as a musician in 1973, when the Disco craze began and work for musicians dried up. He went to trade school and earned a first class FCC license, then started working for NBC in New York as a vacation relief engineer in 1975. Scarborough got hired permanently for the new Electronic Journalism department because of his first class FCC license. The rest, as they say, is history, long-lasting recorded history in Scarborough’s case.
September’s Camera is a self-published book only available on the Internet, at www.septemberscamera.com. The book is getting rave reviews, and has Scarborough in demand to make media appearances. He has been on about 20 radio talk show programs around the country, and was a guest on the Today Show in New York on Sunday, September 9. The story will also air on MSNBC at a later time. Scarborough is working on booking spots on other radio and television programs that want to discuss his book.
Scarborough said his wife of 30 years, Alice, and his family has helped him through a lot. He has three grown sons. Kent, his oldest, is still in the Army and is now training to be a respiratory therapist. His two other sons, Cam and Drew, took after dad and have a band called The Black Apples (www.myspace.com/theblackappleband).
Scarborough has always played music and it was a great escape for him in the past, but now he has the chance to play a lot more; and he’s taking full advantage of that.
"In my retirement, I am enjoying playing out as much as possible without having to go work for an average of 11 hours a day like I did for 27 years in New York," Scarborough said.
Since moving back to Colorado, he has been with: Second Wind, Penny and the Loafers, the Kristen Kay Band, Tuna Blue, Off the Rail, Groovin’ On, and The 3eatles. He still plays in Groovin’On (groovinontheband.com), a variety band, and the 3eatles (3eatles.com), a Beatles cover band. His favorite band since moving to Colorado is the 3eatles, because he is an absolute Beatle freak, and Scarborough said the band does their music correctly. KQMT’s radio host Archer has had Scarborough on "Breakfast with the Beatles" five times.
"He’s a great guy who really appreciates Beatles music and people who do it right; and he’s even more of a Beatle freak than I am," Scarborough said
As for his experience on 9/11, Scarborough said he feels both blessed and cursed.
"It was fortunate that I was there, armed with the knowledge from the 1993 Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, which convinced me both towers would fall, and that I took appropriate action," Scarborough said. "Sure I wish none of this ever happened and that radical Islam did not want us all dead. But they do, and the war will last a long time on many fronts. They have been at war with us for several decades, and the public only became aware on 9/11/01. It truly is good versus evil, and make no mistake, we are the good guys."