Tom Waits, Paris 1992.

Thursday, 9 June 2011

This photograph looks for all the world like I came across Tom Waits lounging about the jazz quarter of Marseilles or New Orleans. In fact it was taken among the cloisters in the grounds of a rather upscale hotel in Paris.

Tom Waits is quite obviously a very sharp and perceptive bloke, but his manner and boho demeanour might, if you didn’t know his work, lead you to think the opposite.  I always smile when I think of the time a very young Ian Hislop made the mistake of trying to make fun of him on British TV.  Ian Hislop certainly got what he deserved that day because Tom Waits gave him a terrible verbal going over. Now that Ian Hislop is a big TV star himself, I’m rather surprised they don’t show that clip more in the before-they-were-famous shows. Maybe Ian Hislop's had it destroyed?

Apparently Charles Bukowski once said of Tom Waits that "the guy doesn't have an original bone in his body."  Coming from someone who owed quite a bit to John Fante, I don't think this is entirely fair.  Plus it’s not quite the point.  Tom Waits may never have really lived the life quite like Bukowski did but they both wrote equally brilliantly about a certain milieu.  One that I suspect is far better to hear or read about than actually live within.

Ayrton Senna, Brands Hatch 1986.

Thursday, 9 June 2011

To coincide with the recent feature film about the great man, here is a previously unseen photograph of a very young looking Ayrton Senna, taken during a practise day for the British Grand Prix in 1986.

There is another entry about him here -

http://www.derekridgers.com/homepage/Blog/Entries/2010/5/3_Ayrton_Senna%2C_Silverstone_1987..html

Siouxsie Sioux, The Roxy, London 1977.

Friday, 27 May 2011

This previously unseen photograph was taken in January 1977, at London’s first punk club - The Roxy in Covent Garden.  It was whilst Pete Fenton was still the guitarist in the Banshees.

At Taboo, Leicester Square 1986.

Saturday, 21 May 2011

Following on from my posting yesterday, I think I should explain how I came to be in Xenon nightclub that night.

I'd been working for about a year for the Sunday Telegraph. Being way right of centre, the Telegraph had never been a paper I'd read but the people working there were nice and I enjoyed the opportunity it afforded me to shoot portraits of people other than rock stars and actors. Unfortunately, whenever they commissioned me to shoot photographs other than portraits, they almost always had a very fixed, preconceived idea about what they wanted. Irrespective of whatever I may or may not have found when I arrived to that the photos, they always wanted them to precisely illustrate a particular point. And very often the story had already been written.

George Harrison and Madonna, Kensington 1986.

Friday, 20 May 2011

Recently the actor Hugh Grant has been on the radio and TV speaking in support of High Court 'super' injunctions and moaning about how the British tabloids have tried to “steal the privacy” of famous celebrities like himself.

If he'd decided to do whatever he did that time with Divine Brown in private, instead of in a car parked just off Sunset Boulevard, maybe he'd have a point.

I do happen to think the British tabloids are far too intrusive but, most famously in the case of the late Princess of Wales, there is often a element of covert collusion.

And sometimes it's hard to know exactly what celebrities do really want.

In 1987 I got commissioned by The Sunday Telegraph to take photographs of young people having fun in various London nightclubs.  I walked into Xenon nightclub in Piccadilly (which was a notorious celeb hangout) with a camera over my shoulder and almost as soon as got through the door a guy came running over.  He said he was with "Frida from Abba", he was her manager and she was having a quiet night out with friends.  "Under no circumstances", he told me, should I take her photograph.  He said I should make sure that she wasn't even in the background of any of my photos.

I told him I wasn't a member of the paparazzi and I promised him that he need not worry.  I said I wouldn't come anywhere near either of them.

This seemed to satisfy him but about ten minutes later he came over to me again.  This time he told me that he'd had a word with Frida and that, if I was really quick, she'd consent to having her photograph taken.  "But just the one mind."   I thanked him and again tried to explain that it wasn't the type of photograph I was after anyway and, if he didn't mind, I'd really rather not.  On hearing this he offered to buy me a drink if I came over and took a few photos of her.  I still declined.

I left the club soon after that to avoid being further bothered by the fellow.

I honestly have no idea if it really was Frida or whether the guy really was her manager.  Xenon was an awful nightclub.  I think it was the only time I ever went there.

But it does rather remind one of Oscar Wilde's maxim that "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about" - in this case, extrapolating the notion to photography.

I've never been a member of the paparazzi myself but I've known a couple (including Nick Elgar, the grandson of Edward) and they always struck me as decent, hardworking guys just trying to make a crust.  But standing outside in the cold waiting to photograph someone who may or may not want to be photographed never really appealed to me much.

The photograph above is from one of the few times I came closest to acting like a paparazzi.  It's from a photo call in 1986 for the film Shanghai Surprise and it took place in the famous Roof Garden club above Barkers in Kensington.  Afterwards, I ran after Madonna's car as she left and took a few more photos. Trying to avoid being pushed over or attacked by her security guards, which only a few minutes before had been helping me, was a strange but oddly exhilarating experience.  But not one I ever wanted to repeat.

The above photograph isn't very good, I know.  All the rest were even worse.  Maybe it's just as well I never became a member of the paparazzi.  I'm just not an in-your-face type photographer.  I'm sure I'd have been no good at it.

Eurythmics, Hampstead 1984.

Friday, 20 May 2011

As promised to a couple of Eurythmics fans, I’ve included another unpublished photograph of them here.

I think this was the third or fourth session I did with the band.

I always seemed to get along with them very well.  Mind you, they were very easy to get along with, without any airs or graces, even though, by this time (after ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This’), they were big stars.

It was taken in what I fondly imagined was a hard-to-find location in Hampstead, North London.  I went there often.

In subsequent years, I’ve noticed quite a few films with scenes shot there so I don’t suppose it was half as secret as I thought.

Annie Lennox, Jerusalem 1987.

Tuesday, 10 May 2011 Eurythmics were intending to shoot scenes for a pop video in and around Jerusalem.  I was flown out to shoot some photos of Annie Lennox during down-time, for a solo side project.  This is an out-take from that shoot.

I went down one day to watch them filming in an area that I believe was called King Solomon’s Baths in nearby Bethlehem. Dave Stewart was there with Siobhan Fahey (of Bananrama) who was his girlfriend at the time.She had some part in the video, which required her to not wear very much – a sort of belly dancer’s skirt and top.  As we all know, in that part of the world - the birthplace of Jesus Christ - women normally cover up completely and Siobhan had attracted a huge crowd of young Arab youths who stared at her with a rather scary mixture of lust and hate. All this unpleasant attention really seemed to freak Siobhan out and, not unnaturally, she didn’t seem to want to do any filming. It seemed more than a little inappropriate and

I think the idea was canned. Either that or they went somewhere less crowded.

This photograph (detail), which was taken on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, was the last time I ever photographed Annie.

In the five years between this photograph and the previous one, Annie Lennox had gone from a virtual unknown to a huge world star.  I enjoyed every moment of the time I spent photographing her.  She was always warm, friendly and very unaffected by her success.

Eurythmics, Camden Town 1982.

Tuesday, 10 May 2011 I photographed Eurythmics quite a few times in the first seven years of their existence.

In the early '80s, whilst I still had a day job at an ad agency, I got a monthly commission from Cosmopolitan magazine to search out and photograph some upwardly mobile new bands.  I can't remember the exact circumstances but somehow I'd met Cynthia Rose, a writer at NME, and she had her ear much closer to the musical ground than I had.  She tipped me off about Eurythmics.  

I hadn't been too impressed by the Tourists but eventually I went to check out Eurythmics at an enthusiastic but sparsely attended gig at the Fridge in Brixton.  I was immediately won over.  I got their phone number from Cynthia, gave them ring and photographed them hanging around in a yard outside the studio they were working in, in Camden Town.

This photograph, or one very like it, duly appeared in Cosmo.

Miss Crash, Los Angeles 2011.

Monday, 9 May 2011 On Saturday evening in London I watched, for as long as I could bear, the American performance artist Miss Crash.  Her show involves sticking long needles through her face and torso and also suspending herself from hooks through the skin of her back and knees.  I hope I'm describing this correctly because, as I admit, I didn't watch the entire show.

Her website says "Though the mainstream public may not find her choices ideal for themselves..."  I would say that this was exactly correct. But she certainly seemed to go down a storm on Saturday at Torture Garden.

I don't pretend to know a thing about this activity.  Wikipedia suggests that body suspension goes back to the Native American Mandan tribe, for whom it was some kind of ritual.  I think it's fairly safe to say that body suspension was first brought to the attention of current generations by Fakir Musafar in the late 1970s (he's a man that I've also photographed) and it's now become associated with the current popularity of tattooing and body modification, that began in the early 1990s.

That said, it will be a long time before I decide to have a go.

The photograph above was taken at her home in Los Angeles in January of this year.

Steven Berkoff, Covent Garden 1993.

Friday, 6 May 2011 So far in this blog, I've told several stories about times when someone rich or famous has incurred my chagrin.  But these things aren't always one way.  Despite appearances to the contrary, I'm not perfect and have, on several occasions, upset my subjects.  For a variety of reasons, some known, some unknown.

Once, five time Academy Award winning composer John Barry indicated to a colleague, by means of a simple, universally recognised hand gesture, that my approach didn't appeal him too much.  Said colleague (the writer Gavin Martin) duly informed me about this but only after we'd left.

Obviously an apology would be a bit too late now.  I really loved John Barry's music and he’s genuinely one of the greats.

I sincerely regret whatever it was I did to disconcert him.

It also seems I didn't impress Steven Berkoff too much either.

He told me that he'd "never been spoken to like that" in his life. He comes from Stepney, in London's rough East End, so I found that one a little hard to believe.

Other than the time I went to a hillside in sunny Spain, to photograph a chap in a sweltering rubber inflation suit (the story of which I will have to leave for another time) it was my strangest ever shoot.

I was with the journalist Barbara Ellen.  We'd arranged to meet Steven Berkoff in an office (I think it was his agent's) in Covent Garden.  It was a bright sunny day - for anyone who doesn't know London, Covent Garden is always packed with tourists on days like this - and I'd had to park some distance away.

Barbara and I were asked to wait in the office reception area and, after Steven Berkoff hadn't arrived for nearly an hour, I realised I was going to have to go out and put a little more cash in my parking meter.

I couldn't have been gone much more than about about ten minutes but on my return, I walked into the room I'd just left and found Steven Berkoff had arrived.  But he was simply sitting in a chair next to Barbara silently staring at the wall opposite, as was she.  Neither of them looked at me, neither of them said anything and they both had the appearance of patients in a doctors waiting room.

I suppose I assumed they'd spoken and probably already had a disagreement about something.  Barbara could certainly, at times, be a little spiky, so it was not beyond all possibility.

Certainly neither of them looked very happy.

Nevertheless, since I still had a photograph to take, I walked over, held my right hand out and attempted to introduce myself.  Twenty years on, I can't remember my exact words but they were very probably "Hi, I'm Derek Ridgers, I'm here take your photograph".

For some reason which, to this day, completely escapes me, this form of words seemed to upset him.  This was when he told me he'd never been spoken to like that before.  He stood up to his full height of about five and a half feet and informed be that he was cancelling the shoot and, what's more, he was going to ring up my editor and make a complaint.

It's an understatement to say that I was gobsmacked by this odd reaction.  I'd photographed him before and he'd been sweet.

But actors can be wild and crazy people and Steven Berkoff certainly has this sort of reputation.

So... I was faced with a decision as to whether to respond in a similar manner, have a row and then get thrown out.

Or to apologise, grovel a little bit and do whatever it took in order to get the job done.

It was really no contest, I chose the latter option.  99 times out of 100 I would do so again, though I do know a couple of photographers, actually very good ones, for whom it seems to work better the other way around.  That’s just not my style.

For me it's always just a case of trying to be a professional and coming away with at least one decent photograph.

So I did my bowing and scraping bit.  Steven Berkoff eventually came around and I got my shots.  When I left, we parted on good terms.

Barbara never said a word, not then or since.  Maybe she'd been rude to him before I got there and that was what he was on about?  She got her interview but seemed not to want to talk about what had taken place beforehand.  I still can't understand it.  I haven't seen her now for many years but if I do, I'll ask her exactly what happened and post it on here.

Maybe he was still in character for a part.  That might make sense.  Some actors do stay in character for weeks whilst they're preparing to play some roles.  It's the only explanation I can think of.

So if he looks a little sour in my photograph above, this is the reason.  I don't mind that.  He plays a lot of villains in films.  I didn't really want him looking too happy.