Marilyn Manson, Utica, New York 1997.

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Wednesday, 21 July 2010 This was from the time when a lot of middle America genuinely thought Marilyn Manson was the devil. Later on in the day, after I’d shot this photograph, religious organisations and deep-thinking bastions of family values such as ‘God Hates Fags’ picketed his gig. He didn’t strike me as being any great danger to the fabric of society.  Quite the opposite.

Lyle Lovett, Nashville 1987.

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Monday, 19 July 2010 This photograph was commissioned by the style magazine I.D. and was taken in downtown Nashville. Lyle Lovett was a bit quiet but he was perfectly compliant and there were no problems at all during the shoot.

Afterwards the writer, Simon Witter, and I went around the corner and found one of the scariest bars either of us had ever been in.  From the outside, the bar looked quaint and like a perfect, bona-fide slice of Americana. So we decided to try it. Once we got inside we realised we’d made a BIG mistake. The entire clientele seemed to be of the crazy, street person persuasion, and they were all staring at us. No big deal maybe. But here’s a funny thing: the bar only stocked a single product – a brand of canned beer. Fair enough, if you only want to drink beer. But there was absolutely nothing else whatsoever. And there were great big boxes of this beer, piled high against the walls all over the place.

It was certainly the kind of place where you didn’t want to find yourself accidentally looking at anyone in the wrong way, so Simon and I went to play pool at the back of the bar, where it was deserted. After a while a guy came over to us and said straight out of the blue: “Do you want to come out the back and help us kill a n_____.” I replied with a terribly feeble sounding “Er, no thanks.” His response was “Aw, ya fucking punk…” and he wandered off. We were both shocked. Neither of us could see anyone fitting the description and it may well have been some sort of crazy Tennessee euphemism for something else. Either way it didn’t sound very nice. We decided to quickly drink up and go.

About year later, I read in the paper that the female singer with a bar band had been shot dead in this place, after she refused to play a request.

The Spice Girls, Holborn Studios, 1996.

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Monday, 12 July 2010 This shoot was for Loaded and the idea, if you could grace it with so lofty a title, was to photograph the Spice Girls, each wearing the football strip of their favourite team. Which was fine for most of them. Both Geri and Emma, for instance, were clearly football fans (Watford and Spurs respectively). Unfortunately, Victoria didn’t have a team and just wasn’t interested in football at all.  Someone involved in the shoot (I don’t know exactly who) showed her a photograph of David Beckham and she thought he looked rather nice. And so, from that moment forth, she became a David Beckham/Manchester United fan. But it wasn’t until my photos appeared in Loaded that a meeting with David Beckham was engineered. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now this isn’t the way either of them remembered it when they came to write their autobiographies but this was honestly the sequence of events as I understood it at the time.

Theo Kogan, The Astoria, London 1993.

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Thursday, 8 July 2010 I always loved to photograph Theo (lead singer with the Lunachicks). She was, without doubt, one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever worked with but, for some weird reason, always seemed intent (in those days, at any rate) on making herself look unbeautiful. Always gurning and pulling faces. But in a somewhat photogenic way. Seventeen years later she still looks fabulous. I’ve always thought age takes a long time to wither real beauty.

“It’s classified.” Mardi Gras, London 2000.

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Friday, 2 July 2010 What's in a name?

One of the first things most photographers will come to learn when shooting editorial portraiture is that there are really no rules any more.  There hasn't really been for quite a long time.  And fashion photographers threw away their rule book even earlier. Photographers doing just whatever the heck they want, probably goes back as far as Man Ray and the dadaists.

But for documentary portraiture there still have to be a few rules, in my humble opinion, otherwise we'll never know what exactly the photograph is suppose to be documenting.  Although everyone's rules will still no doubt be different, one of mine concerns captioning, which I always feel needs to be as accurate as possible but with one exception - names.  

If I photograph someone in a club or on the street, I don't usually ask my subject to sign a model release.  But I'll always ask for their name.  Yet they are obviously under no obligation to give it.  Or give me their correct name.  Or speak to me at all.  And I completely accept that.  So that if someone just walks off and doesn't want to tell me their name, I'll just caption that photograph as "anonymous".

Also, if someone gives me a name that is clearly not their correct name (and says something like "just call me Ethel Minge" for instance) I'll make a judgement as to whether to use that name in the caption or not.  Clearly many people prefer to be known by nick names (like 'Belsen' or 'Tuinol Barry') and that's fine too. Besides, many people are probably better known by their nick names than their real ones. 

And there will also be occasions, like at Gay Pride, where some people will not want me to have their real name for perfectly understandable reasons.

There will also be times when I'll ask one of my subjects what their name is and they'll say something which I find interesting in itself.  And so I'll use that in the caption.  As in the example above.  It was shot at a Gay Pride event which had been rebranded that year as 'Mardi Gras'.  I asked the bloke what his name was and he simply responded "It's classified."   

Which was perfectly good enough for me.

Kylie Minogue, Chalk Farm 1994.

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Saturday, 26 June 2010 I guess I should have seen it coming but the polystyrene ‘K’ she’s holding here was my real-life Spinal Tap moment. Just in case you don’t know, there’s a bit in that film where the band decide to perform in front of a huge polystyrene recreation of Stonehenge. Unfortunately they get their inches and feet mixed up and it comes back from the makers about three feet tall. Nevertheless they still perform behind it, looking completely ridiculous.

How I failed to heed the lesson from what is one of my favourite films, I’ll never know. But I didn’t. I simply asked my assistant to organise a large polystyrene ‘K’. Thinking about it, did I say “large” or “huge” or “massive” or just “enormous”? Either way, I knew what I meant and I meant ten feet high, not 10 inches!

Henry Rollins, Chicago 1995.

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Friday, 18 June 2010 It’s jobs like this that make being a rock photographer actually seem like real work. Although Henry Rollins himself was perfectly charming and polite, my schedule meant I had to fly to Chicago, get a cab to the venue (an old theatre) take the photos, then get a cab back to the airport and jump straight on a plane home. I didn’t get to see the gig and my feet hardly even touched the Chicago sidewalk.

No matter how long or short my photo sessions are, they always seem to stay with me, in sharp focus, forever. One of my shortest ever sessions was a single frame in duration and the subject was Miles Davis. I think it was 1983. Together with the writer Robert Elms, I’d gone down to meet Miles at the Grosvenor Hotel in Park Lane. When we met his PR man in the lobby, he told us that Miles was far too ill to be photographed but he might, just, be able to do the interview.

We went up to Miles Davis’s suite to find him sitting on a sofa, happily doodling away in a sketch pad. He didn’t look up. But, by the same token, he didn’t look too ill either. Of course, it  has to be said though, I’m not a doctor.

Miles was surrounded by about half a dozen people, tentatively standing around talking in whispers. I stood just inside the door and managed to click off one frame before I got a raised hand and an old-fashioned look from the PR guy.

I guess I could have put up more of a fight, but if we’d been chucked out, Robert would not have got his interview either, so I didn’t. I guess to have photographed the great man at all was something.

Nevertheless, that session lasted a whole lot longer than one I did with another jazzer, John Lurie. When I met him he was a picture of health. I was standing in front of him with the camera up to my eye about to start snapping, when someone walked over with a magazine article to show him. John Lurie stood there, silently reading the article in front of me for about a minute. Then he angrily threw the magazine across the room and stormed off. The magazine article had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me but it made no difference. I lost out on John Lurie completely that day.

Fifi Dennison, Willesden 1991.

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Thursday, 17 June 2010 I always loved photographing Fifi (aka Fiona), she was funny, inventive and always eager to get in front of a camera. But I never really knew anything about her life. Often I prefer it that way because it doesn’t always help to photograph someone if you know them too well.

I think she was a singer but to be completely honest, at that time I’d never heard a not of her music.  Her full stage name was ‘Fifi La Douche D’Or’ which sounds really classy, unless you know what it means.

This shot was taken in a huge car breakers yard near the famous railway  junction.  I attempted to ask the guy running the place for permission to shoot there but when I walked into his office he said, without even looking up “Whatever you want, the answers no.”

So we simply went round the back, climbed over the fence and did it anyway.  Bearing in mind that I’m not exactly sure what the Statute of Limitations is on trespass, I may have just imagined this.