One of the hallmarks and difficulties of shooting rock stars is physically getting together with them to shoot their photo. Most tour often and widely. If you wanted pictures of a band, you went where they were. And where they were at the moment was often deep in the bowels of some concrete enormo-dome on the outskirts of some anonymous city.
The first time I photographed the Black Crowes was a typical, “you have twenty minutes and not a second more,” situation, even though they were just going to walk across the parking lot to wait for the van. The tight time wasn’t really the issue, the main problem was how to make an interesting photo in a terribly drab and ugly place.We were to shoot in the backstage area of the Capitol Centre in Landover MD. Definitely a place to deploy some cross-processing, or at least some weird colored lighting or something.
I opted for both, and got my shots. We didn’t really chat much, as I was busy cranking film through the camera while trying to keep track of the gelling and exposures I was going to need to know to process all that film. I would say it was uneventful. My assistant and I got to hear (through the echo-ey concrete walls of the stadium) a pretty rocking show, got them on set a half hour after they finished, and took care of business.
A year or two later, I got another assignment to shoot the Crowes, this time in their home-town of Atlanta. They weren’t foolish enough to have us in their houses, oh no, they pulled an REM and hired a hotel suite for our shoot, in the Ritz-Carlton Atlanta.
Eponymously ritzy, this palace of the economically secure. And a particularly odd place to be photographing some rock stars during a race riot. The Rodney King verdict, clearing the white cops of the beating we all saw happen on TV. Los Angeles, the epicenter of the case and the violence was only the worst of it. Atlanta had some pretty intense racial conflict itself during those first days after the verdict. Shopkeepers in NY were boarding up windows, LA was in flames, Atlanta saw some violence and decay of society. While my assistant Patricia and I watched the TV with scenes of the disintegration of society (smashed store windows, etc) we wondered if this shoot would actually happen? It was decidedly weird to be watching scenes of rioting and mayhem occurring virtually downstairs from us as we were ensconced in the lap of luxury.
The Black Crowes, brothers Robinson and the rest, did show up, on time no less. We were shooting them as debauched rock stars trashing a hotel room (though my client would have killed me if we did any real damage, like the kind you have to pay for). They’re hilarious and giving and delighted to try any kind of cockamamie stunt I may have dreamed up. With one exception.
As is often the case, the Art Director asked me to shoot individual portraits of each band member.I always hated this, as it ruined the energy of the shoot, the other band members had time to get bored and leave or perform other mischief. I had rigged another set in the little corporate kitchen thing in the suite. We were shooting with a ring light which gives a unique and wonderful look but is awful to be photographed by. It fits around the camera lens (hence the “ring”) which means that any shadows cast are around the subject's entire outline. Being the same shape as your retina, and totally bright, the ring lite is not only kind of shocking and unpleasant to be photographed under, it also leaves you with afterimages on your retina. I was shooting with the lights off, making their retinas enlarged, and making both the shock of the camera firing and the afterimage thing (circles that linger in your vision for about twenty minutes) a truly miserable experience. With each band member that emerged, stunned, weaving their heads around trying to shake off the circles hovering in their visual field, the next one became less likely to want to do it. By the time we got to the last dude, we almost had to club him into submission to get him onto the little set.
We all had a grand old time making pictures
, and forgot all about the riots going on downstairs. And in fact, the Crowes were playing a party that night in some suburban dive bar. If you think the Black Crowes rock an arena (and they certainly do) you should see them in a bar. It’s like watching the young Rolling Stones or something, just old time loud simple rock and roll. No ring lite required.
Nice shots, about as rock starry as you can get. I saw them a bunch of times in the '00s at the Casino Ballroom in Hampton, NH. Not a bar per se but a smallish venue that gives one that feel. I saw them in 2013 at a bigger venue and it wasn't the same, but then again neither was the lineup.
One of the underheralded perqs of the rock star shooting gig was some amazing shows. That one in the bar that night was among them.