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Gered
Mankowitz has photographed many of the biggest names in rock
and pop. Most famous for his photos from sessions with Jimi
Hendrix and The Rolling Stones, many of his other works are
also instantly recognisable as reflections of the fashions and
pop culture from the sixties, seventies, eighties and beyond.
Here Gered talks about his career, the people he has worked
with and his current and future projects.
All
images courtesy of and © copyright Gered Mankowitz 2010
Eurythmics
Elton
John
Digger: How was the physio
today?
Gered: Not too bad.
Digger: I had some physio.
It’s a strange feeling lying on your back and having a woman
with her knees on your chest manipulating you.
Gered: That sounds like
you were having extra special treatment. (Both laugh)
Digger: … What are the
best aspects of what you do Gered?
Gered: Gosh, that’s an
open-ended question. Well, I suppose working with musicians
who I feel a strong affinity with.
Digger: Does that mean you
wouldn’t work with them if you didn’t have a strong
affinity?
Gered: Well, it hasn’t
ever been a question of that really. I was drawn to musicians
and actors right at the beginning of my career and I found
that I had an affinity with musicians in spite of the fact
that I have no musical skill or talent whatsoever. And I just
found that it was an area of photography that gave me a sense
of independence and influence and pleasure and expression and
a degree of artistic freedom. I just found it very rewarding
and fulfilling from the offset really, from ’63 and Chad and
Jeremy who were pretty much the first chart artists I worked
with.
Chad and
Jeremy
Digger: They were in the
first wave of The British Invasion to America.
Gered: They were very much
bigger in America than they were here and they had a long
period of success in America throughout the sixties. But I
think those were the main delights of being a music
photographer for me.
Digger: Does that mean
that your advertising work was subordinate to that?
Gered: No, I evolved into
an advertising photographer. Towards the end of the 70s, and
really kicked off by punk, was a realisation that this really
wasn’t for me and that I would need to move on. So although
I thought that the energy of punk was appealing it was quite
clear, initially at least, that they were rebelling against
anything that was anything to do with the establishment. And I
was very much part of the music establishment by that time. So
I saw the writing on the wall and I thought “I’m going to
have to do something else and give up music.” So I started
through a rather lengthy process of re-inventing myself, first
as an editorial portrait photographer for magazines like The
Observer and The Times and then into an advertising
photographer. But then what I couldn’t see happening
immediately in ’76 was that actually that sort of pure, raw
punk energy was going to dissipate very quickly and that the
music establishment was going to take over. And that within a
very short period what I call ‘poser punk’ came in. They
needed established, experienced image makers and so my music
career didn’t crash and burn with punk in a way I thought it
would but I did sort of create a new business profile for
myself in advertising.
Digger: People should
always have an exit strategy or other options.
Gered: They should and
I’ve always tried to be extremely conscious of what’s
happening and I wouldn’t say I saw anything coming but I
just sensed that I was going to have to make a move. As it
was, there was Generation X, Kate Bush, The Tourists and The
Eurythmics and they were all waiting around the corner. So I
had three careers going on, the music, the advertising and the
editorial one as well. And then the music career wouldn’t
die.
Dana
Gillespie
Digger:
You’re famous for your work with Hendrix and The Stones, of
course, but you’ve got some iconic images of Agnetha
Faltskog, Dana Gillespie and Kate Bush in your portfolio. Can
you remember those sittings and can you tell us about them?
Gered: (Laughs) Well, I
worked with Dana from the mid-sixties onwards, really, and I
haven’t stopped. I still work with her today. She’s a
very, very dear friend of mine and I don’t know how many
covers I’ve done for her but an awful lot.
Digger: I remember seeing
her on stage for the first time in about 1970.
Gered: She’s always been
a very impressive performer and a terrific person to work with
and I’ve always enjoyed photographing her. I remember most
of our sessions and they were fun. It’s always difficult
working with someone repeatedly because you have to find
something new and something fresh and we always seemed to be
able to do that.
Agnetha
Fältskog
Digger: Agnetha Fältskog?
Gered: Agnetha came about
as a result of Mike Chapman producing that album and I’d
pretty much done everything for ‘ChinniChap’ and worked
with them on all their artists. And I was a very involved part
of the team in that sense, from the visual side of it. I was
very close to Nicky (Chinn) and Mike. And then Mike went off
and did various projects and I got a call basically saying
“Come to Stockholm to do a session with Agnetha.” I was
really excited about it and I had to think about how to
photograph her. They organised a studio for me and we had this
lovely session. She was absolutely divine, very beautiful and
very photogenic. A very, very nice and sweet woman.
Digger: That’s good.
Gered: Yeah, a really nice
woman. It was a lovely session and she responded very well to
my ideas and she had her own ideas and we got on like a house
on fire.
Digger: It’s a very
eighties look, isn’t it?
Gered: I suppose it was.
Digger: But then why
shouldn’t it be? That’s when it was.
Gered: Reflecting the
times. Most things that we do reflect the times – the
clothes we wear, the cars we drive etc.
Digger: Unless people
decide to live in the 50s or the 30s like some did on a TV
programme I saw last night. They still had computers and
microwaves, mind you!
Gered: Quite tricky.
Kate
Bush
Digger: What about the
Kate Bush images? I can vividly remember seeing that on tube
posters and all over the place at the time.
Gered: On the buses as
well. That was in the days when EMI were nurturing and nursing
young artists and she’d been under their wing for quite a
while. They had an album which they were absolutely thrilled
about but they didn’t have a cover. Actually, that’s not
true, they had a cover that they weren’t happy with. And
they didn’t have a really strong image of her so they called
me in and played me some music, played me Wuthering Heights
and told me it was the single. And I couldn’t believe my
ears.
Digger: It was odd when
you first heard that, wasn’t it? It took a few hearings
because there was nothing like it before.
Gered:
That’s right and I said to whoever it was I was working with
at that point, “I’ve got to listen to that again because I
can’t believe what I just heard.” And listening to it two
or three times I said “What we need is a photograph that
people are going to want to look at again and again and again.
Something that’s going to surprise them like the music
does.” And watching some videos of her it was quite clear
from what I saw and from what I heard and had been told, that
dance was an incredibly important form of expression for her.
And I always thought that the rehearsal clothes that dancers
wore were sexy and great to look at and so I suggested that
maybe I get some leggings and leotards and scarves and things
like that. And we talked to Kate and she liked the idea and
she came to the studio and disappeared into the dressing room
while I set up this old canvass. It’s actually an old boxing
ring canvass – below me in those days in Great Windmill
Street in Soho was Jack Solomon’s gym and it had just closed
and we’d managed to get a couple of old things out of it
including a boxing ring and a training mirror. The mirror was
in our dressing room and I used the ring as a background for
this session. She came out quite a long time later just
wearing this pink leotard and she just looked absolutely
wonderful and it was just perfect for her. It was a wonderful
colour and she just looked ravishing and I thought the
contrast of this beautiful young woman and this shabby
non-descript canvas would work, and it did. Everybody fell in
love with the picture and it caused a sensation. It did its
trick and I worked with her on maybe seven or eight sessions
after that.
Digger: Who have you not
photographed that you would have liked to?
Gered: The young Elvis
Presley, the young Dylan, the young Bob Marley.
Digger: Jim Morrison?
Gered: Yes, although I
remember hearing that he was a pretty unpleasant person. I
don’t know whether that was true or not. I’ve always been
very pragmatic about my career and I’ve been very lucky,
been asked to work with lots of extraordinary people, often
very early in their career before they’ve had any success.
Digger: When you worked
with Slade, did you work with them as Ambrose Slade as well?
Gered: Yes.
Digger: So you saw the
conversion from skinheads to Glam Rock?
Gered: I actually saw it
in advance of that. When I photographed them they were
velvet-clad, long haired, scarved old hippies. And then Chas
Chandler called me in and said “You’ve got to come and see
the boys, we’re going to have to do another session. “ And
there they were shorn and booted. I think I did nineteen or
twenty sessions with Slade as well.
Ambrose
Slade
Slade as
skinheads
Digger: Because there was
a connection with Chandler and Hendrix, of course?
Gered: That’s how I got
to know Chas. He approached me to work with Hendrix and from
that point on I did an awful lot of photography for him. I
wouldn’t want to say I did all of it but I did most. I did
every Slade cover, I did Fat Mattress – Noel Redding’s
band, Eggs Over Easy a pub band he had.
Digger: When you go into
the National Portrait Gallery, what are your favourites in
there?
Gered: That’s another
leading question. Crumbs…
Digger: Mine is actually a
painting and it’s of Lady Colin Campbell. I can’t take my
eyes off of it.
Gered: I don’t know…
Let me think… I suppose probably the Holbeins to be honest,
because the Holbein portraits – his court portraits, I think
that they’ve influenced me. Rembrandt’s influenced me and
then photographers like Irving Penn. But probably a Holbein
portrait would be my favourite thing in the NPG.
Digger: How has technology
changed how you do things?
Gered: I suppose the first
real change that was very positive, in fact it was a
revolution, was Polaroid. I can’t remember exactly when the
first Polaroid for Hasselblad came in but that completely
changed everything.
Digger: I can remember Bob
Monkhouse advertising the Polaroid Swinger on TV in the mid
sixties.
Gered: I know that was a
major change and probably just prior to that strobe flash was
a huge revolution and then Polaroid and then I think it was
pretty static until computer-based digital post-production and
that changed everything. That came in during the last few
years of my advertising career. I can’t remember when I got
my first high-end computer but it would have been in the early
nineties or maybe the mid-nineties.
Digger: I’m assuming
that you’ve got a Mac?
Gered: No, I’ve always
been PC based.
Digger: That’s unusual.
Gered: It is unusual, but
when I started I had a sort of computer mentor and at that
time he said “Don’t go with Macs, go with PCs. There’s
much more expansion possibilities and they’re much more
economical and you can do this and do that.” I think people
knew that Macs were always going to be there but Macs were
notorious in the early days for simply stopping supporting
something and you were locked in to Apple and if they decided
not to continue something then you were screwed. With PCs
there was always a different route, and once locked-in then
you stay there, so I’m still PC-based.
Digger: I find trying to
drive a Mac very hard because I’m so used to the way it’s
done on a PC.
Gered: I’m a bit odd in
that I have an Apple laptop, so I have a foot in both camps.
But all my re-touching and all my digital imaging is all done
through a PC.
Digger: What are your
consistent bestsellers?
Jimi
Hendrix
The
Rolling Stones
Gered: Hendrix really.
Hendrix, Hendrix and then Hendrix. (Digger laughs) Hendrix and
The Stones are the most consistent. There are certain images
of Marianne Faithfull that are incredibly popular. Hendrix is
consistently the most popular, the most asked for, the most
sought after of my images. I suppose for lots of different
reasons but, you know, I have my archive of The Stones which
is nearly 5,000 negatives whereas with Hendrix it’s 96
images. I think that because there have been, relatively
speaking, so few images of Jimi, and very few photo studio
images, mine have become incredibly famous and iconic. That’s
what everybody wants and it’s coming to a point now where a
couple of images are pretty much sold out.
Digger: Did you keep much
memorabilia from any of the sessions?
Gered: No, honestly the
only memorabilia I’ve got are a couple of pieces that people
left and we kept because they didn’t come back for them.
These were just regular guys and you didn’t think about
memorabilia or autographs – it wasn’t something you
considered. And when somebody really famous came to the studio
– George Harrison for example when he came in ’86 and I
did the Cloud Nine album with him. It would have been almost
crass to have asked him.
Digger: I know.
Gered: It would have been
much too embarrassing and also have altered the relationship.
One of the things that’s really important for me, and going
back to your very first question, is that I always felt that I
had an equal standing with my subjects. I never felt in awe of
them, I never felt subservient to them and never felt in any
sense that I was above or below them. And I felt that equal
footing that we were working together to try to make an image
– that’s what I was trying to do and gave me a role in
their career and somehow if I turned round and said “Can I
have your autograph?” it alters the relationship.
Digger: I thought somebody
might have left something behind.
Gered: I’m looking as we
speak at a pair of Billy Idol’s shoes and a leather
motorcycle hat of Elton John’s and that’s all that I can
lay claim to have.
Digger: Have you seen the
memorabilia for sale on my site? Because Neil Armstrong
refused to sign autographs for years, there’s a comb and
scissors that his barber obtained which is up for sale!
Gered: Yes, I saw that.
Very bizarre. I think the thing is that we live in a society
and age of celebrity and I was listening to Roger Law – the
guy who made the Spitting Image show and he was saying how he and
Peter Fluck had been asked to bring Spitting Image back. But
how they refused or weren’t interested because it would all
have been about celebrity. It wouldn’t have been political
satire, which is what they did it for.
Digger: We don't have the
personalities like we did.
In the old days people earned their right to be a celebrity,
not these days.
Gered: It’s a different
celebrity based on lots of different things these days,
occasionally talent. More often than not the shortness of your
skirt or the size of your breasts or how tiny your IQ may be (Digger Laughs) is sufficient to get you into the pages of the
magazines. It seems to be the pursuit of celebrity more than
anything else and the celebrities seem to be pursuing
celebrity rather than doing anything constructive or making
anything or creating anything.
Digger: What has been your
biggest accomplishment? What would you still like to achieve?
Gered: (Laughs) I’d like
to think my biggest accomplishment is to have kept going
really. I think that’s quite an achievement. I suppose,
though, my biggest accomplishment was holding on to my
negatives, my pictures.
Digger: There was one
photographer who had a big burn up of his life’s work…
Gered: Oh, that was Brian
Duffy. He was always slightly bonkers but I can, funnily
enough, understand. In a way it’s a double edged sword
having an archive. It’s given me and gives me a terrific
reason for working and a great living and a lot of interesting
activity and I’m lucky and thrilled to have it.
Digger: That can’t be
bad.
Gered: No. But on the
other hand it requires continuous maintenance and work and it
does make it harder for me to pursue other things. I need, in
order to keep going and support what I’ve got. I need to
keep the archive going and one of the big problems for a lot
of photographers is the fact that if they’re lucky enough to
have created something that’s been valued then a lot of
their other work is ignored or neglected. That’s quite
difficult to live with. I’ve been quite lucky that it’s
never bothered me but I would quite like to do other things
photographically.
Digger: I know you’re
teaching down there but what other projects have you got?
Gered: Well, they’re not
commercial projects as such. The next big thing for me is in
September when I’ve got a book of my Hendrix photographs
coming out and there’ll be an exhibition in London and
there’ll be events to launch the book all over the place.
There’s going to be an exhibition in Tokyo, one in Paris, in
New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. So it will be all
hands to the pumps to promote this book in September and
October which I’m excited about. That’s the big project
for this year and then next year I’m working on my 45 year
music retrospective which I hope will be published towards the
end of next year. And then there are other projects I want to
pursue down here in Cornwall which is where I live now. So
there’s other photography I want to do and I’m full of
ideas for things I will do, I’m beginning to do and which
I’m playing with, but at the moment the archive keeps me
busy all of the time.
Billy
Idol
Digger: What about a 'Now
and Then' with current images of the ‘survivors’ along with
your original images?
Gered: It’s funny you
should say that. I was going to do that and I started a
project based on that but it wasn’t long before I realised
that people just didn’t have an appetite for seeing
themselves. Noddy Holder was one of the first people I
approached, because I know him and he very sweetly posed for me
and I got a very nice portrait of him. But when pursuing and
discussing it with various people I realised that most of them
didn’t want to be seen like that so I rather abandoned that
idea. So I think the music retrospective book next year, that
will be it as far as music books are concerned and if I can
keep going for another ten years or so I’ll have a career
retrospective. That would be nice – I’d love to do that.
Digger: Can you send me
some images over to include in the article please Gered?
Gered: I’ll send you
some images of the people we’ve talked about. Obviously
Hendrix and The Stones, but also the others like Slade and so
on.
Digger: Thanks. I think
it’s interesting to cover people’s other work as well as
their most famous stuff. When I did an interview with Sir
George Martin I told his PA that I wouldn’t ask him any
questions about The Beatles! A hard thing for me to do, but
there wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard or read a hundred times
before. And he did so much other work. Anyway, when he
answered my questions he, of course, made lots of reference to
The Beatles.
Gered: Yes, they are very
important to him. This goes back to what I was saying about
photographers in my position. There’s a great photographer
who I know very, very well and he did some wonderful pictures
of The Beatles but it’s a continuous frustration for him.
People aren’t interested in what he’s bee doing since and
that is very difficult and a constant frustration for him. I’m sure George
Martin responded in the same way, that he’d love to talk
about all the other things that he did but in the end he
can’t escape The Beatles.
Digger: I think he came to
terms with it a few years ago and now doesn’t mind having to
talk about them rather than everything else he does and has
done. He went
through a phase where he was always asked the same
questions and didn’t like it but in the end he accepted it
and now celebrates his major contribution to The Beatles.
Gered: He and Giles have
got so involved in 'Love' and the Cirque De Soleil and all of
that, so it’s such an incredible body of work and it’s so
important, how cold anybody pretend it wasn’t?
Digger: When you were with
George Harrison did you pick up on the things that seemed to
make him special? He had a mysticism and an incredible sense of
humour.
Gered: Yes, well he
was, almost inevitably, most of the time preoccupied. The time
was spent working and concentrating on the images and what we were trying to
get out of the session. What he
was wearing, how he was holding his guitar and all that
stuff. It was work, but we had a long lunch in the middle of
the day and he regaled us with such funny Liverpool stories.
He had us in fits, he was funny and he was sweet. He
arrived completely by himself, he didn’t have anybody with
him, he carried his own suitcases and he was completely
unpretentious.
George
Harrison
Digger: The bigger the
real stars are, the nicer they are.
Gered: Yes, often the
problems come from the people around them. They’re the ones
who are the trouble.
Digger: Well Gered, it’s
been fascinating and thank you very much.
Gered: Thank you so much.
Nice talking to you. Take Care.
For
more information and to buy please visit:
The
website of Gered Mankowitz
All
images courtesy of and © copyright Gered Mankowitz 2010
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