Music is easily the brightest source of inspiration for me. I once read that the German film director Wim Wenders, when asked what films inspired him, stated that rock and roll was the true source of his inspiration – for both his work and his ability to live on this planet. It so accurately reflected my feelings that I never forgot it.
Since my teens, I’ve been a devotee of the spiritual experience that live music is for me. Five years ago, I stopped dancing wildly in the crowd, picked up my camera and started photographing bands. I wasn’t tired of dancing, but I felt a sort of urgency to capture this strange, endlessly enthralling world. I wanted to try to convey the magic of it all – the transcendent places the musicians seem to reach, the mysterious thirst of the crowd to feel, move and breathe into and through the music and the ever unpredictable interaction of audience and band.
I started out shooting at tiny, barely-lit club and pub gigs – sometimes there’d be more people on stage than in the audience and ‘capturing the atmosphere’ was something that the band rather hoped I wouldn’t do. Many other times the venues would be sweatily crammed to the rafters and the chance of ending up with someone’s pint or, slightly more painfully, someone’s boot (still attached to their foot, as they crowd-surfed) flying towards my head was a nightly danger. As the years and countless nights of music photography expeditions rolled on, I’ve shot at all types of locations – vast concert halls, quirky church venues, weather-risky outdoor festivals in mud-bath-like fields in the middle of nowhere and within the well-kept grounds of palaces.
Every gig is different, all of them an adventure.
My very favourite type of gig shoot is capturing a band whose music I love and having their trust and permission to shoot without restriction – this means photographing at any time during the show and from any vantage point in the venue. Gold dust!
Which brings me to David Hillyard & The Rocksteady 7. I first heard their music many years ago on a Hellcat Records compilation from the 1990s called ‘Give Em The Boot’. However, it was when David was touring the UK in 2008, with The Slackers (both bands are based in New York), that I first met him. He was being interviewed for London-based punk website Distorted and I photographed him for the feature, standing outside Camden’s legendary Underworld venue.
The Slackers had been one of those bands I used to dance wildly to in my pre-camera-wielding days and so it was a great pleasure to photograph them live. In the years since, I’ve been fortunate to photograph them a number of times and I still find their performances intriguing and exciting.
For the new Rocksteady 7 album, ‘Friends & Enemies’, David wanted to use this close up photograph of him playing saxophone (which I shot back in 2010) for the cover. The reflection treatment – given to the photo for the album artwork – really seems to magnify the raw expressiveness of his face in this moment. He’s commented that the album title refers to the idea that friends and enemies share a deep similarity – both care about you, albeit in different ways. Both hold some sort of connection and feeling, rather than pure indifference. This double image fits perfectly with the idea of two sides of the same coin.
‘Friends & Enemies’ describes itself as a mix of reggae, ska, jazz and afro beat. It’s a tantalising mix and, strangely, an instrumental album that doesn’t feel like an instrumental album – the brass sounding very much like a voice interwoven through the tracks. It’s glorious for me to have my work published on an album that I thoroughly enjoy. Despite music photography, wild dancing might be back…
‘Friends & Enemies’ was released in December 2012 and the band are on tour in Europe during January 2013.
