Eric Hayes Photography
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Bob Dylan and The Band, Isle of Wight, 1969 the Rolling Stones, but my photography did.” He was going to photography school in California when Ravi Shankar was playing the Hollywood Bowl, and his idol George Harrison was going to be there. Hayes tried to get backstage and was ushered out, but managed to stand near the stage and take photos during the concert. Oddly enough, there were no other photographers there, and he got a tap on the shoulder and a big man with a Liverpool Eric Hayes Photo by: Joshua Hayes accent said: “Mr. Harrison would like to see you during the break.” He was invited to send some prints to Shankar’s manager when they were developed. They must have liked his photos. Months As a youth, Canadian followed and photographed Ravi Shankar later, Hayes had dropped out of school and on a month-long tour in India, shot George was on the way to India with his girlfriend photographer captured Harrison teaching She Came In Through when he got a telegram offering him a job historical images of the Bathroom Window to Joe Cocker, a to join a documentary film crew follow- dishevelled Jimi Hendrix being interviewed ing Shankar around India and do the still folk and rock legends. in his London apartment. And his photos photographs. By Mike Sadava are on two iconic album covers of Fairport “I thought I’d be instantly enlightened. Convention. Like a lot of people, I saw India as a magic Photos by Eric Hayes Half a century later, some of these photos place.” taken during an 18-month period are still India turned out to be more capitalistic combination of nerve, luck, turning up in various publications. than magical, but the tour went well, and and a good eye allowed Eric Now in his mid-seventies and living in he got to be in hotel rooms and at all-night Hayes and his Nikon camera Victoria, Hayes says that period in England concerts listening to Shankar and his tabla to witness an important period was unforgettable in the way that some in player, amazed by the polyrhythms of of music history. the previous generation talk about the war, Indian music. AIn the late 1960s, Hayes was barely in his minus the violence and PTSD. Hayes and his girlfriend stayed in India twenties, living in England and publish- “A lot happens to people when they’re for months, got married in Mumbai, and ing photos of some of the most influential young,” Hayes says. “It was a couple of with the help of a wedding present bought folk and rock musicians. He shot a cover years of such intense activity.” an old Land Rover and travelled overland to photo of John Lennon dressed as a wizard At one point of his youth he wanted to England. for Rolling Stone. He photographed the be a musician, but soon realized his talents They rented a bedsit near the Brixton Rolling Stones in the studio during Brian were elsewhere. “My guitar playing never prison in London and got into the Swinging Jones’s last session before his death. He would have gotten me into the studio with Sixties way of life. With a big mop of curly 44 penguin eggs: winter/spring, 2020-21 Fairport Convention: working on Liege and Lief Bob Dylan and The Band, Isle of Wight, 1969 Jimi Hendrix hair and the dandified English clothes of two days there, shooting hundreds the era, Hayes started hanging out in clubs of candid shots in both black and like the Marquee and the 100 Club, taking white and colour slide formats for pictures of the bands. More often than not, Liege and Leaf. they’d ask to see prints. “It was a most magical experi- One of the most enduring contacts was ence. You’re in this two-centu- with Fairport Convention, who hired him ry-old country cottage, hearing for two of their most iconic albums—Un- Dave Swarbrick’s fiddle from halfbricking and Liege and Leaf. The latter down below coming up the stairs.” session got him the cover photo on the first Hayes is still in contact with British issue of Rolling Stone, of Sandy some of the surviving Fairport Denny eating breakfast. members, including Simon Nicol, John Lennon Mick Jagger “We got along really well. I think it was Thompson, and Boyd. because I was from Canada, not an Ameri- Hayes’s contact with the Stones can with a big ego.” was pure luck and moxie. He went to their about town to working at a sawmill and For Unhalfbricking, Sandy Denny sug- management office on the off chance, and a living in a tiny log cabin.” gested shooting the band having afternoon young manager said they just happened to But he soon got his photography career tea in the garden of her parents’ grand house be in the recording studio and needed some back on track, first at small weeklies, in Wimbledon. The cover photo he ended new pictures. eventually moving up to national level up taking had her parents in the foreground He spent a couple of all-night sessions publications. He photographed everyone, outside the gate with the band behind the while they were recording Let It Bleed, from lifers in a maximum-security prison lattice fence, but somehow he got each head trying to stay invisible and out of the way. to Brian Mulroney to nudists. He shot for of a band member framed by a different “I was totally amazed at how hard-work- publications such as Maclean’s, Canadian large square in the fence. ing they were. I went there thinking there’d Geographic, the Toronto Star, Harrowsmith, Hayes was also with Fairport during the be a haze of pot smoke and alcohol, but and even ads for Bacardi rum. tragic period after the car crash that killed they were all business. They went from 9 But some of his old music photos still drummer Martin Lamble and Jeannie Frank- p.m. to 6 a.m. with a supper break at 2 a.m.” occasionally pop up in publications. His lyn, the girlfriend of Richard Thompson. He The one exception was Brian Jones, who Hendrix shots and pictures he took in 1966 visited Denny in hospital and felt the grief. seemed out of it. At one point, he asked of Jimmy Page playing with The Yardbirds “They were in shock, especially Richard Hayes to play an E note on the piano so he have been published in extremely expensive Thompson from losing his girlfriend. I could tune his guitar, but was incapable of coffee table books. And recently, his pic- think it coloured the rest of his life, all those doing it. He later found out that the engineer tures were picked up by a major American angry songs.” had turned off Jones’s mic while they were music archival website called Reelin’ in the Eventually, Fairport came back even recording. Jones died months later. Years, https://photos.reelinintheyears.com. stronger, adding new drummer Dave Despite the glamour, Hayes and his wife Hayes believes in the old saying that the Mattacks and Dave Swarbrick, one of the were barely getting by and eventually de- way to get good photographs is, “set your greatest-ever fiddlers in British traditional cided to return to British Columbia. Broke lens at f8, and most of all, be there.” He was music. and desperate for work, he got a job at a there, and his persistence is still paying off Their producer, Joe Boyd, rented a house sawmill in Clearwater. after 50 years. for the band to rehearse in and Hayes spent “I went from being a fashionable man www.erichayes.ca penguin eggs: winter/spring, 2020-21 45.