Gered Mankowitz
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GERED MANKOWITZ A Shot of RHYTHM& Legendary lensman GERED MANKOWITZ recalls burning Bill Wyman’s bed, feeding The Yardbirds and other photographic adventures in the 60s. Words: Claudia Elliott t was Stones publicist Andrew Loog Oldham the night of the blackout, when the whole of the East who called the art of photography “music for the Coast, including New York City, was in total darkness. eyes”, which is a fitting description for the work The hotel gave us tea lights to put in the ashtrays. As the of Gered Mankowitz, who created many of the wax melted it got hotter and hotter until the glass on my defining images of 60s rock. Aged just 18 when side of the bed exploded. Bill and I shot out into the he shot the Stones for the first time in 1965, Gered corridor and these girls grabbed the ice buckets and threw Iwas invited on the band’s US tour and spent the next the contents over the fire. My bed was soaking wet and two years as their “unofficial photographer”, taking one of the legs had burnt through, it was a terrible mess.” a number of classic portraits including the sleeves for How did he get on with the Stones? “Keith was lovely. Out Of Our Heads and Between The Buttons. Charlie was very caring and considerate, almost like Now he’s celebrating his career with a book called an older brother. I got on well with Mick but there was 50 Years Of Rock And Roll Photography, and an exhibition at always a distance there. Brian was impossible, he was London’s Snap Galleries, a guitar pick’s throw away from tricky and could be very unpleasant.” his old studio in Mason’s Yard. “It’s an opportunity for me And how did he cope with an unruly bunch of to get across, not just the really famous images, but people musicians? “Sandwiches!” is the surprising reply. “I’d go who didn’t make it, or perhaps went on to make it, or to Jackson’s of Piccadilly and buy lunch. I realised early people who were huge at that moment in time. It’s a very on that feeding musicians was a great way of breaking personal visual journey through the past 50 years of the ice and getting them to relax. They always seemed to British popular music,” Mankowitz tells The Blues. be hungry and broke. It also gave me a chance to study Touring the US with the Stones was an eye-opener for them without being too obvious, and to work out my a boy from North London, and the boys from Richmond, compositional ideas. You could say that I bought their for that matter. “America was the land of our dreams,” he co-operation with an orange and a pork pie.” says. “It was everything we’d ever wished for… cowboys On the following pages we have some of Gered’s and Indians… then Elvis and rock’n’roll.” evocative photos of London’s rhythm and blues scene, In the book, Bill Wyman recalls the time that he and accompanied by an exclusive commentary. Gered were “messing around” with three or four girls in So what makes an iconic image? “There’s an ideal a hotel room, when a candle set the bed on fire. Tell us body type for pop stars – big head, wide shoulders more… “It was an adventure,” Gered laughs. “That was and tiny bum. Jagger and Hendrix were perfect...” THE ROLLING STONES This is from the first session I did with the Stones in April 1965. It was a week after a national newspaper called them ‘animals who should be caged’ because they’d peed on a garage forecourt after they were refused permission to use the toilet. The building site was in Ormond Yard on the other side of my studio and I thought it would make an interesting, unexpected backdrop for them – unglamorous and gritty. I also shot them behind one of the cages used for moving the bricks around, as a jokey way of putting a finger up to the media who’d branded them ‘animals’. classicrockmagazine.com 77 GETTY GUY STEVENS We went to Guy’s flat in Earls Court, cleared the room and filled it with his records, to give the shot a beatnik feel and show his dedication to music. LPs were precious in those days, they were how you made a connection with other people. Guy had the largest collection of American R&B in the country and in 1963 he was head of Island Records’ Sue label. This portrait was done for the cover of The Sue Story. I had a club called The Pickwick, opposite Ken Colyer’s in Great Newport Street, and Guy supplied our records – Mockingbird by Inez & Charlie Foxx is still one of my favourites. ERIC CLAPTON (TOP) AND BUDDY GUY (RIGHT) These shots were taken in March 1969 for an ill-fated TV spectacular called Supershow. The idea was to get musicians from the blues, jazz and rock genres to jam together in supergroups – Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Miles, Stephen Stills and others. Unfortunately it didn’t work. The atmosphere was disorganised and chaotic, and most of the musicians were uptight because they didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing. I caught Eric waiting to go on by the side of the stage. The blues part went well and watching Buddy Guy was a treat. The gig took place in a disused lino factory in Staines, and my travelling companion was Roland Kirk, a blind jazz musician who could play several instruments at once. He was like a walking orchestra. Everywhere he went he had a melodica around his neck and drumsticks in his pockets. We THE YARDBIRDS got into the cab and he felt for the flip-up seat opposite him and started This shot captures the bashing that in a bass drum rhythm, playing his melodica and, with the band with Jimmy Page other hand, beating out a rhythm on the plastic grab handles. We had and Jeff Beck. I already crazy music for the whole journey. knew Jimmy quite well through his session work. This was done in Ormond Yard, near my studio. It was a tempestuous lineup [barely lasting six months], but they really wanted to assert themselves as a group. In the background you can see a flat-capped worker, a dolly bird and the symbol of the British establishment striding past in his bowler hat, snapped between the legs of singer Keith Relf. 78 classicrockmagazine.com classicrockmagazine.com 79 P.P. ARNOLD We did this shot on Wimbledon Common. Patricia came to London as one of Ike & Tina’s backing singers The Ikettes, but Mick Jagger persuaded her to leave and sign to Immediate as a solo artist. I came up with her stage name, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Pat Arnold didn’t sound right, so I suggested P.P. as it was cute, and she’s adorable. Immediate Records was like an extended family and everyone felt involved. DANA GILLESPIE This is Dana in the hippyish living room of her flat in Knightsbridge in the early 70s. On the piano there’s some esoteric blues sheet music and you can see the Ry Cooder album on the floor. She has an extraordinary knowledge of all sorts of music and made a lot of blues albums, some of which have been on the Ace label. I did all her album sleeves for Decca in the 60s. THE PEDDLERS Bass player Tab Martin, keyboardist and vocalist Roy Phillips and drummer Trevor Morais formed jazz-blues trio The Peddlers in Manchester in 1964. They became regulars on London’s established club scene and built up a celebrity following throughout the 60s. Roy MUSIC FOR THE EYES always kept his shades on when they 50 Years Of Rock And Roll were performing, and we dressed Photography, by Gered Mankowitz, them in black polonecks for this is published by Goodman, £30. shoot to pick up on their Dave The exhibition is at Snap Galleries, Brubeck, New York hipster look. 12 Piccadilly Arcade, London, until November 2, 2013. For more details, see www.snapgalleries.com classicrockmagazine.com 81.