The B52s
The B52s
I was a young photographer’s apprentice working in a fashion studio in NYC. My bosses were kind enough to allow me to take their Nikons out at night and photograph the music scene in NY.
I got a phone call one day from Richard Cramer, the assistant art director at Andy Warhol’s “Interview” magazine. He asked me if I wanted to go to Max’s Kansas Ciry, a NY music bar/restaurant and see a new band from Georgia. As I used to live in Atlanta, I was curious about the band, but I told Richard that I had no money for a ticket.
“I can get you on the guest list”, Richard said.
This is a photo from that very early gig at Max’s.
The band began the show with music from “The Peter Gunn” TV show theme written by Henry Mancini. It was music for a ‘50s television show about a private detective. I used to fall asleep listening to my parents watching that program and it was the first tune I could play on my first guitar. The song was “Planet Claire”.
The B52s
This is actually the first studio shot that I made with the B52s. I wanted to get a photo of them that I could show to Andy Warhol’s “Interview” magazine.
When the band came to my studio, Cindy had gone back to Georgia. Since nobody knew what the band looked like, I asked Maureen McLaughlin, their manager at the time to stand in for Cindy.
I used a still-wet solarized print as a paper negative for a new print to get this effect. This is NOT a computer trick…
The B52s
I got the band into my bosses’ studio for the second time, bribing them with piña coladas and banana daiquiries.
They chose this photo and I designed and printed 1000 - 16x20” posters to put up in the streets of Manhattan. White space was left in the design for writing in the name of the club and time of the gig. The first time I went around the block by Max’s Kansas City, taping the posters to any mailbox or wall space I could find, I got back to where I had started and the posters were gone.
The B52s
When the B52s got their first recording contract, I got a phone call from Tony Wright, the art director for Island Records. He wanted to see my portfoiio and my B52s photos.
The band had already decided that they wanted to use the poster image I made for their debut cover and Tony wanted to colorize it.
He asked me how much was my fee for using the photo on the cover. When I gave him a blank look, he offered me $750. I quickly calculated that that was about five weeks of my assistant’s pay. I agreed.
Tony began to give me other assignments, Lydia Lunch, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, the Ramones and many more.
The B52s
When I was 13, I heard the Ventures “Walk, Don’t Run ’64". I had seen the Beatles and wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to buy the Ventures’ Mosrite guitar. When I went to my local music store in Muncie, Indiana, the Mosrites were more expensive than the Gibson Les Paul models, so with my meager savings, I could only afford a damaged guitar that needed a new paint job and tuning keys.
When I got the right lineup into my bosses’ studio, I tried to emulate the Ventures’ cover. The B52 girls wore bouffant hairdoes and the same fashions from the ‘60s, Ricky played a Ventures Mosrite and I got the guys in the band to sit on the floor ala the Ventures cover. They called their bouffants “B52s” because they were so high. The hairdo that is…
The band never “cottoned” to my concept.
The B52s
I was trying to get Andy Warhol’s “Interview” magazine interested in them and Glenn O’Brien used the poster image for his music column.
This album took 10 years to certify gold and their manager made me pay for a plaque.
No one assigned me to shoot the band. It was only my desire to help them gain popularity. I saw one of their earliest gigs and liked their music so much that I let them stay in my NY apartment for weeks.
