The Burning Up Times - Strangled.co.uk

Burning Up Times Issue 3
Hugh says he was a regular visitor to
your studio where you smoked hash and
played Parliament records?
Yes. Hugh and myself got funked up on
Parliament.
You’ve since directed pop promos for a
myriad of well-known artists after
photographing many stars from Punk and
New Wave. How did you fi rst get into
that?
I’ve always been obsessed with fi lms
since the age of 12 or 13. I was studying
Art at Bournemouth and I had a holiday
job working for John Garrett. He was
one of the Top 10 photographers of the
day. I then got an opportunity to work
with him full-time. It was brilliant,
and I learned both technical nous and
discipline. One day I’d be shooting a
Rolls Royce, then the next – a heap of
frozen peas. Another day, it would be a
naked woman.
With the arrival of Punk, what was it like
living and working in such a creative,
productive culture?
It was a really exciting time. I was from a
sort of hippy background – too young to
be a real hippy in the Summer of Love and
all that, but I was into Brinsley Schwarz,
who morphed into Graham Parker & the
Rumour and Nick Lowe. I was listening
to a lot of jazz too, Pere Ubu… The
Ramones, The Doors... You see, I wasn’t
into musical barriers – as long as it wasn’t
chart stuff, crappy disco records, that sort
of thing. But those days were very political
times; a government that was about to
land us with that woman Thatcher, had
made it a police state: there was terrible
unemployment, teenagers had no bloody
future, no prospects. There was a lot of
unhappiness – and out of that, Punk was
born. And to this day, there has never been
anything that can touch such a creative
period in music culture.
Your photographs didn’t appear on any
other Stranglers records?
That’s probably because it became such
a busy time for me, what with stage
managing the Roundhouse, and Stiff
Records taking off like a rocket. I also
did work for Chiswick too, all the indie
people. I rarely worked for the big
established companies because I suppose
had this Punk/Indie attitude. Once, I
was asked by a huge American company
to photograph one of their new artists
– just because I had photographed Elvis
Costello, and he too had glasses, just like
their new talent. Their rationale was that I
knew how to take pictures of people who
wore spectacles. I told them to stuff it
straight away! But I did fi lm ‘Walk On By’
with Hugh…
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