Don’t know why I watched the Voice finale. It was like watching a car wreck on the highway. Wanted to look away but couldn’t! Singers were terrible, with absolutely no personality. So they showed their families to make them cry. Very manipulative. Celine Dion kept on popping up to sing. Not very good, but damn, did she sing a lot of notes!

With about 30 minutes to go, they introduced Lady gaga to the mix. That’s when it turned from a car wreck to a train wreck!! I have always maintained that the best way to see if someone can really sing is to strip down all the staging and let them sing with minimal backing. That is what she did, and man does she SUCK!!!!! Horrible, out of tune voice and almost no stage presence. Halfway through the song, she did something that someone who cannot sing should never do. She brought out someone with a classically trained voice to duet with her. Christina Aquilera blew her off the stage! If I were Lady Gaga, I would have just dropped the microphone on the stage and walked off in embarrassment!

I first met Christina when she was 18 years old. I was hired to spend the day working at an auto race in the Chicago suburbs. This tiny 18 year old singer, who’s first album had just came out, signed autographs

and then sang an amazing version of the National Anthem.

Right before the race started, someone asked me if I wanted to stay to see the race. They sat me in the infield grandstands, in a VIP section. A few minutes later, Christina sat down next to me and we talked throughout the entire race (mostly about how stupid it was to watch a bunch of cars that were going so fast that they were just blurs, and the fact that she wanted to meet Billy Corgan, who was sitting nearby. I have photographed her several times since, and she never fails to impress me.

She is a true star. Lady Gaga should maybe take some vocal lessons from her!!!

R. Kelly is in the news this week. He is releasing a new album, and has been all over the news. My experiences with him were some of the worst I have ever had.

When his first album came out, his publicist asked me if I wanted to do a shoot with him. He was opening for Salt N Pepa, and she also offered me a shoot with them the same night. I had worked with them in the past and they are always fun to shoot. So I said sure- no problem!

I arrived at the venue and met with Robert’s manager, who showed me into an empty dressing room and asked me to set up. I unpacked and set up my lights and stepped out into the hallway to wait for my subject. I knew I was supposed to photograph Robert just before he was to go on, and then move all my stuff down the hall to S-N_P’s dressing room. About 10 minutes before Robert was supposed to hit the stage, a crew guy walked into the room I was set up in. He came out a minute later. Without telling me, he locked the door to the room my stuff was set up in. Five minutes later, Robert’s manager came by to inform me that Robert had decided not to do the photo shoot. I asked him to unlock the door, so I could get my stuff out of the room. He told me he didn’t have a key and didn’t have time to find anyone who had one. So I sat backstage during Robert’s entire set, missing shooting him live, and missing my shoot with S-N-P.

After the set, the crew guy came back and unlocked the door to the room. I went in to pack my stuff. A few minutes later, the door opened and Robert walked into the room, sat down on a bench, and stared at me while I packed my stuff. Man, was that AWKWORD!!!

My next experience was a few years later. There was a charity album being recorded around the country. The producer was bringing the master tape around from city to city, and getting R&B stars to sing a verse. Robert was asked to sing on it and his publicist (The same one) asked me to meet them at the studio to shoot some photos. I was told to meet them at noon. I arrived to find about 20 guys waiting for Robert to sing for about 20 seconds. Robert showed up at about 5PM, no apologies for making all those people waste a full afternoon waiting for him!

I got one usable photo!

So the score is now about 8 hours wasted out of my life for one photo! I learned my lesson!! Never again.

Britney Spears’ Team Stunned By ‘Unapproved’ Question On ‘Good Morning America’    Posted on Sep 19, 2013 by Jen Heger

Before Britney Spears agreed to appear for an exclusive sit-down interview with Good Morning America, all questioned had to be pre-approved by her team and RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned they were stunned by an unapproved question that left the pop star panicked.  The interview “absolutely had conditions in place about what Sam Champion could ask her. The formal sit-down interview took place before Britney appeared live on Tuesday from the desert,” a source told Radar.  “Britney’s team panicked when Sam deviated from the pre-approved questions and asked her who her first kiss was. There was a brief moment of panic from Britney’s team, but she handled it like a pro.”  According to the insider, pre-approved questions have always been a demand from Spears’ team.

WOW. I remember meeting Britney when she was just starting out. I was scheduled to do a quick photo shoot with her before her first Chicago show. I was told to arrive at 4PM to set up and get ready. When I arrived, I was given the smallest room in the building, and told to set up. I was told that I could not leave the room- I just had to wait there until Ms. Spears was ready. I was ready by about 4:15, and sat down to read a book (I always carry one with me for this reason!). And there I sat. At about 7PM I heard the opening act go on. At about 7:30 they finished. Still waiting!!

At about 7:50 I heard the stage manager tell Britney’s band to head for the stage. At 8PM, I heard the announcer say “Please welcome- Britney Spears.”  The band started to play and the door to my little room opened. There stood Britney!! The first words out of her mouth were “I don’t like the background.”

I said, “Sorry, no time to change it. Please sit down.”

She said, “I don’t like sitting for photos.”

I said, “Sorry, no time to change it. Please sit down.”

She sat down, I took three uninteresting photographs, she got up and left without a word!

Oh well, another wasted day in paradise.

I was listening to the radio this weekend and they were doing a flashback to 1979. It brought back a lot of cool memories. I had just broken into shooting for CREEM magazine, an ultimate goal for any music photographer of that era. I received a call from the photo editor one day. He started out the conversation by saying “Do you want to shoot a cover for us?” YIKES! Of course I would. This was my first assignment from them- up to that point they had just licensed stock images from me.

The band that they wanted me to shoot was Rockpile, a group of four English “pub rockers.” I called the manager and we set up a time at their hotel. I had 15 minutes to set up and 10 minutes to shoot. I have never been that nervous up to that point or since! Got to the hotel and loaded in lights and background and set up in a corner of the road manager’s room. The four guys walked in and couldn’t have been nicer. I shot for my 10 minutes, they thanked me, and were gone. Later I found out that Nick Lowe, the bass player had just produced the debut albums for Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. I still go to see him when he comes to town. He is still a great guy.

I figured out later that the band was not really big enough to be on the cover of CREEM. But their manager also managed Elvis Costello, and the magazine wanted him for the cover. The manager made a deal- I will give you Elvis if you put Rockpile on the cover first. And so it goes!!!

One more thing!!!

From the Chicagoist blog:

News

Hi! We love our readers and their amazing photo contributions that capture our amazing city. By adding photos to this pool, you are giving Chicagoist permission to run your photos on the website Chicagoist.com – with full accreditation, of course.

Thanks for sharing!

Last week someone asked me what music of today I listened to. I told her, unfortunately, none of it. Music of today doesn’t interest me. It has no soul, no heart.

This weekend I watched a film by Ridley Scott called Springsteen and I. It combines film footage of Bruce and the band through the years with home movies taken by fans and interviews with fans. One piece shows a couple from Philly. When he met her, he told her that one day he would be on stage singing with Bruce. A few years ago, he dressed up like Elvis and they went to a show. During the show, Bruce spotted him in the audience and invited him up on stage to sing All Shook Up. When he came of f the stage his wife was standing there crying.

The greatest line from the film was a Danish woman who was making a “Selfie” video with her phone out in a field. After describing how much she liked his music, she uttered a line about Bruce that I will never forget:

“We have been friends since 1985, although he doesn’t know me.”

I don’t think there isn’t a band out there today that can have that effect on their fans.

On another completely different note, from the Sun Times this week:

After repeatedly claiming to be “penniless and homeless” television infomercial Kingpin and convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau revealed a hidden Swiss bank account to authorities after a night in jail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown. The discovery of the account was revealed in newly filed court papers, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Trudeau wrote $75,000 in checks from the account on Aug. 23, weeks after U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman warned him not to move any money around. Most of the money went to longtime Trudeau business associate Lee Kenny, believed by the Federal Trade Commission to be helping Trudeau hide his assets overseas. Trudeau “remembered” the account Sept. 20, coincidentally the same day Gettleman ordered him locked up for contempt of court in an attempt to force him to reveal where his assets were hidden. Trudeau was fined $38 million in 2007 for making false claims in his infomercials about his book Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You To Know About; Trudeau hasn’t paid a dime toward that fine.

Also from the Sun Times This week came an ironic headline, seeing as they fired all of their photographers earlier this year!!

First- Kevin Trudeau- guilty on all counts. In jail awaiting sentencing.

An observation: Yesterday I was downtown, riding in 3 or 4 elevators. Every person in every elevator I took was either talking or texting on their cell phone. EVERYONE!!

There is a great article in Sports Illustrated this week written by Steve Rushin. In it he describes the dumbing down of America. (The article is called Dumbstruck.)

The last paragraph describes a basketball game he attended:

Then you attend a basketball game a week after the Sandy Hook tragedy, and there is a pregame moment of silence for the victims,  and that silence is shattered when a cellphone rings behind you, and the owner, unbelievably, answers it. As he conducts his loud and long conversation, you wonder if our collective IQ hasn’t already fallen below some intellectual Mendoza line, from which it can never return.

Earlier in the week, I built some new bookshelves in my office, and started moving some books around. In one pile I found a magazine that I have saved for about ten years. It is a special edition of Q Magazine, a great English rock magazine. It is titled The 100 Greatest Rock’n’Roll Photographs. Each photograph is accompanied by a short paragraph written by the photographer. Most are English, but there are a few Americans in the list, most notably Jim Marshall, Henry Diltz and David LaChappelle. Some of the quotes are pretty priceless. Next to photo # 27 (A naked Eminem with a lit stick of dynamite covering his junk) LaChappelle says:

Rule number 1 is don’t tell anyone your ideas for the shoot until the day of. There are a lot of people in the record industry whose whole purpose in life is to rain on the parade.

The best quote is in the forward (written by David Bowie):

A vaguely irrelevant sidebar to this discussion is that during my formative Ziggy period my then management, no doubt giddy on the trip and under the spell of Colonel Tom Parker, brought in a policy of no photographs at gigs. This brought a singularly ridiculous outcome, particularly in the States in that most newspaper reviews of my shows, not having a nice action shot, were relegated to an inside or back page of the entertainment section. Ha bloody ha.

While I was reading that I was remembering a festival I photographed starring Moby and David Bowie. I was there to photograph Moby, the final act, and his publicist asked me to stay in a tent backstage (with most of the other photographers) during Bowie’s set, as we were not cleared to photograph him. She put a guard at the entrance to make sure that none of us escaped. It was hot in the tent, so myself and the Sun Times photographer (who had just gotten out of the hospital, where he had actually died on the operating table, and was brought back to life) decided to walk about 10 feet from the entrance of the tent to find some shade and breeze. Just as we sat down on the ground in the shade, the publicist came back, so us and started screaming at us that we were breaking the rules!

Maybe Mr. Bowie forgot what he wrote in Q!

We have a bunch of wacky characters here in Illinois (mostly politicians) but this guy takes the prize!

In the early 1990’s he wrote a book called The Weight-Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About” In it he suggested a weight loss diet of 500 calories a day, but claimed that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. He ran infomertials for the book and in 1998 he was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for making false and misleading claims promoting the book. He settled that action, by agreeing to pay a $500,000 fine and consenting to a lifetime ban on promoting products other than his books via infomercials. On Nov. 29, 2011, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $37.6 million fine levied against him for violating that 2004 settlement.

He declared bankruptcy so he wouldn’t have to pay the fine, and says he is broke, even though he seems to live in a mansion in Switzerland. He is back in Chicago this month on trial for not paying the fine. The judge has thrown him in jail twice in the last month for not disclosing how much money he has. Each time he is let out, he walks out of jail like a rock star, smiling and waving without a care in the world.

Now he is on trial, and if he loses, he will probably go to jail for a long time. Lets hope!!

They were back in town this weekend for a couple of shows. Still as great as ever.

While I was doing a photo shoot with Chris before the show we were reminiscing about the first time we met, when their first album had just come out, as he had just received a call from our mutual friend Keith Van Horne, offensive lineman for the 1985 Super Bowl Bears. He was heading toward the show, and needed a couple of chairs on the side of the stage, because he was recovering from major surgery. Chris reminded me that when I went to photograph them that first time, and I walked into the dressing room with Keith, all Chris could think about was that that was the biggest photo assistant he had ever seen! (Keith was-and still is- six foot seven and about 325 pounds). He and I have spent a lot of time hanging out with bands through the years. My favorite moment was when we were in New York for a Keith Richards show, around the time that the Danny DeVito-Arnold Schwartznegger film “Twins” was out, and Van Horne and I were walking around the village before the show, and people were making fun of us, as New Yorkers were known to do.

So Keith showed up right before the show and took his seat at the side of the stage. He was walking real slow, and we were all worried about him. I went to talk to him, and the first thing he said was “This seat sucks. Show me how to get into the photo pit.” So I had a six foot seven bodyguard down there. Even sitting down, he was too tall for the short people in the front row. I shouldn’t have worried about him- five minutes later he was gone, out to the lobby to meet some friends. For a guy recovering from surgery, that man can move!

Great show, great time was had by all.

Chicago is known for politicians in jail, and politicians that lie their way out of jail! This was evident last week. First the back story:

10 years ago, our last mayor (Richard M. Daley) pushed through a plan to build a park in downtown Chicago called Millenium Park. It became one of his legacies. He commissioned Anish Kapoor, a sculptor who designed and produced a hugh silver bean called Cloudgate, and hired famous designer Frank Geahry to build an amazing bandshell, funded by the Pritzker family, and aptly named Jay Pritzker Pavillion in Millenium Park. There is a huge fountain with video images of kids faces that change throughout the day. All in all a great place to hang out, and a lasting legacy to our last mayor, who spent way to much money for the park, but got it completed.

Included in the park is a restaurant called the Park Grill. It has a very interesting Chicago political history. After the building was built, the park district put out a call for bids to lease the building and run the restaurant. The winning bid was won by two guys who owned a bar on the near south side. He was backed by a bunch of Mayor Daley’s personal, well connected friends. They got an amazing deal from the park district. Free water and natural gas for 20 years, including having the city dig a trench from the gas main, at the city’s cost. They also got free garbage pickup for 20 years! What a deal!!! After the deal was finalized, it was determined that a high ranking employee of the park district was the girl friend (now the husband) of one of the two guys-AND she was pregnant with his child. They were married last year by a prominent Chicago judge who’s husband is the most powerful alderman in the city council.

Wonder how they got that great deal? The park district employee said she recused herself from the negotiations. YEAH,RIGHT!

So this week, our currant mayor is trying to break the lease and lease the restaurant to someone who will pay all the bills. This week, Mayor Daley was deposed (swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth). Seems that he doesn’t remember anything about planning Millenium Park- just woke up one morning and the bean was being installed in the park!!!

Then came the greatest headline in the last ten years on the front page of the Chicago Sun Times:

Mayor Daley testifies: I DON’T KNOW WHAT I KNEW.

YIKES!  6 small words and history is made. You can’t make this stuff up!

My father always told me to shoot every job as if I was shooting a cover assignment for Rolling Stone. Even if I was only getting paid $25 for the job. I always try to do that, Sometimes the subject thinks I am crazy.

One time, the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked me to accompany a writer to meet, interview and photograph Meryl Streep. I showed up with a Hasselblad and lighting equipment. For a newspaper assignment!! She thought I was crazy, but went along with it.

I once saw a television special on the beginnings of Motown Records. Berry Gordy hired a group of people to make his young stars act and perform “properly.”

He hired a choreographer to teach them how to hold a microphone so that the audience could see their faces. He also hired an etiquette teacher to make sure that the artists behaved properly at interviews. She formed what became known as “Motown’s Finishing School.” This was one of the industries first Artist Development Departments. As Smokey Robinson said, “It didn’t matter who you became during the course of your career. Two days a week when you were back in Detroit you had to go to artist development. It was mandatory!”

The woman who ran the department used to say “Do not confuse me with your parents-they are stuck with you. I am not!”

Her name was Maxine Powell. She passed away this week at the age of 98. An era has come to an end.