Last night I did something strange (for me). I actually bought tickets to a concert and sat in a seat for pure enjoyment. The artist was Syl Johnson, a legendary (although underappreciated) soul and blues singer and songwriter best known for his 1975 hit song “Take Me To The River”. Syl was celebrating 50 years in the music business (wonder what most of today’s artists will be doing in 50 years?). He hit the stage in a red suit, backed by a 14 piece band, with horns and backup singers galore, and played many of his most popular songs. He talked about the last 25 years, when he was semi-retired, until he realized that rappers like Wu-Tang Clan, Hammer and the Geto Boys were sampling his music, mostly his song “Is It Because I’m Black.” He talked about Cypress Hill sampling one of his songs and Sony forgetting to clear the sample, resulting in a lawsuit that made him a great deal of money (he thanked his lawyers from the stage.)

He brought Otis Clay and Gene Chandler up to sing with him during the set, and the crowd went crazy!

Before he started his encores, (without the horn section- they put on their coats and left because, as Syl put it “They have another gig!”) he told the story of how his first record company changed the name of the company to try to screw him out of royalties, and how the recently released, career defining box set provided him with the first chance in his life to actually receive a royalty check!

Nice to see a true star finally get his due!

One weird note: During the prerecorded announcements before the show, the voice announced that “at the performers request, no photography will be allowed .” As this was a prerecorded announcement, it seems that the venue has decided that no one will be allowed to shoot at any show. Having known Syl for many years, and knowing that he is attracted to a camera like a moth to a flame, I am guessing that he knew nothing about this.

Someone just sent me a pretty interesting article today. It is an article in Arts Journal by John Rockwell in which he eulogizes a publicist friend of his. Here is an example:

Edgar’s death set me to thinking about publicists. Ideally there should be a certain tension between press and publicists, but that relationship changes with the personality and position on each side of the divide. Press agents who represent famous clients spend more of their time warding off the press than hustling for stories, let alone Page Six mentions. Of late some of the big-name Hollywood press agents, those who demand copy and photo approval and guaranteed covers, have become awesomely obnoxious. Junior critics and reporters, or those working for marginal outlets (like, now, the blogs to which I contribute), can expect dismissive treatment from most press agents, who spend much of their time fending off requests for free tickets. Writers for major publications like the New York Times get fawned over, or at least treated courteously.

Quote #2:

While the basic tension does and should exist between writers and the representatives of the written about, it’s not surprising that friendships and respect should arise. Young people who love the arts find no easy career path into the field. Some become writers, some publicists, some managers or agents or curators. They share a passion that often overrides any supposed division of responsibilities. And rightly so.

It is interesting to hear this perspective from a legendary writer. If only it was so in the music business! The relationship between photographer and publicist is completely adversarial. Part of it is because there are so many photographers who are not really working journalists- like the quote above, they are just looking for free tickets.

The other part of the equation is this:

It is really difficult to respect a photographer who gives away his or her work for free. During my short stay at the Pitchfork Festival this past summer, I was introduced to two photographers who were the “official” Pitchfork photographers. We started up a conversation. I asked them what hotel the festival was putting them up in, and when they were flown in. They both laughed! Turns out that “Official” tag means that they find their own way to Chicago, sleep on friends floors, and give Pitchfork all of their photos to use for free. For this they get no money whatsoever (But they get to eat lunch and dinner backstage). So that is a plus!!

A few days ago I picked up a magazine (A free one) called Emerging Photographer published by Sony and Photo District News. In the magazine is an article titled “For free  or not for free.” A few experts are asked when it is right to work for free-

Dennis Keeley:   Never! (He does say that a great portfolio piece is worth something.)

Graham Mitchell: Work for free once and clients will come to expect it of you.

So what is to take from all this?? If you work as a professional, more than likely publicists will have more respect for you and give you more access! (Hopefully)

Last week the New York Times ran an article detailing Warner Music Group resurrecting their photo archives to try to inventory what they have in dusty old boxes all over the world.

“I wanted to take an inventory of what we had,” said Edgar Bronfman Jr., the chairman and chief executive of the Warner Music Group. “We thought it was important from an artistic standpoint, from a corporate culture standpoint and potentially from a consumer standpoint.”

I had to chuckle at that one! Over the course of my career, I have, on occasion, entered into a buy-out contract with a major label for photos used on album packaging. In almost every case, this was for an artist that I figured  would never amount to any thing, so there would be almost no reason to lower my price and retain ownership. Only one time did I regret this move. That was the evening that legendary bassist Bootsy Collins drove up to my house in a Cadillac filled with clothes and instruments! Man, I wish I still had some of those images.

I understand the rationale behind the major labels insistence to own all the images. They are always banking on the artist becoming famous, or staying famous, and they don’t want to have to hunt down images from early in the artist’s career and renegotiate usage fees with a bunch of photographers when the are putting together greatest hits and career retrospectives.  So it was very humorous to read this:

In close to a year of digging, the company has only pricked the surface: there are still 14,000 boxes in New Jersey alone that haven’t been touched, and tens of thousands more elsewhere in the United States and abroad in places like Brazil, Japan and Australia.

So, when they do a greatest hits package, they still have to call photographers all over the world to negotiate usage rights and fees, because they have no idea what they already own.

Just example number 5010 (approximately) why record companies are nearly extinct dinosaurs!

If I had a dime for every band that I heard say “Being on the road is really hard. We have to play for an hour four times a week!! We are so tired!” I would be rich. My thoughts go back to the Counting Crows, who, after opening for the Rolling Stones for a month (One hour a night, 5 nights a week in front of 50,000 people each night) had to cancel a month long sold out theater tour because they were too tired. WOW, that is really hard work!

Then there is Willie Nelson.

I photograph Willie every year at Farm Aid. He always opens the show, and he and his band close the show at the end of a long day. They usually play for about a half an hour, as the show is usually a little past close time. This year, the day after the show, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, editing photos and waiting for a few people to come down so that we could head back home. Mickey Raphael, Willie’s harmonica player and one of the nicest people in the business, sat down next to me to look over my shoulder at the photos. He asked me if I had ever seen a full Willie Nelson show. I thought about it and realized that I hadn’t in about 25 years! So he invited me out to Joliet the following week to see a Willie show.

And what a show it was!! Willie and the band played for 2 ½ hours. There were no breaks in between songs, just one great moment after another. He played country, blues and jazz. He played all his hits, and also played a ferocious lead guitar throughout the show. The band was minimal. Willie on guitar, his sister Bobbie on piano, Mickey on harmonica, a bass player and Paul English and his brother playing drums (a snare drum and a cymbal). The only prop on the stage was a giant flag of Texas as a backdrop. One standing ovation after another! After the show, Willie hopped on his bus and headed down the highway to his next show

Maybe those young guys should go and see a Willie Nelson show and see how it should be done!

Recently, I saw two old friends of mine in the news. I went out on Friday and bought the new autobiography “Life” by Keith Richards. Fabulous read!! Almost 600 pages of Keith’s recollections of his life. It is a great and funny read, and also good exercise as it weighs about 500 pounds!!! Keith has been all over the press for the last couple of weeks, being his usual debonair and charming self. My favorite description of him was from the New York Times this week called him a “Consummate gentleman.” This is something that anyone who knows him wouldn’t be surprised about. From the first time I met him (even though I was shaking so hard in fear heading to my first photo shoot with him that I could hardly walk!), he proved to be one of the nicest people I have ever had a chance to hang out with. He puts everyone around him at ease. One late night I was sitting in a chair off camera in Hunter S. Thompson’s living room in Colorado while Hunter was interviewing Keith. It was a most surreal night. Everyone was waiting for Hunter to get his act together. He got up and left the room. The room was silent. All of a sudden, Keith picked up a guitar, turned to me and said “You are from Chicago- does this sound like some of those old blues guys from the south side?” All of a sudden all eyes in the room turned to me. Keith and I proceeded to have a 20 minute conversation about Chicago blues, and the whole crew had a free Keith Richards concert! That was the best part of the night (which ended as the sun came up over the mountains and Hunter shot a double barreled shotgun out the sliding glass door into a tree, deafening everyone in the room.

Keith is always the first one to any van we are traveling in, opening the door and helping everyone into the van before him. In his house, he was always asking me what I wanted to eat and drink. I have never been nervous around him, and always knew that I was in for a good conversation whenever he and I were in the same room! Get the book- it is great!!!

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, I spent a lot of time working with Journey, both in Chicago and on the road. I watched them grow to become the biggest band in the world in the early 1980’s. Everyone in the band treated me great, and I always had a great time photographing them. They put on a great show, and their songs became anthems for a generation of fans. Then they disappeared. Rumors circulated that Steve Perry didn’t get along with the rest of the band, different forms of the band continued to tour with several different lead singers. Then the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005, using Don’t Stop Believin’ as their theme song, and Steve Perry popped up on stage at the victory parade singing with the team. Then the Sopranos ended it’s final show with a Journey song as the screen went black. Cut to last week, with the san Francisco Giants in the World Series. There is a clip all over uTube this week videos appeared of the crowd singing along to Don’t Stop Believin’ as the Giants won the first two games. As the camera pans the crowd, it stops on a familiar looking guy in the crowd waving an orange flag, screaming out the words to the song that he made a massive hit 30 years ago. Steve Perry rises again. Maybe a Journey reunion in the works? One can only hope.

Last week the City of Chicago put on their last summer festival, the Chicago Country Music Festival. A pretty good lineup of headliners a few years past their prime!

First day: Gretchen Wilson followed by Clint Black

Second day: Someone I never heard of followed by Jewel

I have photographed all of these people before and they have always been pretty nice about being photographed. So I headed downtown, walked up to the press table, and was given the bad news-

Gretchen Wilson- We were allowed to shoot the first 30 seconds of each of the first 2 songs!

Clint Black- First three songs from a pretty long distance from the stage.

My first thought was to find a seat in the first couple of rows (it was a free show on public property) and shoot the whole show (or get thrown out) but I had forgotten my book and the artists weren’t worth it. When I was told that Jewel had the same policy as Gretchen, I knew I had my weekend free for some quality sports watching!

Another note- while talking to the publicity, a cameraman from ABC7 walked up. He was told he could shoot 30 seconds of Gretchen Wilson, and could not shoot Clint Black! Clint must have a great publicist, to not allow television coverage in a major city in America on a Friday night (a slow news day). So that night at 10PM, I turned on the ABC7 news and saw a nice piece about the Country Music Festival, headlined by Gretchen Wilson- and no mention whatsoever of Clint Black!

This weekend, I was scanning some Neil Diamond photos for a CD project, and it reminded me about the  first time I photographed him. His publicist called and offered to hire me to shoot a show, because they were desperate to get some new photos for press. But there was a catch- Neil didn’t like to be photographed. So I was snuck into the venue, and placed in a fifth row seat a little off center and told to stay low so that the artist that was ultimately paying me would not know I was there! Got some pretty decent photos, even with those restrictions! The next morning, I went out to the suburbs to have breakfast with the publicist that had hired me. We were sitting in the lobby of a fancy hotel, surrounded by very agitated middle aged women of all shapes and sizes. He asked me if I had ever had as weird a circumstance as what we went through the night before. I laughed and told him about my experience two night earlier, when I had been at a different venue photographing Julio Iglesias. Ten minutes before the show, his road manager led me down to the front of the stage, a roll of white tape in his hand. He stopped on the stage right side of the stage, kneeled down and with four pieces of tape, drew a box about two feet square on the floor in front of the front row, stood up and said “There you go- you can shoot as many pictures as you want, as long as you are standing in this box. That way, you will only photograph the side of his face that Julio wants photographed.” Shortly after I finished this story, the aforementioned middle aged women started to scream. We looked up, and saw a sight it will be hard to ever forget. The worlds collided when two facing elevators opened up and Neil Diamond and Julio Iglesias each walked out of one of them and stood face to face. All we could do was laugh.

Looks like my friend Bryn Bridenthal has finally retired. One of the greatest publicists in the history of the music business, she has, during her career headed publicity departments for four record companies – DreamWorks Records, Geffen Records, Capitol Records and Elektra-Asylum Records. During her career, she handled publicity for Queen, Mötley Crüe, The Cars, The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Jr., The Pointer Sisters, Carly Simon, Eddie Rabbitt, Patrice Rushen, Grover Washington, Jr., John Prine, X, Megadeth, Duran Duran, Steve Miller, Crowded House, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Beck, George Michael, Enya, Slash’s Snakepit, Forest For The Trees, Herb Alpert, White Zombie, The Sundays, Hole, Aerosmith, Jimmy Page, Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell, Don Henley, Nelly Furtado, Toby Keith, The Isley Brothers, Rufus Wainwright, Lifehouse, eels, Papa Roach, Floetry, Jimmy Eat World, Alien Ant Farm, Jessica Andrews and Buckcherry, among others!

That is quite a list! A few weeks ago she sent out an email to her friends saying she was retiring to concentrate on her work as a glass artist.

Her talent and wisdom will be sorely missed by any press person who still remembers when one of the jobs of a publicist was to treat a press person with respect and work with them to try to get what they needed to do their job.

Last week was the 25^th anniversary Farm Aid concert. Held at Miller Park in Milwaukee (thankfully the roof was closed) the concert was a rousing success. Some new artists (Band of Horses, Amos Lee) some soon to be superstars (Jamey Johnson, Norah Jones) and a few unlikely pairings (Willie Nelson and American Idol judge Steven Tyler, for example) and the classics (Dave, John, Neil and Willie). It should be noted that there were about 100 photographers working there that day, and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. There seemed to be a pretty good level of respect among the working photographers and it seems that everyone got what they needed.

Last night I was hanging out in back of a venue talking to a band I had just photographed. The subject of putting on a show to make it worth the money for the fans came up. These guys (Anti Flag) from Pittsburgh had just driven 8 hours to play a 35 minute set at a festival, and all said that, although they were tired, and all in their middle thirties, and that it wasn’t as fun to drive around in a cramped van anymore, they were still going to jump around like crazy because they owed it to the people that bought their tickets and music!

They certainly did!

Last week I photographed a few Dave Matthews concerts at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The second night, the concert ended at about 11PM. I packed up my stuff and fought my way through the happy throngs and started walking to my car, which was parked in a Cubs lot about 2 blocks away (thanks to my friend and fellow photographer Steve Green). The crowds on Clark Street were huge, mostly heading south to all the bars in the area. I walked one block south and turned on Eddy Street, and walked past Sluggers Sports Bar to the parking lot directly behind it, got in my car and went home.

The next morning, I woke up and went to the corner to buy the paper. The front page story was about an FBI sting operation that caught a guy who threw what he thought was a bomb into a garbage can in front of Sluggers Sports Bar shortly after the concert. On the news that night they showed the corner that I walked past to get to my car, about five feet from that garbage can at about the time that the incident took place. Although the FBI had control of the guy from the beginning, and it wasn’t a real bomb, it still makes you think. Would I have been there when the bomb went off? Would I have just walked past? Or would I have been photographing the aftermath? Sure makes what I do for a living pretty insignificant in the scope of the real world.

We, professional photographers, are continually restricted in what we can shoot. It seems that if we shoot more than the little bit that we are allowed to, the world will end!

Meanwhile, everyone that pays to get in to the show has a camera! And they seem to use them throughout the show. It seems that the main byproduct of buying a ticket and going to the show is to have a picture of the band on one’s cell phone camera to take to work the next day and show to the world.

Recently, I photographed Iggy Pop. Halfway through the show, he invited audience members to jump on stage with him and dance. That should have been enough- except for one guy, who had to take a self portrait with Iggy!

At a recent Dave Matthews concert, I turned around during the show and saw this scene:

Does anyone just go to a show to see and hear the band? Does everyone in America have a camera? And finally, why is it OK for 5000 people to take bad photos at a show, and not OK for 10 people to take good pictures?