Blog: My Stories, News, Concerts, and Uses

This photo of David Bowie wearing an eyepatch was made at Hilversum, Holland’s TOP POP television studios in 1974, during a playback taping of the song Rebel Rebel in 1974.

This photo of David Bowie was recently used on a t-shirt  by a major US clothing company. The choice of this photo was made by David Bowie’s management.

The Dire Straits were really big after the release of their first LP. They hated to pose for photos as a group. And so I taped a small piece of blue paper on the wall of their hotel lobby, next to a window for available light portraits, and waited all day for them to trickle in from their separate trips into Amsterdam. As you can see, the light was fading. The record company was looking for photos of them for their new Communique LP shortly after this session was made. These pictures were spotted in a Dutch magazine, and so the record company decided to use these photos, instead of bother the boys for a new photo-session. Just by coincidence, my background paper fit the Communique Blue of the album.

Released in June 1979 – Sold 7 million world-wide

I was recently contacted by a film company that was making a documentary produced by Dave Grohl on

the infamous Sound City Recording Studio. This photo of REO Speedwagon, made in the streets of Amsterdam in the late 70’s, was used in the rockumentary.

http://buy.soundcitymovie.com

 

This photo I made of The Police, before their big breakthrough, was rejected by management back then, because this did not fit in with their very serious (no smiling, & no clowning-around allowed) image.

But in 2009, Sting chose this photo, to be just one of a handful to be used in his book Lyrics.
I was the only photographer to show up at the Rock Planet TV Studios to shoot them. I read in Crawdaddy Magazine that they were going to be the next biggest thing. After doing some crazy playback in the tv studios, we went outside, in the cold Dutch winter weather, to shoot just one roll of 36 exposure black and white film. Soon after that, I was on a bus, with a bunch of members of the Dutch press, to go on a junket to see them in Paris. I photographed them again in Cologne, Germany and at PinkPop.

This photo of George Clinton was made in his hotel room while he was in Amsterdam for a concert with Funkadelic and The Brides of Funkenstein.

It was a completely outrageous show with flying saucers, strobe lights and great music.

Years later this photo was used on a CD cover.