Behind thescenes Bowie with
As his pictures are shown as part of Dublin Bowie Festival, photographer Denis O’Regan on tours and friendship with the Thin White Duke
AS a child Denis O’Regan badgered his mother to take him to see The Beatles and by his teenage years he had been to Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper and The Who.
But it was the night that he saw David Bowie performing his last gig as Ziggy Stardust that really ignited something in Denis.
Later, when it was his ambition to become a touring photographer, Bowie was the man he wanted to tour with.
‘Because I knew what I wanted to do, when things came along I took the opportunity to move towards them,’ he says.
As a rookie photographer in a school hall, photographing The Damned, he borrowed a flash for his camera off another photographer called Chalkie Davies and a friendship followed.
‘He was sharing a house with Phil Lynott and Philip said ‘We are going to go to Scandivancia on tour.’ Chalkie didn’t want to do it so I said ‘Take me’ and off I went.’
There were two tours with Thin Lizzy and one with The Rolling Stones before he managed to get his dream job. An accountant he had become firm friends with on The Stones tour was putting together a tour for David Bowie.
‘I rang him up and told him I wanted to photograph the tour and he said ‘Great, you need to do me up a business plan.’ So my business plan was that I would do a book and the advance from the book would pay for me to go on the tour.’
The advance paid for O’Regan to join the Serious Moonlight tour and would lead to future tours and projects and an enduring friendship.
While on tour with Thin Lizzy in Scandinavia, O’Regan was in a serious crash where Phil Lynott’s Mercedes was written off but it was just as Bowie was starting his rehearsals in Texas for the tour O’Regan would join.
‘Phil was lovely,’ he says. ‘He was a real mentor to a lot of people — musicians and people like me. He took an interest in the photographs I took and because of that I spent time with him and socially because we lived not far from each other. People call him a wild man — he was a very quiet sort of a wild man,’ says O’Regan, laughing.
Similarly, says O’Regan, Bowie was interested and interesting, personable and kind during the months and months they spent together on the road.
‘David was very personable and approachable,’ says Denis. ‘We all travelled by private jet and we were backstage all the time. His dressing room had an open door, we stayed in the same hotel and we sometimes socialised as well. He would often say to me ‘We’re going out for dinner, so and so is coming, why don’t you bring the camera?”’
Denis was unusual in that he stayed for every night of every tour. ‘I did it because I loved it,’ he says. ‘I thought I might as well travel round the world with David Bowie as sit at home.’
A selection of O’Regan’s wonderful photos make up A Portrait in Flesh: a photographic exhibition of David Bowie which is currently on display at Rathfarnham Castle and runs until Sunday. It is part of the annual Dublin Bowie Festival, a huge celebration of Bowie’s work involving people like Denis, Gerry Leonard who played guitar with Bowie and many other musicians who were inspired by the late, great singer.
‘On the tour I would go to his hotel room and show him the photographs and so every one in this exhibition has been approved by him,’ says Denis. ‘Quite often it would just be me and him and there is a photo of him sitting on a boat just relaxing with his hat on his knee which is one of my favourites too. It was just a moment I grabbed but it was just because we were on our own.’
O’ Regan knew that David Bowie was ill and at the time of his death they had been working on a project together.
‘ I knew what he was doing- he was clearing out his loft,’ says O’Regan ‘He was putting his legacy together and ensuring everything was in place when he wasn’t around to look after it.’
Now O’Regan has a collection of photos that will preserve Bowie’s memory in a special way.
‘The estate has archived a lot of stuff including my pictures and they will be in the V&A which is opening a Bowie wing in its new building. So they have given that to the best people to take that into the future. And in another way it means I will be kind of involved with David for the rest of my life. And I like that.’