CAPTURING ROCK’S LEGENDS
Charlie Watts, drummer with the Rolling Stones for more than half a century, passed away peacefully in London on 24 August, 2021 at the age of 80. A statement from the band read: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts…Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also a member of the Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation.” Through the photography of Gered Mankowitz, who photographed the band regularly between 1965 and 1967, The Peninsula magazine pays tribute to the legendary musician.
Charlie Watts, drummer with the Rolling Stones for more than half a century, passed away peacefully in London on 24 August, 2021 at the age of 80. A statement from the band read: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts…Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also a member of the Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation.” Through the photography of Gered Mankowitz, who photographed the band regularly between 1965 and 1967, The Peninsula magazine pays tribute to the legendary musician.
“Charlie was always tricky to photograph because of the lighting and getting a good live shot of the whole band together was almost impossible!” says Gered Mankowitz, as legendary in his own field of photography as Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts was in the land of rock and roll.
In 1963, Gerard Mankowitz had already begun to make a name for himself in the music business, and as a result of a chance meeting with Marianne Faithfull, who had just released her first single ‘As Tears Go By', he invited her to pose for him which she willingly did. They instantly got on well and after several sessions with her, Mankowitz got to know her manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham.
Ensnaring the attention of Oldham, Mankowitz was asked to work with another one of Oldham's bands, The Rolling Stones. In 1965, the Stones were three records into a run of Top Ten hits that would last until 1971. Mankowitz was slated to follow in the shoes of David Bailey, who was the “trendiest, most happening fashion photographer in England, or even the world,” and shot the cover of the third album.
“It was intimidating being in Bailey's shadow, though one of the great strengths of youth is arrogance, ignorance and a determination to make your mark,” recalls Mankowitz. Very much buoyed by the atmosphere of the burgeoning 1960s, the groundswell of an incredibly dynamic, energised youth-led movement was taking flight. Taught the value of controlling all three building blocks composition, light and focus - through a classical photography education, and armed with his trusty Hasselblad, Mankowitz set out to conquer the world, thinking that “nothing was going to stop me and I thought I would be the greatest photographer ever.”
In early 1965, Mankowitz began to photograph the Stones, marking a major turning point in his career. Welcomed into the folds of the mighty Rolling Stones, the photographer muses over how down to earth the band was. “There weren't prima donnas, and even Brian Jones, at that time, wasn't particularly difficult. They were still lads at that point, they weren't flash, nor were they rich. Nothing was taken for granted.” Different professions, they may have been in, but in those early days there was a sense of camaraderie, a youthful energy, a desire to make it big that seemingly united the group, who were all around 20-something, give or take a few years. Thus a set of photos that veered far from the norm was conceived during that first session. “Using a big construction site right outside my studio was the absolute antithesis of the glamorous, glittery, shiny and smiley pictures so prevalent in the day. The moody, sullen dark Stones just looked more interesting that way.”
From his first session photographing the band, came the cover for the album ‘Out of Our Heads' (U.S. title ‘December's Children'), and as a result Mankowitz was asked by the Stones to go to America with them on their record-breaking 1965 autumn tour. During this six-week (36 city) tour of the U.S., he photographed the band on stage and off, and got particularly close to Keith (Richards) and Watts. There were many adventures, as the lensman found himself on the road with the greatest rock band in the world at the peak of their early success.
Mankowitz continued working with the Stones as their ‘official' photographer, producing photos for other albums (‘Between the Buttons', ‘Got Live If You Want It', ‘Big Hits', and several others), press and publicity, taken at home, in the recording studio, on stage and behind the scenes until mid-1967, when the band broke off with their manager Oldham.
Although they would go their separate ways in 1967, the incandescent images captured in those short years would come to represent the band in the early days, in their prime, before the fame and fortune spiralled out of control.
In 2016, Charlie Watts was ranked 12th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest drummers of all time, and his last concert with the group took place in Miami on August 30, 2019.
The psychology of drawing someone into the camera has always been interesting to Mankowitz, but it's not something he particularly likes talking about. “It's like mojo, you just don't want to overthink it. My mother was a psychotherapist and talking has always been an important part of my life," he says by way of explanation. "Nothing is an accident," he says of good photography. “I'm not a control freak, but a photographer has to be controlling.” Showing distain for photographers that fly by the seat of their pants, he is a great proponent for creating intelligent, well thought out, perfectly composed images. “I hated people talking about my work as being snaps; it showed that they didn't appreciate the quality of the work. I wanted them to notice the subjects who were the heroes in the shot.”
Offering a last word on the subject, Mankowitz muses: “The eating, talking, relaxing and easing yourself into the work, drawing someone into the photograph and making a shape - that's what composition is - unifying the band as a group and trying to coax that bit of magic from them. It's a complex process, and they're all pieces of the puzzle, part of the grand plan to control the final outcome." “I am something of a perfectionist, but I don't think I'm over-the-top about it. Such is the life of a commercial professional photographer that I needed to know I could produce results so I would get paid!”
A book of Gerard Mankowitz' Rolling Stones images entitled ‘Goin' Home – The Rolling Stones 1966' was published by Reel Art Press in November 2020.