SMACKER THAT ROCKED JAGGER... AND THE SECRET PAIN OF BLONDIE
One the eve of his London exhibition, celebrity photographer Norman Seeff tells JAMES MURRAY the stories behind his shots of stars like the Stones, Debbie Harry and Ray Charles
THE year was 1972 and no band was bigger than the Rolling Stones. They were putting the finishing touches to the album Exile On Main Street and Norman Seeff, then an album designer, was teamed up with an artist called John Van Hamersveld to take pictures for the cover.
“The Rolling Stones then were a hot, smouldering take-no-hostages band and were working on the album all day,” he recalls. “Our session started at midnight and I was trying to create something iconic.
“Keith was in his usual state – loaded – but Mick was incredibly responsible and very hands-on. We ended up doing the shoot but nothing was happening. At one point a woman standing next to Mick suddenly got this idea that she wanted to kiss him deeply on the lips.
“As she spun around she lost her footing and the two of them fell. I happened to be there fast enough to get a whole sequence of Mick flying through the air with my assistant with him. So that made the shoot.”
The pictures of Jagger are among a host of images – of stars such as Blondie, Ray Charles and Patti Smith – from Seeff’s celebrated career as a photographer that go on show in London from tomorrow.
It was while the 79-year-old Seeff was selecting pictures for this exhibition that he got to the bottom of why Blondie’s Debbie Harry walked off a shoot at New York’s Chelsea Hotel one day in 1979.
“I started shooting inside a large room and it was great at first then the musicians started jumping around and bumping into each other. In the middle of taking some shots, Debbie suddenly walks off.
“I was always perplexed about why she walked off, so I found the film and developed the footage only recently,” he says. “When I cut the footage I had a chance to see what was going on all those years ago. Then I realised they I first started the shoot they were really beating the s*** out of her. They were really bumping into her.
“Rather than her being some little diva, I realised she was quite shaken up and quite hurt by the roughness of the play. I can understand why she looks a little p ***** off.
“Despite the rocky beginning, Debbie rose to the occasion and we wound up working harmoniously and coming up with some very strong imagery.”
One of the images from the shoot will be shown in the gallery and shows Blondie in a yellow dress with guitarist Chris Stein and other band members. Her right hand is across her body, gripping the elbow of her left arm as if in pain. Unsmiling, she looks slightly miffed and her normally pristine hair is a little ruffled.
SHE can be forgiven for looking a little out of sorts, as Seeff explains. “I’m on the balcony with the whole band, the lighting guys and we are pretty heavy,” he says. “The hotel is old and I was scared the balcony would collapse but I just kept shooting and hoping.”
Things also got off to a rocky start when he had to photograph singer Ray Charles, who died in 2004 aged 73, for a laser disc ad.
“When he arrived a part of him didn’t want to do the ad, but they were paying him good money,” he says. “He was short and testy and, like, ‘Get out of my face.’ But after we’d talked about creativity he was calling me brother.”
Sessions In Sound: Photographs by Norman Seeff is at Proud Central gallery, London WC2, from tomorrow until January 13.