Terry O’Neill
Photographer
THE PHOTOGRAPHER Terry O’Neill, who has died at 81, rose to fame through his work with the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and was almost as much a part of the swinging Sixties as were they.
The tributes paid to him by Barbra Streisand, Sir Michael Caine and Sir Elton John, amongst many others, attested to his fame. “A real character,” Sir Elton called him.
One of his last public appearances had been at Buckingham Palace last month, to collect his CBE for services to photography, from the Duke of Cambridge.
That, said O’Neill, by then in a wheelchair and in the advanced stages of prostate cancer, “surpassed anything I’ve had happen to me”.
He had become one of the world’s most collected photographers, his work hanging in national art galleries and private collections worldwide.
His images graced album covers, movie posters and magazine covers and by 1965 he was being asked to work with the biggest publications in the world.
As the Royal Photographic Society noted, upon granting him its centenary medal in 2011, he had grasped that the youth culture of the 1960s was a key moment in time globally. He began to record the new faces in film, fashion and music who would go on to become megastars.
His work captured the highs and lows of the decade. The Beatles and The Stones were still young bands on the make when he first took their pictures, as were David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton and Chuck Berry.
Sir Michael, who remained a lifelong friend, would describe him as “a historian whose camera captured the resurgence and energy of this revolution”.
But his subjects were not all icons of popular culture. The Queen and Nelson Mandela posed for him, and there are striking images of Sir Winston Churchill also among his archive.
The footballers Bobby Moore, Franz Beckenbauer, Pelé and George Best; manager Brian
Clough, boxer Muhammad Ali and Pakistani cricketer and politician Imran Khan were among the sporting greats he captured. He was also known for his photographs of Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Terence Stamp, Jean Shrimpton, Tom Jones, and Frank Sinatra, through to Bruce Springsteen, Amy Winehouse and U2 in more recent times.
He was known, too, for being one of the first photographers to work with the new film franchise of James Bond, capturing both Sean Connery and Sir Roger Moore.
Terry O’Neill was born in Heston, west London, and had initially expected to become a priest – but soon found his true calling to be in music.
He set his heart set on becoming a jazz drummer and tried to get a job at an airline, believing it would help him to get to New York City where he could play jazz in the clubs. He opted for photography when he could not find work as a steward.
He then got a lucky break while working for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, forerunner of British Airways. He took a picture at an airport of a man napping, surrounded by African chieftains, who turned out to be Home Secretary Rab Butler. As a result, he was offered a job at the Daily Sketch.
An honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society since 2004, O’Neill married three times; first to the actress Vera Day, secondly to the film star Faye Dunaway, and then to Laraine Ashton, a former model agency executive. She survives him, along with his two children from his first marriage and his son with Ms Dunaway.