Atlanta, 1990 at The Masquerade. A band called Nirvana plays a small show for a group of 50 people. The band takes to the stage in dirty flannel shirts and greasy hair and proceeds to blow the roof off of the club. At the end of their set, the lead singer runs full speed across the length of the stage and dives head first into his Marshall stack. He somehow manages to stand up afterwards, his guitar shattered and in pieces. At that moment I knew I had to capture and communicate what I was witnessing, the photography I shot then continues to influence me and how I see the world.
Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta (basically in the middle of nowhere) I yearned to escape my isolation. I began my career in photography as a staff photographer for my high school newspaper. I was fortunate to have an older cousin who turned me on to the sounds and iconography of indie music when I was 13, bands like The Fall, Pylon, Let's Active, The Birthday Party and The Clash all opened up a new world for me. I was always dreaming of going to rock shows in Atlanta, it was the best of the late 80's, The Pixies at Club Rio, Jane's Addiction at the Metroplex and so on. By 1988 with a driver's license in hand, I was old enough to finally escape with my friends in a yellow VW bug to the downtown indie music scene.
The Masquerade was the most popular venue in Atlanta to see all age shows. Situated in an old mill, the club consisted of three levels - Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Everyone from The Swans to Skinny Puppy played there. At one of the shows I happened upon the Atlanta based fanzine Mouth Magazine, printed on newsprint with a unique black and white collage cut out cover. The photos and layout were really strong and featured a lot of my favorite bands and subsequently working with them meant I could become more serious about photography through having a lifeline into this culture I found so wonderful.
Mouth was published and autonomously financed by a woman named Leslie Batchelder. After meeting her I edited through a few contact sheets, we had some photos to run in Mouth. Her one criticism and piece of advice was that I get closer to the action. A few months later I found myself consistently shooting inside of a barricade (basically a gutter filled with 50-75 beer bottles and cigarette butts) between the crowd and the stage at The Masquerade. The bouncers never seemed to mind and I decided it was the perfect spot. I was able to capture a multitude of angles throughout a show and move freely from side to side (at times crawling) with the raging crowd at my back and the bands blasting two feet in front of me, nowadays this type of access would be unheard of. I probably shot 30 shows in the gutter with nobody ever telling me to leave. The open barricade was key to complete coverage of the show. I shot The Smashing Pumpkins on the Gish tour. Leslie loved the photos and decided to run a shot of Billy Corgan on the cover of the next issue. In the coming months, I shot and submitted a ton of photos to Mouth, developing all of my own film and making the prints in my father's darkroom. My goal was to get as close and intimate as possible to the band, shying away from using a zoom lens. With relative ease the opportunity to shoot stars in the making was wide open and I rarely saw any other photographers in the trenches in the time I was there.
It doesn't seem all that long ago but it was a time and place where we all learned about the scene through mixed cassette tapes from friends, reading fanzines, magazines, listening to college radio and scanning the local paper for listings. Bands on record labels like Sub Pop, Amphetamine Reptile, Discord and Touch & Go propelled the scene with raw energy, constant touring and a cast of eccentric characters who were much less afraid of being photographed.
My favorite book describing this time period is Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad, a historic chronicle of bands such as Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Mudhoney, Mission of Burma and Dinosaur Jr. Azerrad makes the point that most of them rarely had enough money to feed themselves on the road, that it was dedication and passion pulling them through. Their music was alive and breathing.
Flashing forward to dismal record sales, musical piracy, and increased living costs bands today exist in a much more challenging world. The scene now seems more calculated and tethered from what I witnessed as a teenager. In addition, the proliferation of digital photography has now made it easier for photographers and videographers to sell or give away their band photos for free. Many bands have caught on and now require photographers to deal with publicists and sign releases essentially handing over all copyright ownership to the band without monetary compensation before being allowed to photograph a live concert. The monster that we've created is devouring us. We've essentially limited ourselves in the end.
Is live music photography still worth shooting? Perhaps not if you have to give your rights away, perhaps not when there are thirty other people doing it, fighting for an inch in the gutter. Band photography today requires a whole new approach. Intimacy needs to be reached through a personal relationship with a band in order to gain complete access, and once the ice is broken it feels natural to be there, 2-3 feet away. It seems no longer something you can just show up and do.
My approach has since shifted and I am more interested in searching out up-and-coming bands that inspire me and photographing them in their rehearsal space over a period of time.
There are still many stories to tell and new scenes to discover.
Music and photography share a symbiotic relationship and have become a part of our collective cultural history. I can't imagine rock n roll without photography.
Reference: Azerrad, M. (2001). Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From The American Indie Underground 1981-1991. New York, NY: Back Bay Books/ Little, Brown and Company. Time Warner Book Group.