London is about to go Rolling Stones crazy. Gered Mankowitz, the man who knew the Stones best, is opening “Off the Hook”, displaying his best images at Snap Galleries and a limited-edition book “Backstage”. (The show opens before “Exhibitionism” at the Saatchi Gallery.)In an interview with Blouin ARTINFO, Mankowitz speaks of taking everything from the band’s passport photos to famous LP sleeves such as “Between the Buttons.”The show includes the group’s first passport photos – not so widely known. How did they come about?The reason why the passport photos haven’t been widely seen is because for the best part of 50 years I was rather embarrassed by them, to be honest. My first session with the band took place in 1965 around February and then I was getting on really well and their manager said to me, ‘by the way, could you knock off some passport pictures?’I went into a complete tizz of anxiety and worry because I suddenly thought that I had to conform to a pre-established look, which I really didn’t know how to do. Anyway, I set up a very basic white background and terribly flat lighting. I think that the pictures sufficed for the purpose for which I took them. About three or four years ago as a part of the process of reviewing, looking at it again with older but fresher eyes, I thought they had a charm and geeky innocence and a vague resemblance to those police lineup, shots minus the numbers!We are showing them in the form of a cross, printing them in a very unique and special way aluminum using a fantastic process called Chromalux.There are various versions of the “Between the Buttons” cover – did the original negative really get lost?Yes, it was never returned by the printer back in 1966. That shoot was very early in the morning. I was with the band while they recorded through the night, which was their habit in those days, and then tumbling out into the dawn from Olympic Studios in Barnes, looking and feeling in a way just like you felt the Stones should. They just looked fabulously Stones-like and so I proposed that we shoot a session. The reason I went to Primrose Hill was that it was high and I rather innocently thought that I would get better light there early in the day.I made this rather crude filter of glass and gasoline and black card which I stuck on the front of my Hasselblad to try to impart a sort of weird stoned acid-like vibe to the pictures, and it worked.The guys were great: they were absolutely all up for it, and they were fabulous for about half an hour. Then they got tired and cold and told me to get on with it! All just banter really.I don’t know how many shots I took in that time but an awful lot of them were good and effective and I have been showing outtakes of that forever.One of the images is of the Stones in Ormond Yard, central London, and the book is by Ormond Yard Press, how so?Ormond’s Yard was the other side of Mason’s Yard, where I had my studio. I photographed a lot of famous people such as the Yardbirds there. It was a great place to take pictures, a cobbled mews with no traffic. At the time I shot the Stones there was a big rebuilding program going on. I just posed the guys on the bricks on the brick cage and around the hoardings because it seemed to me to be unglamorous, gritty and as grainy and dramatic as I felt the Stones were and a complete contrast to the rather sort of glamorous shiny Beatles images that were being produced at the time.I showed the location to (Snap gallery owner) Guy White and that’s where he got the inspiration to call the publishing company after it, also because the books are a yard wide when you open them.I’ve also done a book with Terry O’Neill called “Breaking Stones” - it’s going to be a big Stones year.Who were you closest to in the Stones?I got on best with Keith and Charlie, but I felt very close to all of them. They were extremely welcoming to me and they made me feel extremely at home and comfortable and from the beginning of 1965 all the way through until they broke up with Andrew in 1967. I felt very much at one with them. When I toured with them, I felt very much like a Rolling Stone and I was treated as such. There were no problems between me and the band although Brian was always difficult. I still talk to Bill a bit.How does it seem looking back?I was having the best time, I was in heaven. I was 18 when I first started out and working with the band and I just thought this was the greatest possible activity to have. The extraordinary thing about the 1960s was that at the time it was just our lives - we were just doing the best we could, we were having the most fun. It was all baby steps, we didn’t know where we were heading, what we were doing but it was working,. Nobody for a second imagined that it was going to have any meaning or value beyond the following few months.“Off the Hook: the Rolling Stones by Gered Mankowitz” is at Snap Galleries, 12 Piccadilly Arcade London SW1Y 6NH from April 1 through May 28,, 2016. “Backstage: the Rolling Stones” is published by Ormond Yard Press in June. Each is signed and numbered and has retail price of £395 on publication.
↧