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Rock can be a hard place

Kevin Cummins has shot some of the most iconic photos in rock music. As he explains to Tony Naylor, it was better in the old days

Tuesday 12 March 2002 01:00 GMT
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He dressed Blur as Blondie, covered the Stone Roses in paint and posed the Happy Mondays' front man, Shaun Ryder, with the biggest "E" he'd ever seen.

In fact, over the past 25 years, the Mancunian photographer Kevin Cummins has produced a hoard of definitive rock images. First as a freelance, and then as a staff photographer at the New Musical Express, he has shot everyone from David Bowie to Oasis, simultaneously negotiating eccentric stars, interfering PRs and upheavals in the British media. Now 48, Cummins has had work in the National Portrait Gallery. His new book, The Smiths and Beyond, a photographic history of the Manchester band, confirms his reputation as one of Britain's greatest rock-music photographers.

In 1976, Cummins was in the last year of a degree course in art and design at Salford College, and the Manchester punk scene exploded. Alongside the writer Paul Morley, Cummins was soon documenting the scene for the London music press. It was, he remembers, rough, ready and wet. "The spitting thing didn't really happen until the Sunday People wrote about it," he says. "Then, suddenly, you'd get covered in phlegm. Everyone started gobbing. I remember a Buzzcocks gig where Pete Shelley was singing, and someone gobbed right in his mouth."

A fan of Bill Brandt and the NME's Pennie Smith, Cummins soon established his own grainy, black-and-white style. He shot grim Northern bands in grim Northern locations, supplying abstract, arty shots if a band were still on the dole. "I've got a Frantic Elevators session, with Mick Hucknall [of Simply Red], that's all in silhouette because they were signing on and didn't want to be recognised. That", laughs Cummins, "was the moody Manchester look."

A peculiar mixture of artifice and intimacy, Cummins's photos reflect the rapport he establishes with a subject – he'll chat for hours to overcome the barrier of the camera – and, equally, rock'n'roll's demand for iconic images. Brett Anderson of Suede, for instance, would perfect his poses in a mirror next to Cummins's camera. "The first thing singers do is stand in front of the mirror, posing, working out how they look good. You're helping perpetuate that; we're part of that myth-making process. I've got pictures of Ian Curtis [of Joy Division] laughing, but they're not the pictures that sell." Morrissey, particularly, had a keen sense of how imagery worked. "He'd bring stuff out, like a 6ft framed photo of Terence Stamp, and say, 'Oh, I thought it might look good up that tree.' And it works, because it looks a bit weird."

In 1987, Cummins moved to London, taking a staff job at the NME. Some of his most memorable images, such as the Stone Roses covered in Pollock-like paint (Cummins couldn't tell them that the studios' showers weren't working) and Shaun Ryder perched on the "e" of a rooftop sign in Barcelona ("A defining image, really: Shaun on the biggest 'E' of his life"), were produced in that period.

Getting those shots demanded a certain professional distance. "I never found Morrissey difficult," Cummins recalls. "But then, I never get involved in the politics. I did a world tour with Morrissey, but I'd come and go, rather than sticking with them and getting sucked into all the petty grievances."

Similarly, the man who shot Shaun Ryder with a bunch of Kit-Kats (because Ryder smoked heroin off the foil wrappers) steered clear of the traditional rock hedonism. "There's nothing worse", he says, ruefully, "than waking up and finding that you've left your camera bag on a hillside in Chile."

Persistence is essential. "Some bands don't want to give you much time. You tell American rap acts that you need one shot for a cover, and they actually think you need one frame, and walk off." He once spent a week chasing the rapper Flavor Flav, of Public Enemy, around America, arriving in New York just in time to see him being arrested live on TV.

When IPC changed the NME photographers' contracts four years ago, "essentially taking our copyright away", he left. "There's no respect for anyone any more. Copyright's your pension; it's so important to keep it." The PR machine is also stifling good photography, he believes. "You can't meet someone for three minutes in a hotel room and get the ultimate image."

Cummins's next project will be a book documenting his beloved football team Manchester City's last season at Maine Road. "Writers try to devalue photography because a lot of them are jealous," he reasons. "Their writing is fish-and-chip paper, but our pictures live on for ever."

'The Smiths and Beyond', Vision On Publishing, £12.99

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