PAUL McCARTNEY at the GRAMMY'S, 1993

photo (C) 1993 Heather Harris. Paul McCartney at the 1993 Grammy's with his special award. Pack/group photography, which I hated because everyone gets the same photo. At least the subject tried to make it graphically interesting with this gesture, and the shadow he cast, kept with fill flash, made it even more so.

JAMES WILLIAMSON PHOTO GALLERY POSTED

A gallery of our whole photo session is posted HERE on the

James Williamson website.

TRACII GUNS, RIOT BRIDES et MOI

For Halloween, phenomenal guitarist Tracii Guns emotes in L.A. Guns on Oct. 24th, bassist Erin Soriano embraces the holiday spirit at the same gig in her band Riot Brides, and I appear from 41 years ago, the one in front with the undead stare and black & white hair.

PHOTO SHOOT WITH JAMES WILLIAMSON 9.23.09

I photographed James Williamson in Iggy and The Stooges live in 1973 at the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood, with my pics published in The L.A. Weekly News, Performance, and some thirty years later, Britain's MOJO magazine. I was lucky enough to have been introduced to the Stooges' onslaught as it was first erupting by the same individual who introduced David Bowie to the band themselves. Comparatively few outside the group's native Midwest and pockets of L.A., S.F., and NYC proved sufficiently enlightened to have appreciated the Stooges during their first rocket blast ride around. Now they'll play to a festival of 30,000 in Brazil next month.

The Stooges (originals) and Iggy And The Stooges (James' incarnation) have always been my personal "go to" music (I can't bring myself to denote "happy place" with music this hellbent, but although my tastes are eclectic and demeanor low-key, I have a wild heart.) Hence a photo session with James Williamson nascent at the return to his legendary band for a "Raw Power" reunion after thirty-eight years was much anticipated fun.

James' music means a lot to a lot of people as well, so I wanted something a little different than what's been done already old or new. He looks great in person, so that was easy to get across. One addresses the thirty-eight year absence from the spotlight by making sure his recognizable star quality comes through to jog fans' memory of him onstage. One day in the 1970's he was the hotshot guitarist who most influenced the future of all the hard rock genres, cut, print, wrap and flash-forward to 2009 when he was a retiring Vice President of Sony Corporation, Division of Technology Standards and IEEE board member. (I had to ask my niece, who lives where his family and he live and works in his same field, exactly what it was that he did.)(And he's her new hero.) The artist's story is both fascinating and unique in rock for his top-of-his-field successes in two such separate lines of work, as if Jeff Beck morphed into Steve Jobs, but those ruminations are for another day, with a lot more fact-checking.

I wanted a warm but edgy look, which meant directional light with specific shadows, and the warm browns overall to emphasize his best feature noted from his prior pics, his intense eyes. I brought in an A List (private to the stars' homes) hairstylist, but no makeup. The red contrasting fresnel light matched two of the three guitars he brought. The lighting and asymmetric shadows in this setup were deliberate, bringing up what was wanted with other elements receding. James must think I'm a mute, because I don't give a lot of directions to people who know what they're doing. And top talent do. That way the result is about the natural bearing of the subject rather than the vanity of the photographer as a pose manipulator (unless that's what the subjects specify they want. I'm easy.) Being referential to what audiences remember from onstage appearances plus star quality within the artifice of the studio was the desired combination for the portrait above.


Photo: Kurt Ingham

YOUNG, TROUBLED LOVE

I watched a short dvd of my 17-year-old self the other day, a student film made by my brother. It made me ponder the first passions of youth, all jumbled up in arrogance vs. insecurities, inexpressiveness despite all other exuberantly compulsive outpourings, and unrequited longing even in fulfillment. You're never going to see it via me, as my leading man (actually the Bane of my adolescence) and I are seen doing unseemly things.

So here are three romantic Youtube offerings, songs contemporary to that time encapsulating same. Note that even these skilled young songwriters occasionally sputtered with tongue-tied inarticulateness when confronting real feelings. Considering that my wild heart preferred hardest rock then and now, these three ballads really snared something in me. Special attention to masterful, psychological archaetypes of contemplative, adolescent love in the first one, sample lyrics, "...somewhere a mountain is moving, 'afraid it's moving without me...go ahead and find her, just close my eyes and she'll be there..." Ignore the graphics of the second two, turn up the sound, enjoy and recall your 17-year-old self in troubled love.


( sung here by Dusty Springfield, written by the Rascals)

FLEETWOOD MAC REHEARSAL circa 1975

photo (C) 1975 Heather Harris. A rehearsal (obviously, as Ms. Nicks did not perform onstage with her poodle dog) at the old Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood. Herbert Worthington took the eventual platinum LP band photos in the loo of same that day. By request, I expounded more on the circumstances of this photograph for the Stevie Nicks fan page, click HERE

THE HANGMEN, LIVE with THE ZEROS

photos (C) 2009 Heather Harris. The Hangmen and The Zeros live at Alex Bar, Long Beach CA, 8/21/09

Once upon a time (sub-set A) The Stooges, the Stones, the Dead Boys, Gun Club and the NY Dolls loved the music of and based their initial songwriting respectively upon, amongst others, (sub-set B) The Stones, Chuck Berry, Alice Cooper, Howling Wolf and Shadow Morton. Because sub-set A innately were all topflight artists, they soon sped past sub-set B covers and borrowings to become the distinctive musicians we now know them to be or have been. But everyone comes from somewhere. It's not insulting to to have recognizable influences.

Those influences of The Hangmen are the entirety of sub-set A, a pretty cool melange to be sure. Singer/songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Bryan Small is also cursed with catchiness, which makes his songs sieved through subset A pretty damn fun to hear as well as being bluesy and rockin'. His Hangmen and he have stayed, with variations, on the scene for over twenty years but remain admirably fresh. It was a real treat to see and photograph them performing with the recently reunited (and terrific) Zeros, truly celebratory punks featuring their original lineup, inclusive of Javier Escovedo and Robert "El Vez!" Lopez.

Trivia: I featured The Zeros 30 years ago in my book "Punk Rock & Roll" (the first published on the subject in the U.S.); and attesting to his personal as well as musical appeal, you can see lipstick traces on Hangman Bryan's face in my photo above.

HILLBILLY PROPHET

photo (C) 2009 Heather Harris

Trip's, of heretofore blogged Trip Trigger, new band Hillbilly Prophet, photographed last weekend. They sound great, like Gene Clark meets Pink Floyd while partying with Metallica out in Bakersfield.

STAB CITY

(C) 2009 Heather Harris

Stab City, cute young power-trio from Los Angeles, session last Saturday.

EXTINCT MAGAZINES

photo (C) 1971 Heather Harris, photo of model originally for article "Do Writers Have Groupies?"

What are everyone's favorite extinct periodicals within one's own reading lifetime? Mine are, in no particular order:
1. Coast FM and Fine Arts ('60's/'70's entertainment media all rounder)
2. Creem (the only mag)
3. Take One (mid to late '60's film magazine- Anne Rice and Phil Ochs once wrote for it!)
4. Neon (excellent '90's Brit mag, like MOJO or Q but for movies)
5. Star (groupie/teensploitation) During more troubled times, I had to sell my copy with Sable Starr and Lori Mattix explaining how to "date" rockstars.
6. Film Threat (GENUINELY alternative film reviewing)
7. Entertainment World (published my first non-student-newsmedia piece.)
8. The Journal of Irreproducable Results (sample: an article calculated over 2,000 different English spellings of Moammar Khadaffi.)
8. National Lampoon, the P.J. O'Rourke/Michael O'Donohue/Doug Kinney years
9. Rags (Rolling Stone-sponsored, fashion commentary and photos, early 1970's)
10.All the lost British music trades...