THIS SPRING'S FLOWERS

The Bauhinia Orchid Tree and Wisteria were here when we bought the place so both are over 98 years old, and represent Old School gardening (our house dates from 1912-- monstrously rare in Los Angeles.) The Wisteria was used for shade arbors a hundred years ago, when people had bigger properties they needed to shade (unlike postage stamps yards of today where opening an umbrella suffices.)

Bauhinia is a tree that flowers for 3 months of the year here, pretty cool, but supposedly looks like a stick for its first 12 years of life, which is why most don't plant it. The Wisteria is hard to manage because of its Malthusian growth: it grows like The Blob since it's a vine, kudzu-like. Wisteria has to have support, preferably titanium!
The poppies are, well, just poppies. Their flatness in my shot reminded me of Warhol's flower silkscreen prints. The juxtaposition of focal planes in these shots is courtesy of a LensBaby attachment, as usually digital presents maximum depth of field outdoors. I was playing around with same, as I want my new cameras to behave just as my old ones did.

MY BETTER HALF

Here's a current photo (April 2010) of Mr. Twister (Mr. Fastfilm) for the curious. He is posed in front of a vehicle similar to the one in which he motored throughout England in the early '70s while fronting a band (Pointed Stick) and affronting audiences

SATURDAY NIGHT POGO

Thirty one years ago, I took the cover photos and designed the graphics for "Saturday Night Pogo," the third ever release from then spankin' new Rhino Records, as I had for their second release "Twisting with The Low Numbers," wherein I placed the band (yes, twisting) in front of the most desperately garish oil-sheik mansion ever in Beverly Hills, replete with human statuary with the pubes brightly painted. (I had nothing to do with Rhino's first release by Wild Man Fischer, although I did finagle this artist to pay me for listening to his single while he was giving them away promotionally. The Wild Man was also a Confused Man.) For you young'uns, pogoing was the official oldschool mosh dancing to punk rock music: try and guess what it looked like!

This cover sports famous gonzoid literati writer Richard Meltzer effecting his best Travolta, amidst the concept spoofing "Saturday Night Fever" via the then reigning Disco fad, mortal enemies of us punkers. The would-be Bee Gees would be the guitarist from Chainsaw (I was hyping my future better half's own punk band, also included in the compilation,) an unknown punk who later wracked up a jail sentence I'm told, and the actual CEO of Rhino, who wanted to be somewhere on the cover. I said fine if he put a stocking over his head. This was one of the first domestic compilations of punk rock back in the day.

Which segues into the inevitable whatever happened to's of its punk musicians in the intervening decades. The Winos and The Low Numbers were a band put together by the other founder of Rhino Records. Both are mega-wealthy now with their multi-media empire, sold to Warner Bros. Both bands sported record company executives, from Columbia and Warners, band-slumming. The Dils were known for punk anthems and became Rank and File which included Alejandro Escovedo in addition to its Kinman brothers. The Berlin Brats resembled the NY Dolls, with the somewhat known Rick Wilder. Vom featured cover boy Richard Meltzer with their track produced by the future deputy Mayor of the city of Los Angeles. The Motels eventually recorded ballad-y new wave actual Billboard hits via its stellar attraction, velvet and smoke-voiced Martha Davis, who still performs to this day and sounds no different, a good thing. Backstage Pass included Spock, a local scenester, and Che Zuro, later of The Orchids and still a performer.

My personal favorites, placed prominently on the back cover layout, were Chainsaw and The Dogs. My better half's last band Chainsaw, theatrical punks before their time, released a single that is prized by collectors today, broke up in a fistfight, and reunited 28 years later for a successful European tour to mark the re-release of all their material abroad and eventually domestically. I didn't know The Dogs at the time, but their distinctive power trio nouveau MC5 hardest rock had impressed me mightily, particularly in those days of radio mellowmush. I later became fast friends with Dog bassist Mary, later in Kanary, a band I've also lionized to mix my animal metaphors utterly.

the Chainsaw single

NOSTALGIE DE LA BOUE

Nostalgie de la boue is a French term for memories of mud, i.e., the gutter, the decadent old times. This seemed like a perfect title for some of my photos of vintage Sunset Strip, Hollywood Calif. backstage nightlife from the golden days of Hair Metal in the late 1980's, plus one pic of an actual Sunset Strip protest against pay to play. Recogizable faces here and there would be Billy Idol, Julian Lennon, Mara Fox of Precious Metal, along with many others who may not like to be remembered for activities performed in the bathrooms and dressing rooms as depicted.
I really was looking for non-incriminating photos to post here, or ones that hadn't been widely published. A reader here commented that black and white innately looks more decadent. Helmut Newton certainly knew this! Do you know that they don't even manufacture the black and white photo papers or films that I used to make these anymore? These are truly artifacts of a bygone era, in all manner of meanings. Billy Idol is shown talking to Julian Lennon, sire- John Lennon, dam- Cynthia, along with a member of Milli Vanilli (with the biggest hair.) Billy gave me trouble that evening for my photography, even though I was a photojournalist invited by "his people" to cover the opening of his girlfriend's Club Rubber.

Mara (the protester) is still doing well in the music business, promoting publishing for alt bands. I can thank her for the access to the Sandy West memorial show where I photoed The Bangles.

I didn't really do much "celeb" photography like the backstage parties: I was invited to the ones here, hence my being allowed to photograph. A technical hint: to take a photo like the one of Idol and Lennon, you have to be the first one to spot them, then shoot, and you'll only get the one shot. The second you do, others will close ranks around them and there's no more clear area around them to photograph. I felt a little bad doing this to Lennon: he looks startled, as would be anyone whose father was ambushed and murdered.

STOOGEWEAR

A
lucky
attendee of the May 2010 Hammersmith Apollo gigs in London by Iggy and The Stooges brought me back a commemorative t-shirt sporting Stooge staff photographer Robert Matheu's classic 1973 pic allied with brand new graphics by "Obama-Hope" artist Shepard Fairey. On the back it proclaims Hammersmith Sold Out. Thank you Natalie! The one on the right is my original Glam era Wild Thing shirt by the very same designer of the notorious Leopard jacket, one of five made, adorning the 1972 Raw Power LP cover as worn by Iggy Pop (story, provenance and present day whereabouts here and here .) Yes, I can still get into it (barely, abetted with strategic vest) but people remain credulous as hell that it truly is original, since this lively design spawned a cottage industry of retro knock-offs throughout the intervening decades, and I've always cut all tags off my clothing since time immemorial as they challenge my overly sensitive skin (to me, the fairy tale of the princess and the pea had no fantasy element to it whatsoever. With a pea sticking out several mattresses below, this woman had a genuine problem on her hands.)

LOUIE LOUIE SONGWRITER

Why is this man laughing? He wrote rock's favorite party standard "Louie Louie"! Seen left to right at a spoken word performance at the Ash Grove back in the day were writer Wanda Colman, (the now late) Richard Berry and poet Michelle T. Clinton.

Why is this photo different than most backstage shots? Firstly,no flash was used, just overhead available light and the same pushed film used in the earlier performance, unlike most backstage snapshots. Secondly, I'd worked with and even been to the homes of both Ms. Coleman and Ms. Clinton heretofore on graphic projects and photo sessions for Harvey Kubernik's spoken word labels, hence I was as at ease as these professional performers were. And Mr. Berry? Besides posing here with the pretty ladies,
he recently had recovered royalties to his copyrighted classic thanks to an artists' legal foundation's help. No wonder the grin!

JEFF BECK, STEVIE RAY VAUGHN together live

photo (C) 1990 Heather Harris. Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughn jamming together at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. It was an odd gig for the minders to restrict photography: both artists were headliners who alternated top billing throughout the tour. We photographers were restricted to the usual first two songs only nonsense for each artist, but told we could stick around and photograph for the last two songs, which I figured would be the fun collaboration as depicted above. Surprisingly, few photo press stayed: perhaps they been so browbeaten into missing the best parts of all sets that they had just trundled out reflexively.

I LIKED THE '80S! LOCAL L.A. BANDS

all photos (c) 1985 -89 Heather Harris

Proffered: a smidgen of my '80's studio shots. Having written that the 1980's were my most productive photographic period, I'll expand that I quantitatively had more work as there just were more local bands, with more variety than now: punk, metal, hair metal, "pretty in pink" new wave, rap, hardcore et al. These shots sample L.A. locals, above: Hans Naughty, photographed in the proverbial dark alley at night, singer Danny Jazz upper right.

Below, I've forgotten whom but the lead singer looked like Rob Lowe/Matt Dillon; Black Cactus Stampede, a terrific live band see HERE;




Below, Daddy Ray, a comedic band a la Cheap Trick, meaning fine as well as witty musicians, with the photo's caption being "How big is it?"; and The Wild Hairs, a Gogo-ish cross between Johnny Thunders and T-Rex!




More 80's L.A. locals below: Bardeux; I've forgotten whom; I've forgotten whom but she was once a lead singer for the Wild Hairs until last spotted careening off with Billy Idol on the back of his motorcycle after a Hairs gig (true story.)

GUN CLUB LIVE, icons circa 1981

photos (C)1981 Heather Harris
Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Patricia Morrison, legendary Los Angeles punk icons.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce, although a magpie of musical styles, ended up sui generis. He could care less what other punks were doing, he was gonna reference voodoo swamp chants, slide Delta Blues, Appalachian folk and bebop jazz in his screaming punk gumbo years before the Black Crowes woke up to the same roots.

His band Gun Club spanned a decade and a half, two coasts and four continents worth of assorted band configurations. His wailing voice, slightly flat but passionate as all get out, was unmistakable from any other soul in the occasionally samey world of punk and post-punk. He was fearless onstage. And frequently really, really drunk.

East Coast publications compared his lyrics to T.S. Eliot in their spare imagery, which figured since Pierce reputedly was well read and literate. Murder ballads and modern allusions to the fire of love abounded in Gun Club songs. On the West Coast, people would have scratched their spikey-do heads in wonder at this assessment, since the man in person was an out of control alcoholic. He suffered the inevitable fate of those devoid of interventions, and died in 1996.

Patricia Morrison! Wowza! Bow down in unworthiness to the True Queen of the Goths! As early as mid-1970's, Patricia had already perfected this exact look depicted (here in motion in my top photo as if she were a Gainsborough painting heroine on the windy English moors) with her real hair, not extensions. She's been bass player extraordinaire to The Bags, Gun Club, The Sisters of Mercy, and The Damned, actually wedding singer Dave Vanian of the last cadre of punk Goths. (Together they hatched a little ghoul, and she's temporarily retired.) In the earliest interviews with Cassandra Peterson, she admitted she "borrowed" her Elvira look from a fellow Los Angelean, a female musician. That rather obviously would be our Patricia.












Check out Kurt Voss' documentary "Ghost on the Highway" about Gun Club for the insiders' assessments of its career arc, plus innumerable Youtubes like:

A H*o*T*t*i*e IN DISTRESS

For your consideration, take a gander at yon hottie. Slim, enigmatic, modern-looking and a 16 year old professional model when the photo was taken, setting the Wayback Machine to 1901. The half-closed eyes, head tilted thusly, off shoulder garment just so: this is one talented model. She's Evelyn Nesbit, whose still relevant story most recently was chronicled in the book "American Eve" by Paula Uruburu, published in 2008.

In the summer of 1981 I took my visiting grandfather to see two films made about people he knew personally around the turn of the century before, "Reds" about John Reed, his erstwhile Harvard classmate turned doomed Bolshevik hero, and "Ragtime," which included a sub-plot of the scandalous real-life murder of Stanford White over a showgirl/model. My grandfather (story HERE) had worked for Stanford White's firm of McKim, Mead and White, the latter architect unceremoniously offed by the jealous husband of White's former mistress, aforementioned showgirl/model Evelyn Nesbit. So who was this intriguing female face? 

I obsess easily (but hasten to add harmlessly) and one of my continuing interests remains beautiful femme fatales with early success who, despite obvious innate intelligence, were slated for later failure. (Can we say subjectivity boys and girls?) Evelyn Nesbit fits nicely within this subset of my books or movies about Louise Brooks, Gia Carangi, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen,) Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Lady Idina Sackville (wife of murdered Joss Hay, Earl of Errol, both of Kenya,) Zelda Fitzgerald, Edie Sedgwick, Adele Bloch-Bauer, Bettie Page or Lady Anne Blunt (daughter of mathematician Countess Ada Lovelace [often regarded as the world's first computer programmer] and granddaughter of no less than Lord Byron. Good genetics there! While her bounder husband slept with every female aristocrat in England, Lady Blunt alone is responsible for having saved the Arabian Horse breed from interbred extinction, as it rapidly was being crossed only with Thoroughbreds in its native Middle East to fashion faster racehorses.)

Author Uruburu contends that Nesbit's life and ordeals represent a cautionary tale to today's teen celebs (while firmly rooting her bio in the times and context.) Nesbit was gifted with curiosity, artistic proclivities, love of books and learning, and yes, drop dead beauty, and became the sole breadwinner for her widowed family with her later modeling career. She had no adult guidance from her clueless mother and was easy prey for exploitative types of all stripes. Her main benefactor raped her, her new rich husband beat her, and the millionaire dynasty who counted on her testimony to save its scion from the electric chair for shooting her former lover in cold blood in front of oh, er, um, 500 or so witnesses in a public place dropped her financially like a lead balloon once same was accomplished.

There's no extant film footage of her *, but plenty of photos to discover online, given her popularity in the modeling world of the Fin Du Siecle. In every one, she looks out to us from a universal, timeless place, nary a sign of the clunky, stylized and fixed-in-cement dowdy heroines like Lillian Russell who more typlified the age. She could be... similarly aged Miley Cyrus in that off-shoulder drapery. Her cautionary tale is that even the gifted need professional guidance and personal support in careers that are so innately collaborative, the media. (As far as the gifted requiring both support and aspects of luck to succeed, I highly recommend the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, which outlines how even mega-talents like Bill Gates and the Beatles needed surprisingly similar additional factors beyond talent to have realized their respective successes.)

Her lovely smile, as depicted above and below, would soon fade.

The mega-rich Thaw family who had enlisted her help vital to getting the murderous husband off immediately disowned her, rare in cases with an heir. Thaw himself eventually only left her $10K, the same amount he left to a waitress he had just met.

Her attempted film career failed. There was drug abuse, suicide attempts, and extreme single mother hardships during The Depression and war years. She eventually supported herself as a sculptor and ceramics teacher, and lived modestly into her eighties. My schoolmate Reidun was one of her caretakers at a facility, said she was sweet and remembered her son visiting as well.

"The tragedy wasn't that Stanford White died, but that I lived." 
   -Evelyn Nesbit, 1934

* FLASH NEWS ALERT !!! This footage of Evelyn singing later in life has recently been unearthed! Behold: