After a fairly funny and eventful flight on a small jet from the tiny airport in Santa Barbara to San Francisco with one of my best friends and long-suffering travelling companion, Tony Edser, we found ourselves hanging around the airport, waiting for our British Airways flight back to London. This was early February 2006. Almost twenty years ago.
Tony is involved in the Eric Clapton world, and we first met backstage at a Clapton gig at the Royal Albert Hall many years ago.
So, there we were, all checked in, waiting in the diamond-encrusted first-class BA lounge, thanks to Tony. I normally sit at the back of a plane. Luckily for me, things are different when you travel ‘Tony Style!’ He always turns left when he enters an aeroplane.
Suddenly, my phone rang.
It was the picture editor from Rolling Stone magazine. New York.
They asked where I was.
“San Francisco,” I said.
“Oh… that’s a shame,” came the reply. “We were wondering if you could shoot this new, up-and-coming band. They’re called the Arctic Monkeys.”
I asked where the gig was.
“Birmingham.”
I paused. “Birmingham, Alabama… or Birmingham in the UK?”
“The UK.”
“And when’s the gig?”
“Tomorrow night.”
I did some very fast mental arithmetic. “I’m boarding a flight to London in an hour. So yes, I can do it.”
They were delighted. I asked them to email the details and said I’d be there.
About an hour later, Tony and I boarded the British Airways Boeing 747 and headed upstairs, where we were greeted by the wonderfully cheerful cabin crew, who immediately offered us champagne.
I don’t drink alcohol. Not because I’m virtuous, but mostly because it interferes with my chocolate intake. More seriously, I stopped drinking when my first child was born. That felt like a sensible moment to grow up. I never drank a lot, so it was easy to never drink again.
So, Tony took the champagne. I took orange juice.
As I turned to admire my bed/seat, Tony cracked one of his jokes. The next thing I knew, orange juice was coming out of my mouth and my nose, sprayed across my seat, myself, and everything within reach. I couldn’t breathe, I was laughing, and I was now completely sticky.
That stickiness stayed with me for the next ten hours.
No matter how much I wiped things down, I stuck to everything I touched. Armrest. Table. Blanket. Me.
As we took off from San Francisco early evening, I looked out of the window as the city fell away beneath us. Then there it was, the Golden Gate Bridge. I grabbed one of my Nikons, put on a 70–200 lens, and took a few shots as we banked away towards the UK.
I love flying. I love moments like that.
Here is the enigma himself, Tony Edser, in that little jet as we flew from Santa Barbara to San Francisco
The next morning, we landed at Heathrow, said our goodbyes, and I headed straight home for a very quick shower. It was great to see Lyn and the kids, but I only had an hour or two before I had to head north to Birmingham. As I checked batteries and packed cameras, I knew the next 24 hours were going to be busy even by my standards. Birmingham first, then the next day, back into London later to shoot a very different kind of live show. Alison Goldfrapp was playing that evening. She is a bloody brilliant artist I’ve always admired, not just musically, but visually too. She is a great photographer, and she gets it. But that was for the next day. First stop: the Midlands.
I jumped in the car and drove.
I’d heard plenty about the Arctic Monkeys by then. Mostly from my lovely friend Dan Rogers, who was working a lot with Franz Ferdinand. He had told me about their support act, The Arctic Monkeys. I also knew they could be a bit… unpredictable when it came to press, journalists, and photographers.
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When I arrived at the venue, my pass was waiting. That was reassuring, but that’s about as good as it got. I was allowed to shoot the first three songs only. That was it.
I hadn’t slept since leaving San Francisco. Even upstairs in supposed luxury, I rarely manage to sleep on planes.
The band came on. I climbed into the photo pit and shot the three songs.
As the third song ended, I grabbed my bag and quietly started to leave.
That’s when I heard Alex Turner say, very clearly over the PA:
“Get the fuck out of here with your cameras. You’re stealing our souls. Now fuck off.”
I stopped. Turned around. Looked behind me.
Nope. It was definitely me.
I gave him an open-armed, what-have-I-done-to-deserve-this look. The crowd immediately joined in, enthusiastically telling me to fuck off as well. I had become, quite suddenly, the villain of the evening.
In reality, it was a theatre. Part of the show. Alex is doing his thing.
I wasn’t remotely bothered that these things happen, though I did briefly wonder if it might have gone differently had he known I was shooting for Rolling Stone. Possibly not. Possibly worse. Possibly better, who knows?
I left the venue and walked about half a mile back to my car, lugging my heavy camera bag.
I sat there for a moment, exhausted but strangely wide awake, contemplating the drive home.
Then my phone rang again.
This time it was someone from the band Babyshambles.
“We’re doing a little gig later at a club in East London. Are you coming?”
I didn’t think. I just said yes.
Babyshambles were famous for announcing gigs online an hour or two beforehand. By the time I got there, it was around 11 pm, and they had just started their performance. They were brilliant. One of those gigs. In fact, they were always amazing. I knew they were history in the making every time I was with them.
As the gig ended around 1 am, it was rapid: “Right, let’s get out of here.”
Pete Doherty was always being chased by paparazzi and the police, not entirely without reason. Pete turned to me and said, “Can you drive my car? I’ll hide in the back.”
Of course.
I left my car just off Commercial Road, in London’s East End, climbed into Pete’s Jaguar XJ6, and drove. As we sped out of the backstage car park, the paparazzi weren’t quite sure who was in the car, but they saw me driving. However, they all seemed to know that it was Peter’s car. I was driving around the streets of East London like a cop in an old 1960s gangster film. Well, it was like that in my mind anyway. Eventually, we lost them. Peter was rather out of it as he prepared his narcotics in the back with his close friend, Alan Wass, who was such a nice guy. So whilst I had been racing around corners and driving like a nutter or more like a retired police dog, they were smoking ‘Crack’ and loving it. They clearly thrived on the excitement of it all. I have to say, the smell of Crack is bloody horrible. When I say Crack, I don’t mean a builder’s bum. Which is probably awful too. I can only guess that this drug, ‘Crack’, is worse.
We ended up at Pete’s flat off Kingsland Road. It was full of friends, fans, and general chaos and madness. As usual, there was a vibe there. Not one I relished. I stayed for a while, then quietly escaped, grabbed a passing taxi back to my car, and drove myself home.
No, sadly, it wasn’t a driverless Tesla. I was very much in charge of the steering wheel.
I got home just as the sun was coming up. I had a few hours’ sleep, not much more, before my day started again. Lyn and I managed to have a catch-up and a quick sandwich in the Peppermill in Chorleywood, where we lived.
By late afternoon, I was back in London, meeting up with Alison Goldfrapp’s PR people, and then I had to shoot her live show. This was at the famous Hammersmith Odeon. No drama. No chaos. No one is hiding in the back of a car. Just Alison, her band and her dancers on stage, utterly brilliant, commanding the stage in a completely different way, an artist who understands imagery as deeply as sound.
Back then, I rarely stopped to ask whether something was a good idea, only whether it would make a good story. Sleep was optional, common-sense negotiable, and saying no simply didn’t feature. One minute it was Arctic Monkeys in Birmingham, the next Babyshambles in the East End, and then Alison Goldfrapp the following evening. Almost every day was like that for me in those days. Which is why it’s quite a lot of fun for me to look back at my diaries and photos and write about it all here for you, on Substack.
Funnily enough, these days, I choose the pace a little more carefully.
But when I look back at days like that, I wouldn’t change a bloody thing
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