Gnarls Barkley North Sea Jazz Festival, Rotterdam 2008
The light was dim
in the backstage area of the legendary Nighttown concert hall in Rotterdam that morning. Amy Winehouse walked in wearing a fake fur coat and shook hands without much interest. Her debut album Frank had been out for some months, and she was predicted to do even greater things in the near future. She sat down on a flight case and looked at her interviewer with an intense and stunned expression on her face. The reason: I had just ordered a coffee. Winehouse shook her head in pity and asked for a beer, and when the conversation turned to contemporaries such as Norah Jones she became a little hostile. “What do I think of them? You don’t wanna know,” she sneered. Then she put down her green Heineken can and filled the room with a loud burp.
When I look at Paul’s portrait, which brings out her penetrating gaze so well, I can still hear that sound.
Amy Winehouse Rotterdam 2004
D’Angelo North Sea Jazz Festival, The Hague 2000
Adele was in a jolly mood
on the extremely windy winter’s day we met in a hotel overlooking an Amsterdam canal. She had fallen in love with the Dutch capital, she told me – so intensely that she wanted to buy a house here. When I mentioned that during Dutch autumns and winters there’s usually nothing more to do than stay inside and wait for the nasty weather to pass, she only became more enthusiastic. “It’ll give me more time to clean the house,” she said cheerfully, before explaining how polishing and dusting had a meditative effect on her. When the interviewer frowned she offered: “You don’t like it? I’ll come to your house and clean it. It’ll be a treat.”
After this the real interview went as smoothly as you could hope for. The same can be said about Paul’s photo shoot, during which Adele posed in her winter coat in the courtyard of the hotel. The temperature must have been around 5 degrees celsius, but nothing seemed to be able to dampen her spirit that day.
Adele Paradiso, Amsterdam 2011
Michael Brecker Brussels 2001
Kid Rock
2008
Beyoncé Ahoy, Rotterdam 2007
Oasis Wisseloord Studio’s, Hilversum 2005
Zucchero Amsterdam 2004
Atthe beginning of the new millennium, Melody Gardot was an ambitious fashion student earning extra income as a pianoplaying nightclub singer. Then came a tragic traffic accident that could have killed her, but instead led to a remarkable career in jazz. During the music therapy she received while rehabilitating, it became suddenly apparent that she had a great talent for composition, and the rest is history.
Paul and I were guests in her hotel room, which she had transformed into a veritable boudoir, scented candles, trinkets and sumptuous draperies providing her with a much-needed sense of home even when on the road. When she wrote a declaration of love for Paul in lipstick on her mirror it was the icing on the cake for us.
Few decades have as much continuing impact today as the first of the new millennium. Not only did many still-current fashion trends originate in the noughties, but many of the stars of the decade’s art and music scenes continue to cast long shadows even years later.
Zero’s Heroes captures the energy and spirit of the noughties music scene in a vivid and exciting collection of photos. Paul Bergen, then as now one of the world’s foremost music photographers, was on hand with his camera to document mega-watt pop stars and cult favorites alike, and from epic concerts to legendary festivals to intimate backstage portraits, this photo book offers a unique and intimate window onto music and life at the beginning of the twenty-first century.