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music photographer and when the bar opened on his doorstep last year, he felt it was the obvious place to do it. “When Adrian Varley opened Park Fever it seemed the ideal location to exhibit – it’s local and friendly with decent beer,” Tony says. The response from Park Fever customers has been enthusiastic. “The exhibition is a great conversationstarter. People love to talk about all the bands and their memories of them”, says Adrian. “It’s also been popular on social media, with people tweeting that they are in Park Fever with Jools Holland etcetera.” After working for Melody Maker for a couple of years, Tony moved on to the “far cooler and more influential NME”, and many of the photos in the exhibition are cover shots commissioned by the music magazine. For 10 years he travelled all around the world taking pictures in musicians’ homes, hotel rooms, dressing rooms and out on the streets. Alongside every image in the exhibition is a short
anecdote about how Tony landed the shot and what the subject was like, providing the viewer with a unique, behind-the-scenes insight into the world of rock music photography. “The pressure was always on to get a shot that was different from what had been seen before and make an impact, especially at NME”, he explains. “Musicians can be prima donnas at times and with bands there’s that extra pressure of trying to keep them all happy. Drink and drugs inevitably played a part too so you had to tread carefully.” When Tony took the photo of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, he recalls Cobain being in the “grips of narcolepsy and constantly swigging cough medicine”. Tony had just become a father for the first time when he got the commission and he recalls dissing them as just “another crap indie band”. “My daughter had just been born and I was so sleep deprived I didn’t know what day it was. I’d never heard of this band I had to go and take a photo of, but the next week they released Nevermind and they became the biggest band on the planet.” Tony’s photo was reprinted as an NME cover in 2011 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Nevermind. Another particularly memorable shoot took place during the 1992 LA riots. Tony had flown out to photograph British rock band The Cult, but just as they were wrapping up the shoot in a still-burning building, who should walk past but Lemmy from Motörhead. “It was all quite surreal,” Tony recalls. “We ended up going back to his tiny apartment where he kept the curtains closed all day and drank copious amounts of Jack Daniel’s.” Tony would always try to have an idea of what he could get his subject to do ahead of the shoot and would sometimes bring along props. When Sonic Youth did a photo shoot to coincide with their sixth album Goo in 1990, he took along some pots of goo, the kids’ slime. “Initially the band weren’t that enamoured with the idea but warmed to it as we started shooting. A friend who was on the shoot still has one of those half-full pots as a memento.” When Tony was booked to photograph former Sex Pistol Malcolm McLaren, he decided to bring along an oversized picture frame as he thought it would provide an interesting focal point. “I was quite surprised when Malcolm said he thought it was a good idea and was happy to pose with it, but by this time he was less the punk agent provocateur and more the LAbased businessman.” Other musicians suggested ideas themselves, and then some changed their minds. “Sinéad O’Connor said she wanted to do something pared back and without makeup for an NME cover,” Tony recalls. “I love the striking simplicity of the photo, but then she apparently hated it because she had no makeup on.” While some subjects would vanish straight after the shoot, others were in no rush to leave. “Despite being distracted by calls from his wife – who was about to give birth – Tom Waits whipped my backside at pool in the Palladium Club, which is in the background of the photo,” Tony recalls.
Tom Waits whipped my backside at pool in the Palladium Club
Over the years Tony got to meet many of his heroes, including Leonard Cohen. “It can be disappointing when you meet a hero but Cohen was absolutely wonderful; kind, patient and a lovely rascal of a gentleman.” In addition to the photo in the exhibition, where Cohen is sitting crosslegged on a hotel room bed, Tony also took a photo of Cohen holding his (Tony’s) daughter Lucca, which featured as a photo story in the Guardian a few years ago. “My wife was working and we didn’t have childcare so I took Lucca, who was then about two, along with me to the shoot. Leonard had this reputation as a bit of a whisky drinking ladies’ man, so I thought it would be good to photograph him with her. He hung her upside down, which she loved and it made a great photo. My daughter now works in the music business so it’s quite a cool thing for her to be able to show the photo to her colleagues and go, ‘That’s me!’” The Park Fever exhibition is just a snapshot of Tony’s work – the walls of his family home, just around the corner, are covered with dozens more images from his archive. So could there be a follow-on exhibition, with yet more rock ’n’ roll tales? “Maybe”, Tony smiles as he shares one last story about the photo of Barry White that currently hangs in his kitchen. “It was taken at his home in Sherman Oaks in LA in the late 80s. He was lovely, although his voice was so deep that I didn’t understand what he said when I arrived. It turned out that he was just asking if I wanted a cup of tea!” A Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear is currently on show at Park Fever, 21a Staplehurst Road. Prints from the exhibition are for sale at £75 each