by 1978
Andrew Kent had the one thing any music photographer desperately wants and needs: access. “Access is everything,” he tells me as we sit over coffee in his home studio north of Ketchum. From his very first gigs as a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Free Press, he became a regular on the L.A. music scene. He used his trusty press pass to work his way up the short list of photographers who were allowed backstage at any given show. His access to musicians soon spread from L.A. to the rest of the world. Simply put, Andy is one of the most acclaimed rock photographers of the 1970s, if not of alltime. While first impressions of Andy don’t scream rock ’n’ roll— he’s polite, soft-spoken, conservatively dressed, with a trimmed beard—just a quick glance around his studio reveals hints and glimmers of a past deeply steeped in music. A large, iconic, black and white photograph of Jim Morrison leans against a bookshelf. Morrison is heavily bearded and squinting through one eye. It is one of the last portraits of the cultural legend. Andy’s photographs of musicians, including Cat Stevens, Keith Richards, Freddy Mercury, Rod Stewart, KISS, Elton John, and even Frank Zappa, have graced the covers of every rock magazine, billboards in Hollywood, and album covers. His portrait of Iggy Pop during an unplanned moment at the BBC Studios is the iconic cover of the rocker’s 1977 album, Lust For Life. He was the staff photographer for Cream, Atlantic Records, A&E, and Capitol Records. 82 sunvalleymag.com | WINTER 2012
Andy is perhaps best known for his photos of David Bowie. His candid portraits offer remarkable glimpses into the musician’s life and personality. “You can’t get these photos from the side of the stage,” he smiles as he holds up a print from the stack on his desk. The image is of Bowie, tangibly comfortable in front of Andy’s camera, on a train reading what appears to be a Russian newspaper. The photo is from the 1976 Station to Station tour. Andy remembers how, instead of flying from Zurich to Warsaw with the rest of the band and tour, Bowie decided to take the train into the Soviet Union. It was just Bowie, Andy, Iggy Pop, and two mem-
bers of Bowie’s staff, on a train bound for unknown adventures behind the Iron Curtain. “We just went over there because we could, and we knew it’d be a lot of fun,” Andy explains. The small group went unnoticed into the U.S.S.R. and Andy snapped photos the whole time. On their way out through customs, Bowie and Iggy were accused of stealing relics and were strip-searched. Andy laughs as he recalls the incident, “…and there I was holding the stolen goods.” At this point in the interview he gets up from his chair and disappears into his house. He comes back holding a small Russian sign, and I can just make out that it says something about toilet paper.
“I unscrewed this from the bathroom on the train,” he chuckles. Andy’s Idaho home is a collection of extraordinary objects: a credenza full of cameras, albums of all his backstage passes from 1968 to 1978, scrapbooks of his photos cut from magazines, and framed art on every wall. He is an organized collector. Andy shows me a framed subway map of Paris. He points to where he lived and where his frequent stops were, saying, “It took me weeks to steal this from the subway car.” Above the stack of cameras there is a framed and faded picture of Andy’s great-grandfather. “He was a Jewish cowboy. That wasn’t too common,” he says and smiles. Andy has surrounded himself