TALL STORIES

Turn to the left... Turn to the right...

The narrative in a great photograph is somewhere beneath the surface tones and shapes,  a song with it’s own story to sing. And the story you see, will not be mine…

Show and Tell - Paolo Roversi pointing the camera at Guinevere van Seenus

American Apparel, Agent Provocateur and Armani.

Temptation to behave is terrible.

Bertolt Brecht

Olga Sherer shot by Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello

My son has followed fashion since he was a punk. He and I agree that fashion is about sex.

Vivienne Westwood

Lara Stone shot by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for Interview – March 2010

The art of invention
Is born in the hands of angels
And it falls from their palms as stars... Glittering... dust.
The Ballad of the Babies – Dumb Baby Sounds 2011

Norman Parkinson for Vogue 1959.
After Kees Van Dongen’s Le Coquelicot 1919.

Vogue Nippon like a red hat too...

Eniko Mihalik wears it... Sebastian Faena shoots it...


Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop…
Ansel Adams

Prada-1997 - Glen Luchford


If in doubt…wear black.

Dumb Baby Sounds 2011

Amber Valletta, cigarette and chopsticks for Vogue Italia Oct 2000

Photography by Steven Meisel - fashion editor Lori Goldstein.

Commercial Break

IN YOUR HEART by Dumb Baby Sounds

Guinevere van Seenus by Javier Vallhonrat

From the Private Dancer Series - Vogue April 2010

The fashion of this world passeth away.

Bible, 1 Corinthians

Mirander Kerr by Greg Kadel

All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Richard Avedon

Guy Bourdin

What you rebellin' against Johnny?

What you got!

Marlon Brando – The Wild One

Sara Stockbridge by Paul Spencer

Feminists wish women to seem like men. They're not men.

Vivienne Westwood

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

Coco Chanel

Peter Lindbergh for Vogue China

Style is primarily a matter of instinct.

Bill Blass

Strike a Pose

Madonna for Louis Vuitton by Steven Meisel

If in doubt… wear red.

Bill Blass

Heidi – Ellen Von Unwerth

I never cared for fashion much... 

Amusing little seams and witty little pleats...

It was the girls I liked...

David Bailey

Marie Helvin by Bailey

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Naomi Campbell by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott

For Interview October 2010

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Andy Warhol

Image by Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello

The camera can photograph thought.
Dirk Bogarde

Photograph by Toni Frissell

Here are faces I have found memorable. If they are not all as happy as kings, it is because in this imperfect world and these hazardous times, the camera’s eye, like the eyes of a child, often sees true. Toni Frissell (Antoinette Frissell Bacon)

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Blue Valentines Part II

Love in Vain...

When the train rolled up to the station

And I looked her in the eye

When the train rolled up to the station

And I looked her in the eye

Well I was lonesome, I felt lonesome

And I could not help but cry

All my love's in vain
Robert Johnson for Willie Mae Powell 1937

Not to be confused with Willie Mae ‘Big Momma’ Thornton who in 1953 had a hit with ‘Hound Dog’ written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller…

When they took Hound Dog to Big Momma Thornton she started singing it like a ballad and an eighteen year old Jerry Leiber plucked up the courage to say  "that's not how you sing it Momma" and she turned on him and said "Don’t you be telling me how to sing the blues white boy!”

The next day she gets it in one take…perfect… Another take, even better! Jerry Leiber turns to Mike Stoller and says “Wouldn’t it be great if she growled that!” Stoller looks at Leiber and says “Yeah… YOU tell her!”

Three years later Elvis Presley recorded it and the rest is his story…

Everybody in the whole cell block… Stoller, Presley, Leiber 

Since the original was written from a woman’s point of view. The Elvis camp had re-written small passages of the Lyric… of which Jerry Leiber said recently… “You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine… What’s that mean? It’s inane!”

“My heterosexual credits have long been established, so I can comfortably say that the first thing that hit me when I walked into the recording studio and found myself standing next to Elvis Presley was his physical beauty. Far more than his pictures, his actual presence was riveting.” Jerry Leiber June 2009

Vanilla for Pricilla

Tracks of My Tears

Proper Sorry Frown – Tears - Man Ray 1932

She brings her hands up towards where my hands rested

She wraps her fingers round mine with the softness she’s blessed with

She peels away my fingers, looks at me and then gestures

By pushin’ my hand away to my chest, from hers

Dry Your Eyes – The Streets

Take my tears and that's not really all...

Tainted Love started out as a b-side for Gloria Jones in 1965… The single didn’t take off but in 1973, after being picked up by a British club DJ on a holiday in the USA, it became a big favourite on the Northern Soul scene in the UK …

Gloria was later to become Marc Bolan’s girlfriend, bandmate and designated driver the night their car hit a Sycamore Tree on the Queen's Ride in Barnes... Bolan died instantly, while Gloria suffered a broken arm and broken jaw...

Tainted Love was later covered by Soft Cell and Marylin Manson… Soft Cell’s version went to number one in 17 countries but took 19 weeks to break into the US top 40. Once there, it spent a record breaking 43 weeks in the Hot 100, suggesting that you can’t keep a good song down.

Fear and Loathing

I’m begging of you please don’t take my man…

Jolene – Dolly Parton

The title ‘Jolene’ came via a girl who’d asked Dolly Parton for her autograph…

“She told me her name and I said Jolene, Jolene, Jolene… that’s pretty, it sounds like a song… I’m going to write a song about you…” Dolly Parton

Parton believed a red headed bank teller had been flirting with her husband, as evidenced by his overly frequent trips to said bank… In live performance, Parton often describes how she fought ‘tooth and nail’ to keep her man… thus avoiding a D.I.V.O.R.C.E

It's just an old war

Not even a cold war

Don't say it in Russian

Don't say it in German

Just say it in broken English

As Tears Go By

Why'd you do it, she said, ain't nothing to laugh

You just tore all our kisses right in half!

Why'd ya do it, she said, why'd ya do what you did

Betray my little oyster for such a low bitch.

Why'd Ya Do It? - Marianne Faithful

Why'd Ya Do It? – A raging tirade of a woman responding to her lover's infidelity. Poet, Heathcote Williams had written it as a lyric for Tina Turner, but Marianne Faithfull convinced him that Turner would never record a number so graphic. The engine room of the song’s riff was based on the Jimi Hendrix version of Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower.’

There’s a Chinese cigarette case

and the rest you can keep…

Guy Garvey - Elbow

And the ghost of your memory

Is the thistle in the kiss

And the burglar that can break a roses neck

It's the tattooed broken promise

That I hide beneath my sleeve

And I see you every time I turn my back

Blue Valentines – Tom Waits

River of Salt

Quite possibly one of the most simple and perfect songs ever written...

Day turns to night

Still tears fall

Since we're apart

They won't stop at all

Blue Valentines Part I

Je Ne Regrette Rien

I get along without you very well

Of course I do

Except perhaps in Spring

But I should never think of Spring

For that would surely break my heart in two

Nina Simone

In 1939, Hoagy Carmichael composed a melody to a poem called I Get Along Without You Very Well. A few years earlier he’d been handed the poem by a student at Indiana University. It was signed only J.B and the student author remained a mystery for many years. The song then gathered dust until 1952 when Jane Russell and Carmichael performed it in the film Las Vegas Story. After national Radio and Newspaper pleas for the writer to come forward the author was revealed as Jane Brown Thompson… Sadly, she passed away on the night before Dick Powell introduced the song on national radio.

Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren Bacall singing ‘Am I Blue’ in Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not… a song later recorded by everyone from Billie Holliday to Eddie Cochran… This one, by Ray Charles…

Baby please don’t go

Back to New Orleans

You know I love you so

Big Joe Williamson

Goodbye is Too Good a Word…

Artist, activist & muse, Suze Rotolo, appeared arm in arm with her man on the cover of ‘The Freewheelin Bob Dylan’ in May 1963. Rotollo, the inspiration for 'Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright' and 'Tomorrow is a Long Time' amongst others, died at her home on February 24th 2011, following a long-term illness…

She had a smile that could light up a street full of people and was extremely lively, had a particular type of voluptuousness—a Rodin sculpture come to life. She reminded me of a libertine heroine. She was just my type. Bob Dylan

Yes, and only if my own true love was waitin'

Yes, and if I could hear her heart a-softly poundin'

Only if she was lyin' by me

Then I'd lie in my bed once again

Tomorrow is a long time - Bob Dylan

Folksinger Paul Clayton was a close friend and mentor to Bob Dylan. In 1962, Clayton’s song, Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone) and the prolonged absence in Italy of Suze Rotolo were the inspiration for Dylan’s, Don't Think Twice (It's Alright).

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn.

Look out your window and I'll be gone...

On March 30, 1967, Clayton, thought by some, the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Dylan, committed suicide by taking an electric heater into the bathtub with him. Another folksinger Barry Kornfeld stated that Clayton was gay, "that it was sadly, something he couldn’t live with...Paul had a tremendous crush on Dylan. I believe that It Ain't Me, Babe was written for Paul.”

It ain't me babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe

It ain't me you're lookin' for babe

Your baby doesn't love you anymore

It's over... It's over... It's over...

The Great Roy Orbison – The voice of God… When they need to know about heartbreak, Lefty Wilbury is the ‘to go to guy…' Only the Lonely, In Dreams, Love Hurts, and Blue Bayou being just the tip of the iceberg…

Crying…

Daniel Craig – Licensed to Cry

Co-Star of ‘The Crying Game’ Forest Witaker
Photographed by Sam Taylor Wood as part of her ‘Crying Men’ series.

A top 5 UK hit in 1964, Dave Berry’s, The Crying Game experienced a new lease of life in Neil Jordan’s film of the same name in 1992… Berry’s version was covered on a number of occasions but never bettered. The most gorgeous of guitar solos was played by the legendary Big Jim Sullivan, known as ‘Big Jim’ to distinguish him from fellow session musician ‘Little Jim’ Page who played rhythm guitar on the track and later went on to do quite well in Led Zeppelin.

Big Jim Sullivan worked on more than a thousand hit records in a career spanning three decades, playing on Ferry Across the Mersey, Ichycoo Park, It’s Not Unusual, Make it Easy On Yourself.’ The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, ‘Something in the Air,’ ’Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus’ and Cilla Black’s cover of Anyone Who Had a Heart, to name drop just a few.

Don't Gimme No Lip Child - the flip side to The Crying Game, was a regular part of the set in early Sex Pistols shows… subsequently given a release when they were flogging a dead bass player in 1979…

When Dionne Warwick recorded the original version of 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan with Bacharach and David in November 1963, 'Walk On By' was recorded in the same session…

Six years later Isaac Hayes walked on by for the Hot Buttered Soul album…

Laundromat?

You’re damn right!

Isaac Hayes - August 20, 1942 - August 10, 2008

It should be a while before I see Dr. Death

So it would sure be nice if I could get my breath

Well I'm not the crying or the whining kind

Till I hear the whistle of the 309

Johnny Cash