It was 40 years ago – September 18, 1970 – that Jimi Hendrix passed away, and the anniversary should trigger numerous reissues and re-evaluations this month. The most revealing commemoration might well be at the new Snap Galleries in London’s Piccadilly, where the legendary photographer Gered Mankowitz will unveil some unseen images of his old friend. Clash met Mankowitz upstairs at the gallery, where he talked at length about Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, even Patrick Wolf…
You hung out with Marianne Faithful as a teenager – that must have been fun?
“She’s a few months younger than me, we’re both pretty much the same age. So I met her socially and thought ‘god, she’s beautiful and funny’ and I said to her ‘I’d love to photograph you’ and she said ‘ok, what are you doing tomorrow?’ So I went and picked her up and we went to Wimbledon common and I took some photographs of her. And we got on really, really well, and I took some more pictures, and she was managed by Andrew [Loog Oldham]. Eventually he saw my pictures and really liked a particular shot, which became a cover, and he asked me at the end of ’64 to meet the ’Stones. And I started working with the Stones in early ’65, so it was fantastic.”
It wasn’t nerve-wracking?
“I don’t remember it being nerve wracking at all. Andrew was a bit nerve wracking, because Andrew was [long pause]…”
A force of nature?
“A real force of nature: extraordinary energy, a real vision. He didn’t give a shit, he just ploughed on, he wasn’t interested in being liked or being nice he was just interested in making things happen. He was very exciting to be with. So he was nerve-wracking, but the Stones weren’t, they were lovely. I keep thinking I should invent something, but they were really very nice.”
“I’d met Brian and he seemed to be charming, he was just very nice, so when I met the rest of the Stones I felt completely comfortable with them. They were very welcoming, they weren’t remotely challenging, I think because I was so young and I was always incredibly enthusiastic. I think they took to me, because they sort of let me into the gang almost immediately, there wasn’t a moment’s discomfort.”
You toured the States with them?
“That was an extraordinary experience because, we’re talking about the end of ’65, the band that was probably universally recognised as the second biggest band in the world after the Beatles, and for many people were far more interesting and exciting. The other thing about it that was really difficult for people to get hold of was that, when I went to America with them, there was just the five of them, me and the roadie, there was nobody else. We were just a group of young men, no entourage, no security, Andrew was already there in New York waiting for us with Allen Klein, there was no entourage, no security, no press, no publicist, no stylist, no make-up, no road crew, no lights no set: nothing.”
You’d kill for that kind of access nowadays…
“I didn’t find it very rewarding, and I’m not talking economically, I’m talking creatively, it was very frustrating. I mean the lighting was terrible. In some of the concerts the lighting was so bad I simply couldn’t take a photograph. The overall experience was absolutely fantastic and I don’t regret doing it, I’m thrilled I did it, but when I came back there was very little outlet for the work, and I got very frustrated.”
“I had a deep desire to be a serious photographer taking portraits of musicians, I wanted to try and project their image, I wanted to try and break the mould of established showbiz people like Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. So I was trying to present the band in an individual way, and I just didn’t feel I could do that recording them on the road.”
Your studio pictures of Hendrix are very revealing – you don’t see him smiling very often.
“I didn’t ask Jimi to smile, he just naturally was quite smiley, and we laughed quite a lot at the session. That was the first session in ’67, and funnily enough most young men in music, young musicians, want to look mean, moody and sexy. There was a lot of laughter in the session and I caught that because Jimi looked great when he smiled and because the nature of the photography then, it was looser, because we didn’t have Polaroid, so you couldn’t show somebody what you were doing, there was always a looseness to the shoot. So a lot of the pictures of him smiling were never ever printed at the time, because that’s not the image that anybody wanted to present, they wanted moody.”
When did they become properly recognised?
“I had a solo show in Soho, in ’92, and that was a catalyst for a lot of things. It was my own retrospective, everybody: the Eurythmics were in there, Kate Bush was in there, the Stones, Jimi, Marianne, lots of people. But I started manipulating and began to reinterpret my images for that show and that acted as a catalyst, and then I started showing my Jimi work for the first time properly at that show and there was huge interest in that, and that triggered off the association officially with the Jimi management and the Jimi record company, and so in a way that was the catalyst. It was from ’92 that my archive started going up and my commercial career was going down.”
More recently you did the shoot for a Patrick Wolf album cover, The Magic Position. How did you find him?
“Oh, I thought he was absolutely fantastic, inspiring, bonkers. He was wonderful to work with, and mad and interesting and expressive and eccentric and lovely – I adored working with him.”
Anyone else you fancy working with now?
“Lissie, now she’s very interesting, I quite like her, she sounds a bit like Stevie Nicks, but the other girl I was recently looking at who I thought was fantastic was Janelle Monae, who I think is wonderfully mad and clever and interesting. But to be honest with you I’m not sure whether my approach is even viable any more, and I’m not sure if I can change it. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, everything changes, everything evolves, the technology has changed hugely. I don’t think people have a real appreciation of photography anymore, its been devalued by the changing technology. I think photography is too easy.”
Gered’s new exhibition runs from 18 September at Snap Galleries, Piccadilly Arcade, London, until mid-November.
Words by Si Hawkins
