Richard Young, photographer

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:44My cast away this week is the photographer Richard Young. Once known as the king of the paparazzi, over the last 50 years he's gone from sneaking into one of Elizabeth Taylor's parties, snapping away until she kicked him out, to becoming a bit of a VIP himself. invited behind the velvet rope by the likes of Vanity Fair, the Golden Globes and Sir Elton John. He has his own gallery in Kensington, full of photos from his archive, a treasure trove featuring millions of images that chart the evolution of contemporary pop culture. His work has been honoured by the University of the Arts, the UK Picture Editors Guild and acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.

1:22Not bad for a working-class Londoner who left school at 14 wanting to prove his market trader father wrong about his prospects. He started out with a borrowed camera before getting a break from his friend David Bailey, who commissioned his celebrity photographs. He befriended many of his subjects, including Freddie Mercury and, eventually, Elizabeth Taylor. His work paved the way for the paparazzi that followed, but his attitude, as well as his talent, marked him out from that often controversial pack. He says, I understood that trust was currency. Being polite, being calm, saying please and thank you.

1:57Those things opened doors that aggression never could. A lot of photographers never understood why I was in the room. The answer was simple. I didn't behave like an enemy. I behaved like a human being. Richard Young, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much and thank you for having me here. Oh, you're so welcome. So Richard, you once said that a true paparazzo picture has a bit of magic and spontaneity about it. Tell me about the key ingredients. What are they? Well, it's got to tell a story. And the most important thing about a photograph is if it doesn't tell a story, then it's not really worth having.

2:32You know, I mean, some of the things I've done over the last 52 years, some I regret, some I don't regret. Some of them I like to say sorry to everybody. And a lot of people know that they can trust me and they like me. So I've been very, very fortunate. But most of these artists I've chosen today to play, I've had some kind of personal relationship and personal contact with. And they accepted me into their homes, into their work environment and everything else. So it's been a very interesting journey. Yes, we want to get to all of that and that transition from, you know, the early days, the rough and tumble and the stuff you might regret right the way through to, you know, being in the inner sanctum with so many of these huge stars.

3:14I mean, your images are often described as candid, as intimate. it. How do you put people at their ease when you're taking the photo? Well, the thing is, you've got to make people smile. One of the most important factors of the whole job is having a sense of humour, being able to get on with everybody. And as you said earlier, being polite, as long as you use those two very important words, please and thank you, anything can happen. And your wife, Susan, is working very hard on digitising your archive, those two million images or something that we mentioned. How much do you remember about the stories behind the pictures, when you're going through, does it bring it all back?

3:50Well, strangely enough, I remember most things about most pictures I've taken. I see an image, I go, oh, I remember what happened that day. I remember how it came about and everything. And it's quite remarkable how much I can remember about an image more than I can remember about other things that are going on in my life. And as you say, you've got a personal connection with a lot of the artists that we're going to be hearing today. What makes musicians such interesting subjects? I think the reason why I love musicians so much is because I so much wanted to be one myself. I remember when I was much, much younger at home, living in Stoughton and two up, two down with my mum and dad and my sister.

4:30And, you know, I built myself a guitar, which was this plank of wood with cut gut, what it was called, strings and things. Cut gut strings, you mean? Yes. Oh, my goodness. Really? And I was playing it. And my mum said to me, oh, I can't have all this madness. and she took it away from me and destroyed it, right? So I thought, maybe I'll become a drummer. So I got all these biscuit tins around me. I felt like I was Jim Keltner. I had my knitting needles, right, or my mum's knitting needles, and I go, da-da-da-da-da. And she said, ah, ah, and she had to take that all away from me. So I didn't become a musician.

5:05It was destroyed for me. Just as well you found your way to a camera eventually, Richard. Exactly. The camera plays my music. Let's get started with your first disc then. Who are we going to hear? Well, my first, this is Amy Winehouse. I loved her dearly. I was on my way to a hotel in St. Martin's Lane and I was on my way and my phone went off and it was Universal Music's PR saying to me, we've got this thing going on in Hammersmith at Riverside Studios. And Amy's here. There is a possibility she might get one or two awards. We would love you to come down and photograph it. So I got down there instead of going to the Vanity Fair party, which I was on my way to.

5:48And I got down there and I got there about midnight. And it was like a speakeasy. It was fantastic. She was up to number three, getting her Grammy Award. And mum turns to me and she said, Richard, you look very hungry. Have another bagel. And Amy shouts out, he's fat enough as it is. He can't have another bagel. Which at that time, I was a little bit overweight. But anyway, so the evening progressed like that. And at the end, she won five Grammars. Yeah. And she was absolutely amazed by the whole thing. And she was in such great form. It was so lovely to be working with her. And she cuddled up to her mum on stage.

6:26And I got this, the most incredible photograph where her mother is crying. And she's in the arms of Amy Winehouse, her daughter. And it was just so beautiful. And rehab really tells the story of the night, really. And tells the story of Amy. They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no. Yes, I've been black, but when I come back, no, no, no. I ain't got the time, and if my daddy thinks I'm fine. They tried to make me go to rehab, I won't go, go, go. Amy Winehouse and Rehab. Let's go back to the beginning then, Richard. You're a Hackney boy, born in 1947. Your parents Hilda and David were market traders.

7:16What did they sell and where? Well, my dad, for nearly 70 years, spent most of the time in Berwick Street Market. I went to a primary school in Stamford Hill, which was useless for me because I didn't learn a thing. And then because I didn't kind of educate myself or be educated or get to learn very much, I didn't get allowed to go to the JFS which was the Jewish Free School which was in Candon Town I ended up in William Worsworth which was a real kind of like okay, all the ones that didn't make it A bit more rough and ready, was it? Yeah, very rough and ready and I really had to learn how to take care of myself So my dad was working in Berwick Street but my dad was only around the corner from the London Palladium Now he used his store especially on a Friday as the front stage of the London Palladium When the girls came out with their pay packets in those days, you know, and they wanted a pair of stockings for the weekend to impress their boyfriends, especially the ones with the seam going down the back.

8:16Oh, yeah. He would get them out the bag and roll it up his arm and he'd say, look, darling, look at that. He had all the patter. He had all the patter. And he did Berwick Street Market for nearly over 60 years. So he was selling stockings to showgirls. Was it underwear that he specialised in? No, no underwear, just ladies' stockings. OK. Sometimes there were moments when I had to stand behind it just to make sure no one nicked anything. So tell me a little bit more about life at home then. I mean, you know, what were you like as a kid? I know that you were into train spotting. It's funny because train spotting was very important to me from the age of six, seven, eight and nine before I discovered other things in life.

8:54And the thing was, my mum used to buy me a Red Rover ticket, which got me around London to all the different main railway stations. So I take my little Ian Allen's train spotting book with me and ticked off the numbers as I went along, right? And I was sitting at the end of maybe King's Cross Station waiting for that 4.30 to come in from Edinburgh or whatever because I knew it would be a great steam train that would be put in it. All the other boys seemed to have white bread, rolled up cheese sandwiches. I had a smoked salmon bagel. Oh, come on. Which was very, very important. And so, as you mentioned, you've grown up in a Jewish family.

9:29Was religion an important part of life at home? Not really. we weren't terribly religious although I did all the necessary things of a boy called age 13 I put my parents through a lot of hardship and a lot of distress in the sense I kept on skipping going to Hebrew classes and going to learn my peace as they called it for that famous Saturday morning when it came along when you're 13 and then they held a big party for me and I thought that was fabulous. So it sounds like your parents were quite supportive did they have the creative streak that would later come out in you where do you think it came from in you i think the creative streak probably came from my father um because my dad was very much into american music i mean he loves frank sinatra dean martin he loved sammy davis jr he loved all people like that which brings us on to our next second song i guess all right yeah let's hear it disc number two what have you got the artist is johnny ray and it's called walking in the rain and what What does this bring back for you?

10:27Well, what happened was my dad, because he was working in Berwick Street, I think he knew people who worked or were connected with the London Playdium. All right. And he liked Johnny Ray. And he said to me one day, I'm going to take you to the London Playdium. We're going to go and see Johnny Ray. And I went, great. I never even heard of him at that point. And we went there and I sat there. I think we were in the stalls. And my dad was absolutely thrilled that he was treating me for a change, you know, taking me somewhere because, you know, he never did because he was so wrapped up in his work.

10:56Of course, that was going to be the first of many, many occasions that I was ever going to go to the London Palladium. Just walking in the rain Getting soaking wet Torture in my heart I try to forget Just walking in the rain

11:31Johnny Ray and Just Walking in the Rain. So, Richard Young, tell me more about your school days. You don't sound like the most diligent student. I was not. No. What was going on? What were you distracted by? Primary school was a real kind of bad situation because what kind of made it worse was my dad was paying for me to be there. Oh, a primary school, OK. Yeah, it was a paying school and it was quite strict. But anyway, I went to William Worsworth in Stoughton and High Street. So were there many other Jewish kids there? I mean, you mentioned that you had failed to get into the bigger Jewish school.

12:08No, there wasn't. It was just me. And then I found out that the guy I was sitting next to, I only got to know him, but he came along when I was 12, 13, 14, because his name was Mark Feld. Now, this guy came into school one day, and he's got a three-piece suit on and a Jacques Faf tie and a John Michael Four Guinea voile shirt. I'm going, I've got to be friends with this guy. This guy looks the way my head is thinking and we connected straight away. You became best mate. And he lived like five minutes away from me. He lived by Stoughton-Inton Common and I lived on Evering Road. And some mornings I would go around to him and we'd go to school together and some mornings he would come to me, whatever was easiest.

12:51and we stayed friends for a long, long time. I was so influenced by this guy, he was one of the biggest influences on my life. He changed his name later, didn't he? When he became a singer and he was in various other groups, he changed his name to Mark Boland. And every Friday, all the other 200 boys would get on coaches and go out to the Dagnum Fields near the Dagnum Works, right, all the way from Stoke Noonter, really? And they would be playing football in the mud and Mark would say to me, in this kind of like expression, not cool. So what were you doing instead? We get on a 73 bus and we go to Soho and walk down Wardour Street.

13:31That used to be my bus, I know it well. You go and see your dad and I go and see my mum, you know, cash some money off them, which is what we used to do. And we go round to the Two Eyes coffee bar and sit there and listen to some music and watch Adam Faith or PJ Probery trying to make a life for themselves. Okay, so it was already the bright lights of Soho. and music and all of that that was drawing your attention? I used to love the bright lights of Soho. The thing was, the day we got expelled, right, we're standing on the platform of the Route Master bus, 73, going to the West End, and there was somebody in the street going, don't even bother coming back, and I just waved.

14:07Did you? So that was it? That was how you left school? Exactly, and I went up to Berwick Street, I went up to my dad, and he's busy serving all these girls and everything, and I said, Dad, I've just been expelled from school. He said, OK, we'll stand behind the stall, make sure no one nicks anything. That was it. That was it. What kind of idea of your future did you have back then? Obviously, you and Mark, it sounds like you were interested in a bigger, more exciting life. I didn't have anything because I didn't learn anything in school. I had dyslexia and all those other things that kids have.

14:39And my mum came along to the rescue and got me a job interview working in this menswear shop in Old Compton Street called Sportique. Right now I'd love to hear your third piece of music Disc number three What have you chosen? Well this is a dedication to Mark And I'm very friendly with his wife Gloria Who's coming back to London soon I'm looking forward to seeing her And this song is called Cosmic Dancer And I love it very very much I was dancing when I was twelve I was dancing when I was twelve

15:19I was dancing when I was out I was dancing when I was out I danced myself right out the moon That is Cosmic Dancer by T-Rex and very poignant Richard Young to hear Mark Boland singing about, you know, him at that age, 12, when you would have known him around that time. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that song was written in school. Even though he was at school, he was writing songs. I know that for a fact. Oh, wow. So he always had his eyes on the prize. Well, let's talk about your progress then. So at 16, your mum had helped you get this job at Sportique in Old Compton Street. London was beginning to swing.

16:11It was one of the coolest boutiques in town. Who were your clients? Well, all these famous people were coming in and I realised how special this shop was, especially painters. I mean, David Hockney and Francis Bacon, people like that, film directors. John Huston came in one day, I remember very, very much. And then a lot of musicians came in because it was right near all the studios around Soho. Of course. And then one day, a bunch of guys come in. There's about five of them, six of them. You know, they're all kind of American. And they're all smelling of a very special fragrance. I wasn't quite sure what it was at that time in my life.

16:47We won't dwell on that. Yeah. And one of them had hair all curly up and everything. And I looked at them and went, oh, it's Bob Dylan. And they're looking at all the clothes. And there was T-shirts and all the shirts and everything. and one of the guys chose this orange and cream Matalo shirt and it's Italian cotton. It's got a lovely sheen to it and I feel like I'm selling it to you now. Oh, exactly. I'm like, oh, it sounds nice. I'll take three. So anyway, you know, I didn't think very much more of it and everything and about a year later, Highway 61 Revisited came out and I looked at the album cover.

17:25Bob Dylan is sitting down with his Triumph t-shirt on. Behind him, the Matalo shirt that I sold, the orange and cream metal shirt is on the guy behind him. No way! I went, oh my God, my first claim to fame, I sold him that T-shirt. Well, I want to come to the track in a minute, but I want to talk a little bit more about music first, if you wouldn't mind, Richard, because I know that after several years of working in Soho, in 1970, you made quite a big decision. You decided to sell all your records and you bought yourself a plane ticket to New York. And I know you went there with two phone numbers.

17:59Whose were they? What was the plan? Well, the first phone number was this young lady who was a girlfriend of a guy who was working in the shop with me. By this time, I was working in a shop called the Squire Shop on the King's Road. And he was one of our assistants. And he said to me, I've got this girlfriend who lives in Brooklyn. She had put you up for a few weeks and everything. So give her a call when you get to New York, which is what I did straight from the airport. And the second number I had was a guy that was the producer and kind of running Electric Lady Studios. which I had no idea what Electric Lady Studios was at that time.

18:35I mean, it's still completely legendary. It's the biggest studio, biggest name, world-known name recording studio anywhere. Yeah. And it was Jimi Hendrix Studio. And I knocked on the door and I said, I come to see Eddie Kramer. And I said, oh, come on up, he's in the office. Now, the guy didn't even say, hello, how are you? You know, what's happening? Do you want a job? I said, yeah, OK. They took me down just by Studio A. They sat me down by the desk. They said, right, you're going to allow the artists in, see them out. Fired away, Master Tate's, have a cup of coffee. And that's it. So this is Eddie Kramer, the legendary record producer.

19:12And what a lovely, lovely man he was. He was so kind to me and everything. How did you know him? He was one of my customers at Sportique. I see. So you were working at Electric Lady Studios assisting Eddie Kramer. Whose sessions did you work on? What kind of artists were you rubbing shoulders with? The most important one was Stevie Wonder. He was cut in Talking Book at the time. And what was he like to hang out with? What did you talk about? He was lovely. He was so gentle and so lovely. And it was years later, maybe, well, about maybe three or four years later. By now, I'm into photography. And I get invited to the Royal Garden Hotel where Stevie is staying, right?

19:50Through, I think it was Motown people invited me there. And Stevie would recognise you by your voice. And I remember walking into his room and we started chatting. I said, hey, you know how great it was to see him again and everything. Hey, Richard, how are you? I thought that was fantastic that he remembered my voice. How lovely. Well, you've already told us a little bit about this track, but would you like to introduce your fourth disc for us? Well, the next track is positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan because eventually I lived not very far from 4th Street. You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.

20:32When I was down, you just stood there grinning.

20:42You got a lot of nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend. You just want to be... Bob Dylan and Positively 4th Street. So Richard Young, you came back to London in 1974. You started off working in a bookshop on Regent Street and I think it was the owner of that shop who started you off with your camera. He sent you on various missions photographing authors. You didn't have a camera of your own at the time though. How did you manage? I said, I don't know that much about photography. What do you want me to do? He said, well, I want you to go down to the West Country and photographed the surrounding area architecturally of Thomas Hardy.

21:27So I did. I went down to near Dorchester, Wessex country and everything and spent a week photographing all these places on this list that he had given me. Came back to London. I gave him the two rolls of film and he got them processed and he came back the next day and he went like this. Showed me the blank film, two blank films. Oh, no. And he said, you know, why does this happen? I said well look everybody is just assuming I know about photography and I don't really know that much I'm sorry he said well you've got six weeks to learn how to use it or you're fired he was mighty mighty upset but he let me keep the Nikon camera and from that time on when he when I got it all wrong and everything I used it every single day walking to work or whatever just taking pictures of anything on everything that moved in London.

22:19Especially over the weekends, I would go to all the marketplaces where my dad was and just photograph market storeholders. Street photography, really. Street photography. I didn't realise it was going to turn into a paparazzi situation. And then one day, where I was living, just off Ladbroke Grove, next door to me, about three or four doors down, were all these American people who had come to London especially to set up Rolling Stone magazine English edition. And then one day they came over to the flat and they said, listen, we've got a really important person coming in this weekend. And they told me that this guy's coming into London from Rome and he's just been released by the Italian mafia and he's had his ear cut off and he's named Paul Getty Jr.

23:03And I thought, wow. And I've heard the name Getty before. But you didn't really know the story because it was a notorious crime at the time. It was really weird. It was a weird one. And the grandfather had to pay a$2 million ransom to get him released. OK, but you hadn't really heard about any of that. You just said, OK. I was naive to the whole thing. So he'd been kidnapped. Suddenly the kid arrives in London. He's staying like two or three doors away from me. And Craig, my friend Craig, who was the acting editor of Rolling Stone, he said to me, we're going to the Hard Rock Cafe on Saturday and we're taking Paul with us and everything and come with us.

23:39You will really enjoy it. So we all went to the Hard Rock, we walked through High Park and I photographed Paul with his girlfriend at the time, Martine. Great pictures. We got to the Hard Rock Cafe, but then there was someone else at the Hard Rock Cafe waiting for us and it was an American writer called William Bowers. Oh, wow. And I was more impressed with that than I was with anything else. So the photos that you took of Paul Getty Jr. after his kidnapping ended up earning you£30. pounds yeah it was more than I was getting paid for two weeks work in the bookshop and I remember sitting by the picture desk for an hour or so and then suddenly I thought well wait a minute where's my negs and contact sheets because I brought it to them so surely I must own the copyright to those pictures right and I said to one of the picture editors can I please have my negatives and contact sheet and they all looked at me like no one's ever asked for that to be sent you know sent back so they went off got it and gave it to me and that was it and I went off and sold it to an agency which that came later much later.

24:41Richard I think we better have some more music this is your fifth choice today what are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you to your desert island? Point Blank by Bruce Springsteen and this song hits me very hard in the heart because at the time this album came out The River my first wife god bless her Rita was dying of breast cancer and I used to play the album a lot but this one particular track really resonated with me and in my heart. I just love it. But it connected with you during such a difficult time. So she was very young and you had a young family, didn't you? My two boys were three and five and she passed away at the Royal Marsden and it was a very, very tough time for all of us.

25:24She was very loved and very missed. What got you through it, Richard? My parents helped me through it and also what got me through it? Meeting Susan nine months later definitely got me through it. She's your wife today. My wife today, she understood the situation and she held my hand all the way through it and she still holds my hand today. We were standing at the bar and it was hard to hear The band was playing loud and you were shouting something in my ear You pulled my jacket off and as the drummer counted four You grabbed my hand and pulled me out on the floor Just stood there and held me and you started dancing slow And if I pulled you tighter I swore I'd never let you go Well I saw you last night down the avenue Point Blank, Bruce Springsteen.

26:17Richard, one of your iconic photos is from the time that you gatecrashed Elizabeth Taylor's party. It was for Richard Burton's 50th at the Dorchester. What happened there? They wheeled in the birthday cake on a silver big trolley with all these major Ds around it and everything. And I'm photographing it. And every time my camera went off, because the flash was much stronger than the guests, because they're all Welsh people, and they had all the insomatics and everything. So in my camera, my flash went off. She went. She's looking right. And of course, I just took it down. I kept on taking about 10 or 12 pictures of her cutting the cake, kissing the kiss.