Music: The Father of the Blues, Golden Age of Jazz, and David Bowie | History in Photos

0:07Dominic Sandbrook:Hi everybody, it's Dominic here from the Rest Is History. So we are in the middle of an exclusive mini-series for our Rest Is History Club members about photography and the way it has been interwoven with the story of history. And in today's episode with the great photographer Chris Floyd, we are looking in particular at music. So we'll be talking about the great bluesman Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in Mississippi. We'll be looking at the great titans of jazz assembling in Harlem in the 1950s for a group portrait. We'll be talking about the career of David Bowie.

0:41Dominic Sandbrook:And we are talking about an iconic image of Grace Jones from the 1980s. Now, if you don't want to miss out on this, all you need to do is to go to the rest is history dot com to sign up. And not only will you get this exclusive miniseries, but you'll get a host of truly unbelievable benefits so we hope to see you uh at the rest is history.com and in the meantime here's a little clip of the episode so our third image that chris has chosen and chris this is somebody that you photographed yourself but you didn't choose your own picture of him and that's david bowie just before we talk about the picture photographing david bowie was it fun uh stressful because again you're with someone who who's worked with the very best and also not only with the very best but also done it a lot right and has probably limited patience for any faffing around but it was good he was surgically funny about other famous people oh that's always good and their foibles right yeah right there's anybody he particularly disliked i wouldn't say dislike but he was he he he made a very pointed and amusing comment about Brian Ferry.

1:52Dominic Sandbrook:Wow. Okay, another 70s glam rock kind of product. So, this is a picture. It was an album cover. It's Aladdin Sane, isn't it? Aladdin Sane, yeah. And it's taken by a great 60s photographer, actually, Brian Duffy, one of the kind of, one of the enfant terrible of kind of 60s photography. Yes, there was Duffy, Terrence Donovan, and David Bailey, and they were known as the Black Trinity. Right. um all from the east end all you know classic 60s working class boys who did good you know high-end photographers had been involved with um album covers since the beatles i guess it's about the mid 60s 64 65 um and brian duffy being invited to come in and do david bowie i mean it's a sign of how successful david bowie is at this point because what year are we in we're in 73 so bowie's at his peak no he's not at his peak actually so there's a great story about about this so bowie's manager uh it was called tony defreece operated on the theory that if he made the record company spend a lot of money then they would be committed because they would they would have spent so much money on a project that they would have to put the effort in to make their money back this album cover in particular he said to he went to duffy and said this we got to make this album cover as expensive as we possibly can and duffy said well no problem you know he's delighted by that so he you know he hired one of the best makeup artists in the world the printing of the image was was done using a kodak process called dye transfer printing which which was the most expensive process by which you could print an image in those days so i was going to ask about this because there's a technical story behind this picture so for people who can't see it i mean you should have a look at that you can google it or you can watch the episode on the website or whatever so the image is a kind of white and pale david bowie shot from kind of shoulders upwards he's got this kind of shock of red hair and he's got this zigzag pattern on his face the kind of red and blue zigzag and the technical skill that was brought to this so duffy had just done the pirelli calendar is that right he's using the same techniques that he'd used on the pirelli calendar yeah so it's dye transfer so you make a plate a printing plate for each color in the so red green and blue you make a separate plate for each for each color it's extremely expensive and it was done in switzerland which made it triply expensive right having to go to switzerland yeah so there's a documentary about him actually called the man who shot the 60s he quoted tony devris wanted to make the most expensive cover he could possibly get a record company to pay for if it cost 50 quid then they could say so what but if it cost 5 000 pounds the record company were now having to pay attention the record company couldn't have come to a better a con artist than my good self okay good line so he does this extremely expensive process it's all part of bowie's i mean bowie's famous isn't he for pioneering the idea that a that a rock star or pop star has a kind of has a malleable image that is constantly changing between each incarnation he will assume different personalities so ziggy stardust or aladdin sane or the thin white duke or whatever and this is all part of the image making yeah that goes hand in hand it's actually very different from the you know the robert johnson pictures he is he is unconscious yeah of his image he's not even thinking about his image because he's not conscious of himself as a musical celebrity of course he's just a jobbing musician well johnson's in a pre-image era isn't he's a pre-mass media era really people are not uh selling music based on on an image in the way that they were by the time we get to bowie here so even the jazz musicians in a great day of harlem there was an innocence i suppose to that image i mean they're all quite they're all very smartly dressed aren't they they're sharp they're sharply dressed but there's no sense i would say of it being a contrivance whereas the bowie image is pure contrivance no yeah they've all thought about what they're wearing yeah and they've all put effort and consideration to it because it was important to them to look good but they've all done it in their own their own individual personal the way with bowie you have elevation of the individual to superstar status rather than simple old-fashioned star status yeah he's sort of going it's superstars you know the idea that he's from another planet and he's an alien and all of that stuff you know there's a great interesting background to the lightning flash on his face yeah so he got that from elvis you know the memphis mafia elvis's buddies yeah that is sort of posse yeah so they were the memphis mafia and he had this logo designed for them which was a lightning flash and the word and the letters tcb which stood for taking care of business right um but elvis actually stole that from the templar christian brotherhood tcb he took the tcb of the of the templar christian brotherhood changed it to taking care of business stole their lightning flash uh and made it his own thing and then bowie stole the lightning flash from elvis wow so there's this lineage of it all comes from the templar christian brotherhood wow i suppose bowie you could argue his fascination with image leads him down some dark paths doesn't it in the 70s at the point at which he's giving interviews saying oh hitler was a rock star and all of this kind of thing and well later on in his career he said oh yeah i was carrying too far the idea of playing a part yeah i suppose yeah and as a photographer yourself so here when you're i mean obviously this is all contrivance this picture yeah and when you're taking your portraits of people when someone says to you will you go and photograph i don't know um paul mccarney or bill gates or whoever how much are you as a photographer colluding in the creation of a confected image or how much are you trying to instead get get to the truth i mean that's just two totally different things here they're creating it's an album cover that's what they're doing they're creating an image yeah a two-dimensional image for an album cover the things you're talking about with the things i've those things i'm doing a portrait for or an interview in a magazine or something like that.

7:46And really you're trying to capture some element of them that is compelling on the page. Not necessarily any truth, but just an image that makes people stop and read the headline.

7:59Dominic Sandbrook:Thank you so much for listening to that. So if you want to hear the rest of that episode, which is of course all about music, then just head to the restishistory.com to join the club and to get all the other benefits. so please do join us at the rest is history club we would love to have you with us and on that bombshell bye