Sunday, 29 August 2004
Placebo @ Reading Festival, UK
backstage & onstage
To France and back again
After a day off I’m on my way to the heart of London’s West End and the St. Martins Lane Hotel in particular to meet the Americans at noon sharp. They had kindly offered me a lift to Reading, for which I was very thankful. The St. Martins Lane Hotel is a deluxe designer hotel for which Philippe Starck has not only designed the golden tooth-shaped seats in the lobby. Its hotelier describes it as young, cool, happy, light and that it’s like the essence of London all packed together. From what I’ve seen I totally agree, it’s one of the things I love London for: its style in modern design and the art it has to offer in general. London has a completely unique atmosphere that can’t be matched. London has been my favourite city ever since I went there for the first time in 1990, with its art galleries, museums and music scene. And also English is such a beautiful language. It’s always an inspirational trip, coming here. As for this hotel in particular, I’ve been to it first in 2002, when Dimitri Tikovoi, brilliant producer and the man behind Trash Palace, was DJing at the hotel’s stylish Light Bar. He had put on some great stuff and Brian and Michael J Sheehy had been there, too. I remember very well that the snobbish waitresses had completely ignored me and a friend at first – until they had discovered that we knew Brian, and their behaviour instantly changed to ultra attentive and fawning. I find people like that just pitiful.
Okay, back to the actual day. So, today we had a driver who, as he was telling us, has been driving Jennifer Lopez and Craig David a.o. before. We pick up somebody in Chelsea before heading out of town. It’s a really short trip today, no comparison to our journey to Leeds. We cross the Reading city boarder round 1 pm and Stef texts me, “We’re on our way”. Stage time is 7.10 pm, so plenty of time. Again we arrive earlier than the band and after having inspected the dressing room containers we check out the site a bit. It has to be pointed out that the Reading crowd at that point was a very hostile audience, as they kept on booing and throwing bottles at Finland’s poor The Rasmus, who were desperately trying to do their thing on stage. But the crowd just wouldn’t let them as they not only kept throwing bottles but in fact everything they could get their hands on, like grass, mud, food, garbage – just anything would do ! Watched from afar it was a bizarre spectacle, you just saw stuff flying through the air, but for The Rasmus it was probably the worst moment in their young career. After 15 minutes their gig was over. I felt sorry for those fans who had travelled a long way to see them. The Dropkick Murphys and The Streets then went down better with the crowd. Although it showed once more that the live format is not really working for The Streets, in my opinion. All that talking just doesn’t translate to a big stage very well.
In the meantime the Placebo boys had arrived and they were getting themselves comfortable backstage. The backstage area was a lot smaller than in Leeds, no space for their own portable disco which they drag everywhere or for table tennis. With Reading being very close to London, a lot of friends of the band were coming to see them and there is a lot of ballyhoo when Dave McLean, Placebo’s other co-manager, arrives. He’s come straight out of his office in Bangkog, from where he wants to break the Asian market for Placebo. Levi is there too and in a multi-media moment I take a shot of him while he’s filming the band. The 4AD Placebo comic strip makes the rounds and Steve starts his practise – everybody’s looking for something to kill time and their nervousness with. They say, “Reading is London in a field !”.
I give them the advice to pretend they are in France and that everything is just fantastic ! Soon we invent the phrases, “Welcome back to France ! Isn’t the weather just lovely here in France ?” and stuff like that. Just say it often enough and it’ll work…Brian disappears with his girlfriend and two friends to watch some band while Stef picks up a newspaper and probably reads about the weather in, err, France…? Then it’s time again to get dressed for success
(= black) and to put the slap on. Again pale faces with rather serious expressions full of concentration prove the thrill’s not gone yet. I’ve seen similar photos of Bono & U2 in Rolling Stone magazine recently. It happens to the best. Xav has his hands folded as if he’s praying, while Bill has a slash between the containers. When they form a circle and practise group-hug Stefan pulls such a face that this particular moment of unity looks like some severe case of queer bashing on my photo instead ! Hilarious (his face; not queer bashing of course !). I follow them to the stage and the crowd gets louder with each step that we’re getting closer. In Reading the main stage wasn’t too far away from the backstage area, so no posh golf car to take us up a hill today. Up behind the stage, only seconds before their show starts, the boys don’t appear as tense as in Leeds. Still it’s a relief though when they finally march on stage and kick off a beast of a show. Only Stefan is still lurking behind the backdrop and hasn’t entered the stage just yet. “Taste In Men” has long started, but Stef’s still stretching it – up until the point when his bass is about to set in and he spurts to his spot. Nothing wrong with a big entrance, eh !
During the show the sun is slowly going down and it bathes the whole stage in that special glowing, atmospheric light – while rubber ducks keep flying on stage ! Brian once mentioned rubber ducks in an interview and gets bombarded with them ever since. I even spotted a duck banner in the crowd. One of their American friends who’s been watching from the side of the stage quickly picked one duck up when the boys had left the stage – to take home to the USA for Stefan’s little niece. Reading saw the same greatest hits set as Leeds and it was one high-proof power cocktail once more.
Again I absolutely revelled in having the whole day and the whole show for my work and that I wasn’t limited to the infamous ‘first three songs only’. This limit truly is a pain in the ass for every photographer who wants to get “the shot”. The scenario is that you and at least a dozen other photographers are only given three (sometimes only two, worst case only one) songs to shoot at the beginning of the show while being squeezed in the pit between stage and audience. By many this is seen as needlessly controlling, especially at big stadium shows, where the pit you shoot in at the front of the stage is the “security gutter” between the first rows and the lip of the stage. The stage is often 3 meters high or more, so one is hardly blocking anyone’s view, and so apparently the only excuse for this is the ego and vanity on the part of the artist ? I mean, what else could it be ? These days everybody wants to look as perfect as possible on photos. This obviously seems to exclude sweaty faces, smudged make-up and a mess of soaking wet hair. But sweat and madness and contorted faces are visual evidence of a great rock gig and buzzing live energy ! Artists should stay real and should go for authenticity. It’s a pity also because the best scenes on stage are always happening after the artists have warmed up, after they have lost all shyness, i.e. towards the middle/end of show – when the photographers are long gone. When Beck played the Bizarre Festival in 2000, totally confused photographers got rushed out of the pit once the first song had ended. And sometimes you are even forced, if it is an indoor gig, to leave the venue after you’ve finished your job and you are only allowed back in without your camera (this happened to me once with Nine Inch Nails and Placebo twice). Just who set up these rules ? Ridiculous.
All this makes it harder to get outstanding shots different from the mass. Where are the pandemonium shots that we know from the 70s for example ? Like Mick Rock and stuff. It’s all too controlled these days.
Backstage after the show Placebo hear from their managers that it’s been their best Reading performance so far and they’re happy. We’re all in a merry mood and I take some snapshots with a cheap camera just for myself. While we were having a laugh gangsta pimp rapper 50 Cent has taken to the stage. I personally wouldn’t even pay 50 cent to see him ! I guess the crowd had a similar view on this. Somebody had pushed their repeat button and they gave their “booing and throwing bottles” software a glorious second run. After a short while we heard a loud bang that was coming from the main stage. The whole day long Stef had been doing a hilarious 50 Cent impersonation, going “I’ve been shot 9 times ! I’ve been shot 9 times !” all the time. So had 50 been shot a 10th time ? No, it’s just that the crowd had successfully bottled our gansta off the stage and in rage he had slammed the mike to the ground. This left headliner Green Day with more than two fat hours for their show ! Fair trade.
The Americans urge to leave before Green Day are finished to avoid getting stuck in the masses of people, so it’s time to say goodbye to everybody – which takes a while of course. Our driver is already waiting for us and I’m happy and thankful they give me another lift home. The driver has even put old newspapers on the floor of the car just in case we would have the nerves to step in with muddy shoes. How very thoughtful indeed – and how very un-rock’n’roll ! But fear ya not, there was no muddy mud in sight. So we drove back to London, even the best of days sadly comes to an end. At 11.30 pm I was back at the Holiday Inn where I fell on my huge bed, still high on all the day’s experiences…and I couldn’t wait to get the films developed.
I am very satisfied with how the photos and the actual prints turned out from my fly-on-the-wall photography. What I also appreciated was the fact that I didn’t have to bother anybody during the shooting, but that it allowed me to work in a more organic way by just shooting what was happening, in a documentary style. That’s why my photos are very authentic, showing how natural and funny Placebo actually are. These are characteristics that I personally definitely prefer to most of the posed, stiff studio shots.
By the way, the next day I visited two great exhibitions, both at the Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre. One was Jacques Henri Lartigue, a French photographer who lived from 1894 – 1986. Central to the Lartigue exhibition were 100 large albums on which he worked all his life – a unique and outstanding document of his times, on loan for the first time outside France. The second exhibition was “About Face – photography and the death of the portrait”. A very fine show indeed which raised the central question: “Can we still take the portrait at face value in an age of digital technology and media domination, miracle drugs, plastic surgery and genetic engineering ?”. There were lots more exhibitions that I was interested in – in London you’re really spoilt for choice – but unfortunately I already had to fly back to Germany. Until next time…
Claudia Schmölders