Section:GDN 12 PaGe:11 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 18:21 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian
Wednesday 7 August 2019 11
bands, such as the Beatles and the
Rolling Stones. This allowed him to
capture the swinging 60s with real
freedom. “I was asked by an editor
to go photograph this ‘little band’
called the Beatles at Abbey Road
Studios, then that led to me working
with the Stones ,” says O’Neill. “All
the old timers almost looked down
on them. It meant us youngsters
could jump in and take up the
opportunity. I could go out and
create my own world. There was no
other time like it; just so much fun!”
By the time O’Neill started
shooting Bowie during his Ziggy
Stardust tour in 1973, he was much
more of a respected name in the
photography world. But while he
had taken concert photographs
before, O’Neill was able to enjoy
these ones a lot more. “You couldn’t
bloody hear the Beatles,” he
explains, “but Bowie’s show actually
entertained you and had a story to it.
I could hear every word and he really
gave you a proper show.”
Scantily clad in fi shnets and
monster claws over his chest, rocking
a garish orange mullet, Bowie’s
“bravery” impressed O’Neill during
this era, especially the way he wasn’t
afraid to look eff eminate at a time
where this could get you beaten
up. Most of all, he liked that Bowie
took charge during their sessions,
particularly for their Diamond
Dogs shoot, where the singer had a
specifi c, animalistic, bare-chested
pose in mind. He also brought a
dog on to the set, which jumped up
in shock at the fl ash of the strobe
lighting, perfectly capturing the
kind of avant garde chaos Bowie had
intended for his dystopian album,
infl uenced by George Orwell’s 1984.
“I loved that he had all these
characters and told me exactly what
he wanted from our sessions,” says
O’Neill. “It meant that our pictures
had a purpose. I guess with most
of the other pop stars I shot, it was
sometimes very aimless. With
David, you never had to coax things
out, they just came naturally.”Yet just a year later, during a shoot
for the Los Angeles Magazine , O’Neill
could almost be photographing a
diff erent person – Bowie is gaunt and
looks like he hasn’t been sleeping.
“There was a lot of cocaine all of a
sudden,” says O’Neill. “He was really
big on drugs. I never felt I was in a
position to have a word with him
about it as don’t forget: we were all
around the same age!”
One of O’Neill’s most famous Bowie
shots co-stars a fellow countercultural
hero. “ One day he told me, ‘Come to
my offi ce tomorrow, I’m bringing
someone special.’ I got there and it
was William Burroughs. I was
staggered. They were both in fedora
hats like father and son,” he giggles.
Was that the Naked Lunch author’s
idea? “No, David decided on that.”
Around this period, O’Neill heard
that Elizabeth Taylor was hoping to
cast Bowie in her new movie Blue
Bird, so engineered a shoot between
the pair. But Bowie showed up four
hours late. “It was only because
of Liz’s professionalism that the
shoot even happened,” he refl ects.
“David showed up stoned out of his
head.” In these photographs, Taylor
looks bemused at being left waiting
for so long, as Bowie hugs her
apologetically.
Yet as the shoot went on, Taylor
thawed and Bowie began holding her
more and more aff ectionately. By the
end of the day, they looked more like
lovers than acquaintances. “With his
charm, Bowie could always aff ect
women,” says O’Neill, “and that’s
what happened on that day. But Liz
never gave him the part in the movie,
which I guess was telling.”
He hopes his new book, Bowie by
O’Neill, will help a new generation
of fans connect with the singer,
with the photographs also helping
spark memories of a period the
photographer admits is now more
than a little hazy. O’Neill, who was
awarded an honorary fellowship
from the Royal Photographic Society
back in 2004, sounds genuinely
humbled that he’s still being asked
to refl ect on these photographs.
“At the time, I just carried on
taking pictures. When I worked
with Frank [Sinatra] he told me
to be a fl y on the wall and that’s
what I was. I never realised that
these photos would live on for as
long as they did,” he says. “Bowie’s
name is going to live on forever and
if, by extension, that means my
photographs do too, then that’s
a really incredible thought.”
Bowie by O’Neill: The Defi nitive
Collection with Unseen Images by
Terry O’Neill is published tomorrow
PHOTOGRAPHS: TERRY O’NEILL/ICONIC IMAGES by Cassell Illustrated , £40.
D
esiree Burch is pu tting the
fi nishing touches to her new
Edinburgh show. “ This is
the part where you’re like,
‘None of this matters. No one’s
going to be changed after
anything I’ve done!’” Looks like I’ve caught
her at a fretful moment. “But at the same
time, I want it to mean something. Every
time you make a show, in the back of your
head you’re that artist thinking, ‘This is really
going to make a diff erence...’ And it does, but
just nowhere near the diff erence you want it
to make .”
On stage and in person, LA-raised, London-
based standup Desiree Burch is a voice you
can’t not listen to. Having gone to the wrong
cafe for our interview, she’s now blustered
into the right one 20 minutes late. The show,
she says, is “ called Desiree’s Coming
Early, which clearly I can’t do and
never do”. It’s her fi rst since
2017’s Unf*ckable, a smash hit
performed on the top deck
of a bus that recounted her
experiences while working as
a dominatrix in early 2000s
Manhattan. Which would, in
Burch’s telling, have been quite
uproarious enough, even without
the twist, which is that she was still
a virgin at the time.
Building on her Funny Women award in
2015 and a growing reputation for outspoken,
oversharing standup , Unf*ckable – a timely
show in the year that #MeToo broke – was
Burch’s breakthrough. But she was the last to
realise it. “Everyone was like, ‘You’re having
such a great fringe,’ whereas I was like: ‘I’m
dying! I am so tired. I’ve done every extra gig
I can possibly do, because this is the time to
push. But I feel like I’m going to run right into
the kerb.” A 2018 follow-up fell through when
Burch had to return home to California for
family reasons. But now she’s back – and with
the spike in profi le derived from Live at the
Apollo slots , a Comedy Central special and
regular appearances on Frankie Boyle’s terrifi c
New World Order , perhaps she can approach
Edinburgh with less anxiety this time around.
“I’m 40,” she says , “and it’s the fi rst time
I’m not mooching off a rich friend I went to
school with, or living with three other people,
or whatever. And I’m very happy about it,
but I don’t know what to do with it, so I’m
probably going to blow it .” Midlife is the theme
of her new show, which is about mortality
(“culturally we’re dealing with a mortality of
sorts right now, so hopefully it can be useful”)
and the loops we get stuck in. “I’m in the
middle of life,” she explains. “I have enough
of a history to go, not only have I done thisbefore, but we’ve all done this before. Are
we doing it because we don’t know what else
to do? Is history a cycle, or is it this horrible
infi nite loop we get ourselves into because we
never do anything diff erently when presented
with the same stuff?
“And also it’s looking at myself and the
patterns I framed an identity out of. And the
self-sabotaging choices I make. And I talk about
dating, having kids, or not , being at Burning
Man and having lots of crazy things happen.”
Like all of Burch’s solo work – the theatre
shows she once made; the standup ones she
makes now – it tells personal stories to make
interpersonal (and political) connections. “I do
feel that the more specifi c you get, the more an
audience can go: ‘Oh, I’m not alone!’ ”
She’s had more success doing so in the UK
than in the States, where she struggled as
a theatre-maker for most of her 20s.
Visiting Edinburgh back then, she
sensed a market for solo work
that was funny and substantial,
alongside – in the form of panel
shows and radio comedy –
more stable opportunities for
aspiring comics. Americans,
she says, undervalue funniness
as a professional skill. “My
friends in New York are trying
to fi gure out yet more creative,
innovative things to do there. And I’m
like, ‘You would have been famous three times
over by now in lots of other places, because
there would have been value placed on what
you do.’”
Burch always felt like an outsider in the
US. “Growing up, I was always fat. We were
the only black family in my neighbourhood.
And all that was against the backdrop of
Hollywood, where everyone just wants to be
attractive and get some sort of Hollywood
validation. For me, it was about surviving 18
years to get to some place where I thought life
might happen to me.”
She has found it now, in the British
entertainment industry, which has invited
her to develop Unf*ckable for television. It’s
a story she wants to return to and fl esh out :
“ There’s a lot more important shit in it, and
more to say about that time in my life and
that time in the world.” But fi rst, the
Edinburgh fringe – that “weird pressure
cooker”, she calls it – beckons. “I’m hoping
to enjoy the festival while I’m actually doing
it this time around,” she says , “while knowing
that’s a distant dream. Fingers crossed it’s
fun – but I typically dread it.”
Desiree’s Coming Early! is at Heroes @ the Hive,
Edinburgh, until 25 August (edfringe.com);
then touring the UK, 4 October-23 November
(livenation.co.uk).Back on the lash
Her last show, about working as a dominatrix, was
a fringe hit – and is now bound for TV. How will
Desiree Burch top it? She reveals all to Brian Logan
‘I’m probably
going to blow
it’ ... BurchPHOTOGRAPH: DAVID LEVENE/GUARDIAN; TRISTRAM KENTON/GUARDIANHe could look
alien-like or
female-like.
It was always
so exciting
‘He turned up
stoned out of
his head’...
with Liz Taylor
in 1975РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS