Rock'n'roll photography from Neal Preston

Photographer Neal Preston doesn’t just take pictures – he has caught some of music’s most memorable moments on camera, producing images that are more than a little rock’n’roll

David Bowie

“A Valentine’s Day show at Radio City Music Hall in 1973. David was great to photograph but I have to admit that I never understood people’s fascination with him – especially the Ziggy Stardust thing. It seemed forced to me and let’s just say that he was playing to a different audience.”

Bob Marley

“There’s not much for me to say about this photo because not being a reggae fan, it was an afterthought for me to even shoot Bob. I have to admit I shot two rolls of film total that night. I was at that show to shoot another band, but I got lucky and got this image – which I know is pretty strong.”

Peter Frampton

“This was at a Peter Frampton show in Florida at the height of ‘Frampton Comes Alive’ mania. The security man wearing that T-shirt was as big as a house. I don’t think he ever turned around once during the show. Security guys like him were always the norm at stadium shows and most of them were drop-outs from the local college’s wrestling team.”

Buddy Miles

"Creem Magazine ran a feature picture every month with a rock star posing with a Creem Magazine “Boy Howdy” beer can. Many of the artists didn’t really want to pose for the pictures so the magazine would depend on the photographers to gently strong arm their subjects at the end of a shoot to “just pose for one last photo” with the cans. Although I did more of these shots than I’d like to admit to, and some made me cringe, Buddy Miles was one guy who had absolutely no problem when I threw the can in the water while he was going for an after-shoot swim. He was also quite unhappy that it was a fake can of beer."

Freddie Mercury

“This was shot at Queen’s first Wembley Stadium show in 1986. I’d spent a lot of time over the years with Queen so photographing them had become second nature to me. Of course, you couldn’t go wrong shooting Freddie… it was like shooting Nureyev with loud guitars in the background. When I went back over the proof sheets a few years back I realised that this was the third frame I’d shot that day. I could have taken the rest of the day off."

Madonna

"This photo was shot in Japan during the Blonde Ambition tour; I like to call it “Madonna having a private moment in front of 50,000 people”. What I remember most about this tour was what had happened a few days before, when I watched her dress down a sound guy on her road crew in front of about 100 people with some of the most vile language I’d ever heard. Now THAT was a virtuoso performance."

Sly Stone

"This shot was the culmination of my following Sly around (or should I say, “chasing” Sly around) for days and days to get anything that would work for a People Magazine story. It took me over a week to shoot only seven rolls of film, and it was a true battle of wills to get even that. Sly had a severe substance abuse problem that was in full flower during this shoot."

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Published: Monday 23rd October 2017

Culture

An average of two hours sleep a night, 47 years of jet lag, and more stories of outrageous backstage antics than you can count – when it comes to rock-star credentials, photographer Neal Preston is up there with the world’s most renowned hellraisers.

In a career that’s spanned nearly five decades, there’s not much the legendary snapper hasn’t seen: sleazy motels and groupies, alcohol and drug-fuelled chaos, and everything else that comes hand in hand with proper rock’n’roll. He befriended Stevie Nicks on a Venice rooftop; took the red-eye flight to London from NYC to photograph Wham!; then returned to the Big Apple that same night to shoot Bruce Springsteen for the front cover of TIME.

Pushing boundaries was all in a day’s work for Preston, and the results are clear in his spectacular shots. His body of work to date is considered one of music’s most extensive and significant photography collections, captured by a man who was very much in the moment, but never took his eyes off the job at hand.

“Rock tours were fertile breeding grounds from which many a party would sprout,” he says. “Call it blowing-off steam, having a little fun, or taking a little break: it’s all the same. I had my share, and more. But there was still work to do.” In the gallery above, he recounts the stories behind some of his most iconic images.

Neal Preston: Exhilarated and Exhausted is out now (£45; Reel Art Press). A complete retrospective of an career spanning almost 50 years, it features more than 300 photographs of rock royalty.

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