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We call this one "Mothers and Babies". The Mothers of Invention unnerved Art Kane: other people's photographs made them look like Hell's Angels, and as he put it himself,They scared the shit out of me. When he met them he discovered that rather than being hostile, they were the opposite, and that many of the Mothers were, in fact, fathers. So he decided to reveal them as one big gentle family, grouped tightly to emphasise the contrast between the big scary looking bearded men and the tiny vulnerable naked babies. The aim was to make the viewer see behind the facade - just like he had done himself. The shoot was a hoot. As he later recalled: The babies were peeing all over the place! One baby on top peed on Frank Zappa's head, which then ricocheted onto another guy's cowboy hat, then dribbled onto another guy. It looked just like the fountains of Rome. I caught it all with strobe, it looked great but Life wouldn't print it.
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The first punk rock photograph? Art Kane knew that their image was as 'bad' boys compared to the Beatles 'boys next door' look, and he wanted to reference that, but going into this 1966 shoot for McCalls Magazine with The Rolling Stones he had no preset idea of how he wanted to photograph them. On the way out of his hotel on the morning of the shoot he grabbed some postcards of Queen Elizabeth II from a giftshop. He knew he wanted the band members to do something disrespectful to this cherished symbol of The British Empire. Of course, in the end McCalls magazine were too nervous to run this early 'punk' photograph of Brian, but we're not scared.
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Art Kane knew that their image was as 'bad' boys compared to the Beatles 'boys next door' look, and he wanted to reference that, but going into this 1966 shoot for McCalls Magazine with The Rolling Stones he had no preset idea of how he wanted to photograph them. On the way out of his hotel on the morning of the shoot he grabbed some postcards of Queen Elizabeth II from a giftshop. He knew he wanted the band members to do something disrespectful to this cherished symbol of The British Empire. Of course, in the end McCalls magazine were too nervous to run this early 'punk' photograph of Keith, but we're not scared.
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Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were a new breed of blues band, so Kane decided to shoot them on a railroad track in Chads Ford Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where the band was performing. After all, what better way to portray the blues than backed by the melancholy of a railway track and the setting sun inflaming Ginger Baker's hair. Drummer Baker, elated over the news that morning of the birth of his son in the UK, would leap up often during the shoot, and roll down the embankment of the train track into bramble bushes, requiring Art's assistant to clean him up. Later, at lunch at a diner in rural Pennsylvania, Baker marched up to a group of firemen who were laughing and pointing at the group of longhaired freaks and said..."What are you laughing at? Look at you in your silly hats"
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Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were a new breed of blues band, so Kane decided to shoot them on a railroad track in Chads Ford Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where the band was performing. After all, what better way to portray the blues than backed by the melancholy of a railway track and the setting sun inflaming Ginger Baker's hair. Drummer Baker, elated over the news that morning of the birth of his son in the UK, would leap up often during the shoot, and roll down the embankment of the train track into bramble bushes, requiring Art's assistant to clean him up. Later, at lunch at a diner in rural Pennsylvania, Baker marched up to a group of firemen who were laughing and pointing at the group of longhaired freaks and said..."What are you laughing at? Look at you in your silly hats"
