Description
Kevin Westenberg
Shot ‘Guerrilla’ style on the streets of London’s east end. This image gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I see it! For the overall imagery and mythology of the band and as a timeless photograph. Definitely one of my top 10. On the contact sheet, this in fact is one of only two frames snapped as we were transitioning from one location to another. Jason was confident enough to walk around in his space suit amongst suited city banker folk on Leadenhall Street so when I was walking ahead and looked back quickly, I just saw.
Fortunately, there was film in the camera, rare during a location transition so I quickly shot just 2 frames with my Mamiya RZ and kept going, not thinking about it any further. Once I saw it on the contact sheet days later that it literally jumped off the page! This is my version of ‘Abbey Road’ for the post post post-generation of stoner rock.
By saying that I’m not comparing the importance but pointing out from a pure photographic view, the circumstances are similar. A completely unplanned captured moment. If we had tried for this perfection, we could never have made it happen. Just like with live gigs, you never know when these moments might happen. Ask Pennie Smith about her shot of Paul Simonon smashing his bass; the answer would be the same. What got me thinking about this shot, was reading about all those Spiritualized re-issues recently released.
In those early days, most everything was staged, set-up and controlled too much. So when one of these totally unplanned gems comes along that endures the most critical test, the test of time, I must celebrate it. A MONSTER! Much time has passed now since it was taken, it’s only become more interesting.
