A photographic memoir. Through the lens of Terry O’Neill

It started off the same as how these things would typically happen: I got a call from a manager asking me to come and shoot photos of their star. The star, in this case, happened to be one of the brightest that ever shone.

I was lucky enough to receive that call to photograph David Bowie. And I was smart enough to say yes. If I had to name the most talented, enigmatic and audacious star I ever photographed, it would have to be him. He was a cerebral and searching soul who was always looking to push the boundaries of his art. Even a simple portrait was not simple. David always chose his own direction; it was our choice if we wanted to follow or not. It’s a testament to his talent that we did.

I wanted to be a jazz drummer. Although I studied to be a priest for about a year, it didn’t work out. The rector pulled me aside one day. “Terry, I don’t think you will make a good priest,” he confessed. “You have too many questions.”

I didn’t question my love of music. I’d play at as many jazz clubs as 1950s’ London had to offer, but I knew if I was going to have a real go at it, I’d have to get to New York City. Someone told me about the new, glamorous world of working as a steward on transatlantic flights. That sounded great: work for a few days, New York layover, then back to London. But BOAC – British Overseas Airways Corporation, a predecessor of today’s British Airways – didn’t have any steward jobs going. I was offered work in their photographic unit, and I’d be placed on the candidate list when a steward job opened up.

After a few weeks Peter Campion, who headed the unit, took an interest in me and was very encouraging about my budding photography work. The assignments at BOAC were to capture moments in the airport. Flying was a big, new industry and no longer just affordable to the mega rich, and the airlines used “reunion” photos and the like to attract travellers: hugging, crying, laughing – how wonderful flying was, how it would bring people together. I was being trained, essentially, as a photojournalist and it was this idea that led Peter and me to discuss, at length, the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and W Eugene Smith. Peter would bring in these photography books and annuals to show me. This was my introduction to “the decisive moment”, as Cartier-Bresson would say. Peter would go on to tell me that Cartier-Bresson would work for months, travelling the world, in search of capturing a single image. I wasn’t too certain about that for my own work: music was still very much in my blood.

Everything changed for me when, one day at the airport, I came across a very dapper gentleman, fast asleep amid a crowd of African dignitaries in full regalia. After I took a few photos a guy approached me and said, “Mind if I take your film and show it to my editor?” No problem. A few days later, I got a call. Turned out the gentleman I took a photo of was a famous British politician, the then home secretary Rab Butler, and the paper wanted to run my photos in the next issue. And I would be paid for it. I suddenly went from photographing at the airport to being offered a job covering events for one of the newspapers on Fleet Street. I was off and running.

The papers at that time all thought that the youth culture – music, fashion, film and whatnot – was going to be big in the 1960s, and they wanted a younger photographer to cover this new phenomenon. Plus, I was a musician, so they figured I’d relate to the music. “We want you to go down to Abbey Road and photograph this new band.” That band was the Beatles. The pictures ran the next day and the paper sold out. I worked with the Beatles quite often in 1963 and 1964, following them to press conferences, award ceremonies, and television and stage rehearsals – even photos of the Beatles with Laurence Olivier, or the Beatles with prime minister Harold Wilson would run in the papers. And the papers would rightly sell out. The men who owned the papers knew they had a new powerful selling tool on their hands, and I was quickly assigned to follow bands such as the Dave Clark Five, the Animals and the Searchers. Then I got a call from Andrew Loog Oldham. He was the young manager of a new band and asked if I would take some photos and “do for them what I was doing for the Beatles”. I was pretty busy and told Andrew that if they came into Soho, I’d meet them. Days later, this group of five lads showed up and I took them to Tin Pan Alley [London’s Denmark Street]. The band was the Rolling Stones, who went on to become one of the greatest bands of all time. I loved every second that I was working with them, and the other new celebrities just entering the scene.

But after four long years at the paper, I was growing very tired of the other assignments I’d be called for. The papers were the papers, after all, and I was one of their photographers, so when I was assigned to cover an event it was my job to do so. The assignment that finally ended my career as a newspaper photographer was a horrific plane crash that claimed the lives of dozens of people, young people, from Croydon, London. I was sent to cover some of the funerals and the aftermath of this tragic event and how it affected this small community. It felt so intrusive, trying to capture the personal and private emotions of the events, that I decided right then and there I had had enough of newspaper reporting. I told my editor the next day and he implied that, without that paper, my career was finished.

The next day, scared to death I had just made a horrible mistake, I called everyone I knew and hustled for work. And once the word got out that I was now freelance, I started to get calls from other big publications. Then movie studios started to ring, looking for special photographers to go on set for a few days to grab some stills for the media. It was a terrific opportunity for me and I found myself working with icons such as Audrey Hepburn, Michael Caine, Terence Stamp, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch and Peter Sellers. I worked on several of the early James Bond movies, having a great time off set with first Sean Connery and then Roger Moore. These encounters led to close friendships – some I hold close to me to this day. The 1960s brought me the opportunity to work with musicians such as Tom Jones, who in turn introduced me to Elvis Presley, and models such as Twiggy and Jean “the Shrimp” Shrimpton. Then I was asked to meet with Frank Sinatra, the icon of icons. Nervously I went along, and that job would lead me to a collaboration of nearly thirty years with the great man. I was in the middle of what cultural historians would label the “Swinging Sixties” – and it really was.

The 1970s ushered in a new wave of film and music. Elton John – with whom I started to work quite frequently in the early years of his incredible career – and others like him launched a whole new set of visuals that the magazines and papers loved. Elton, like Sinatra, would become a good friend of mine and our working partnership has lasted decades. Although, truth be told, I was more likely to be found working on the set of a film than front row at a gig, I still knew enough to answer the call when the phone rang. I never took work for granted, never assumed a job would be just around the corner, so when an offer came I was likely to say yes. And this time it was a new manager asking me to come along to a closed-set performance of Ziggy Stardust.

Marianne Faithfull was going to be one of the guest stars at the performance, and I already knew Marianne; a decade or so earlier, it was Oldham, the Stones’ manager, who asked me to take some photos of the new singer he was working with. Marianne and I would work together a few times in the 1960s, and I always found her very charming and incredibly easy to work with.

The Marquee Club was located on Wardour Street in Soho and was one of the places musicians would perform. The club held about 150–300 people, so it was the perfect place to record for television: small enough to handle all the equipment needed, and probably easier to produce a show that would involve several costume changes, various performers and multiple takes. The special performance was going to be taped for an American television programme called The Midnight Special and the singer, David Bowie, was calling the show “The 1980 Floor Show”. I was told the show would be a mixture of modern dance, mimes, a few duets (with Marianne) and then performances by Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. At the end of one of the songs, David Bowie was going to strip off his costume and unveil a new character – this was the final performance David would ever give as Ziggy, after he’d publicly “retired” the character onstage earlier that year. That’s when I realized what he was doing. From my experience working on film sets, watching actors transform themselves for the camera, I saw that David was acting. He was using the television platform as so many great performers would (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and so forth) to help launch himself and to achieve what he was aiming for: a transformation.

I was asked to arrive in the morning and I could see straight away this was going to be a different type of television recording. You could tell by the fans who had started to gather, many winning tickets through the David Bowie fan club. The kids were dressed outlandishly. The club itself was packed with lights, television equipment, record industry people and close friends.

Because I was there to take photos, I was allowed full access, including backstage. When I went back to introduce myself, I was met by this tall, lanky, pale boy with shockingly red short hair. “I’m David Bowie,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

David was a complete professional and very generously allowed me into his dressing room to take photos of his transformation into the characters he’d play onstage. I got photos of him being dressed by his then wife Angie, and his stylist Suzi (who would go on to marry guitarist Mick Ronson). I liked Angie a lot and could tell she had a major influence on the overall visuals of the band – which was something different, I won’t lie! Gone were the days of the Beatles’ suits and tuxes worn so frequently by the musicians who ruled the 1960s; here were the looks that would dominate the next revolution. But as electric as his look was, it didn’t come near to matching how electric he was onstage – the energy and presence he had. Marianne performed two songs the day I was there. A solo, during which I found myself watching a casual David in a T-shirt, encouraging and directing her from the sidelines. A few hours later she appeared next to David onstage. David was dressed in a strange devil-like ensemble and she came out wearing a nun’s habit. They sang “I Got You Babe”, a song made famous a few years prior by the American duo Sonny & Cher. In retrospect, the show he was recording would be instrumental in breaking him into the American market, and performing to a select crowd of his most dedicated fans was the right decision. Those cheering boys and girls, and girls who looked like boys, and boys who looked like girls gave him so much love and adoration. I hadn’t seen that sort of reaction since the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. And watching him perform a song over and over and over – just to get the lighting right, the best camera angles, or so that Ken Scott, his long time sound engineer, was happy with the quality – I knew he was going to go on to become one of the most significant artists of our time. He was meticulous, and he had a visual concept. He used the television medium to his full advantage. Even when he was rehearsing or doing a simple sound check, he’d come out dressed as strangely as I’ve ever seen. And he was great to his fans, those in the front rows, achingly outstretching their hands to touch this man; a man who would help define the next thirty years of music. A few of my images ran in the Daily Mirror the next day, under a headline that shouted: “Back in Stiletto Heels…David Bowie of Course.”

David and I hit it off immediately and I sold the pictures. That day at The Marquee was the start of a relationship we would continue over the course of the next few decades.

Several months later I returned to Los Angeles, where I was spending more time. I didn’t usually work the clubs in LA, such as the Whisky A Go-Go or the Troubadour. Instead, I chose to focus my career on shooting on movie sets and the occasional portrait session for publicity to help drive album or box-office sales, and so forth.

Bowie’s manager rang again and asked if I was available to do some additional work with Bowie, this time in a studio environment. Everyone was quite happy with what I had done at The Marquee and David needed stills for his new album they were just finishing off, called Diamond Dogs (1974).

In the 1970s, as it turned out, I photographed several musicians for their album covers. A few for Elton John, most notably Rock of the Westies (1975), and even for the Who’s album Who Are You (1978). For Diamond Dogs, at first I was asked to just shoot some reference photos of David – and a dog – on the ground, posing. These stills would be used to help guide the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert when painting the portrait that ultimately became the album cover, complete with gatefold sleeve. It was easy enough and the shoot went without a hitch. I think this was the first – and only – time I did a few rolls of film of just a dog. The finished product, which I would only see a few months later, was excellent. Peellaert took my photos of Bowie and of the dog – taken separately but posed in the same position – and managed to merge them, creating a portrait of the artist as half-dog, half-man.

For the next session, following the same theme, the images were going to be used for publicity; possibly for the album interior, concert promos, that sort of thing. David was going to arrive with a great dane. On the scheduled day he walked in with a few assistants, one leading a giant dog. When David emerged from the back, now clothed in high-heeled boots and a sombrero Cordobés, he looked terrific. The dog was going to be placed at his feet. So far, so good. Bowie stretched out in his chair and I started to work, but at every snap of my camera the dog grew more and more agitated. The clicking of the camera matched with the popping of the lights must have set the dog off. At one point, the strobe that was hovering above the star and his canine companion encouraged the now barking dog to leap. People who were gathered around shrieked and took cover. I was safely behind my camera. And David? David didn’t move an inch. That image, often referred to as “Jumping Dog”, has been called one of the most iconic images in rock and roll.

By this time, we were friendly enough that David would just call me when the time arose. This was the case when the phone rang one day in London around the time of the Diamond Dogs promo shoot. We were both back and forth between the two cities so often back then. “Terry, come to our offices,” he asked. “I want you to meet a good friend of mine.”

When I arrived, camera at the ready, David introduced me to an older man. They were doing an interview together for the American edition of Rolling Stone magazine and I was asked to take a few portraits. I gave one of the test prints from that shoot to David so he could have a preview. I never minded sharing images with the people I worked with, and David would sometimes mark the contact sheets himself. On one occasion, I remember, he didn’t like some particular images so he cut them in half. He loved the photos I took that day, though, so luckily nothing was chopped! Later, he showed me the print again, now fully enhanced by his own hand with colouring, markings and so forth. He titled the image “2 Wild Boys”. The two wild boys, it turned out, were David Bowie and the writer William Burroughs, pre-eminent figure of the beat generation and author of Naked Lunch (1959). I was so embarrassed I hadn’t recognized him! But no matter, those photos ran in Rolling Stone as planned and the Bowie-enhanced test print he took from me that day was highlighted in the groundbreaking David Bowie Is exhibition that travelled worldwide from 2013 to 2018.

The next stage in our working relationship would turn out to be on the actual stage. Now, I did not and do not have a lot of experience working with musicians onstage. Sure, I shot the occasional show, but these were more in the Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich style, where grand curtains would unveil a solo singer with the full force of a backing orchestra and band. Usually audience members would be in tuxedos and evening gowns. I did work quite often with Tom Jones on the set of his television show, where he’d perform with acts such as Janis Joplin, Ray Charles and Cher. But Bowie’s stage shows, in front of tens of thousands of fans in big auditoriums, would be some of my first live concert performances. I didn’t realize the challenges I would face.

The thing about stage performances that is the opposite of working in the studio or on smaller television sets, first and foremost, is the availability of light. For this, the Diamond Dogs tour, I figured out quickly to follow David onstage as best I could, in order for the lighting to be spot on him, which allowed my photographs to have a real illuminated feel to them. Working with David again onstage reinforced my original thinking about him: that he treated the stage in the same way as an actor would. He had real command of it, from using props such as a skull for a very Hamlet-inspired moment, to reaching out to touch his adoring audience. I needed to be quick and stay out of the way, I could not be a distraction to anyone – the artist, the band or, most importantly, the audience. They were there to see David, not a man running around with a camera. I tried to find my moments and spent a lot of time running to the front, left and right. A year or so later I used my experience of working with David Bowie and applied that knowledge to photographing Elton John at his two-day concert series at Dodger Stadium in LA.

It seemed to me that the touring, recording, interviews and everything else David was doing was starting to take quite a toll on him. I thought it was visibly apparent when we scheduled a session that many would later dub the “Yellow Mustard Suit” series. Again, the shoot was in support of the Diamond Dogs album and now tour, and it was to be a simple studio session. When he arrived I thought he looked exhausted. His hair was bright orange with hints of red and yellow, framing his very tired complexion. He looked worn out to me; his eyes were half-closed and as bloodshot as I’ve ever seen. I had seen the effects of the rock and roll lifestyle up close before. There was one occasion when I ran into Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones at an airport in around 1968, only a year before his untimely death. Brian was slumped in his chair and, for an instant, I wondered whether I should get a picture of this, something I saw as a warning of what drugs and alcohol could do and where it would lead? But I didn’t – I called for help instead. At this session, with David, I felt I could see the signs of someone running fast, day and night.

I didn’t know what David was doing when we weren’t working together. I would see him occasionally at a party – such as Peter Sellers’ 50th birthday party, where he performed in a little makeshift group they dubbed Trading Faces, which included Joe Cocker, Bill Wyman and Keith Moon – but I certainly heard the rumours of late nights. Luckily I never got involved with all that, even in the 1960s. For the “Yellow Mustard Suit” session, I chose not to use a lot of colour film. Black and white hid some of the shadows and evened out the eyes. Even so, as tired and worn out as I thought David seemed that day, he was styled to the nines. That bright, bright suit, clashing with his shock of hair; posed with a slight slump of his shoulders; the cigarette dangling from his lips; the large silver scissors pointed down – they are great photos, even if I do say so myself. David is the one who absent-mindedly picked up the pair of scissors. He could still cut a brilliant image.

“Can you introduce me? I want to ask him about a role in the film I’m working on.” When Elizabeth Taylor asked you to do something for her, I’m not sure there’s a man alive who would have said no. When she called and asked me to introduce her to Davie Bowie, I did everything in my power to make it happen. She was working on a new film called The Blue Bird (1976) and thought this unusual singer would be perfect for one of the leading roles.

I knew Elizabeth and her husband Richard Burton from working with the couple in the 1960s and 1970s. Elizabeth and I were quite friendly; I liked her immensely, so I was happy to do what I could to introduce her to David. After a few calls, a time and date were set.

I headed out an hour or so ahead of the appointed time. We had agreed to meet at around one o’clock at the director George Cukor’s house in Beverly Hills. I arrived a little earlier than scheduled, wanting to ensure everything was set up. I brought my camera with me, in the hope I’d be able to capture the moment with a few snaps of the stars together at this, their first meeting. Well, we were there, waiting for David. Two o’clock came and went, then three, four, five o’clock, and still no David. And you know, no one is ever late for Elizabeth Taylor. Finally, at six o’clock, he showed up. By then we hardly had any light left, so Elizabeth just took control of the moment, grabbed him in her arms, and I managed to capture a series of photos of the two icons meeting for the first time. They shared a cigarette, swapped hats, and the connection between them was instantly clear. While they had great chemistry, I think the fact that he kept her waiting for so many hours may have cost David a role in the film. However, although he didn’t get the part, they did become very good, lifelong friends. She was really charmed by him. And he, of course, was cast under the spell of Elizabeth Taylor.

But David did move over to film, and quite successfully I might add. One of the first films he worked on was shot on location in Arizona, not far for me from Los Angeles. I went down to the set of The Man Who Fell to Earth, the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film, to grab a few candid photos of David preparing for the role. This time, though, he appeared to me much healthier; clean in a tailored suit, he was ready to work on what would become a new extension of his talents – the silver screen.

But his eventual success in movies didn’t deter David from continuing to work on his music. This was very evident to me when I was called over to Philadelphia to capture some images of the recording session of David’s latest album Young Americans (1975). Here, at Sigma Sound Studios, he was working and writing, and directing his back-up singers Ava Cherry, whom I’d met at The Marquee and on tour, and a young man named Luther Vandross, who would later become a very successful award-winning solo artist. David’s longtime piano player Mike Garson was also there, and Tony Visconti – who is still a good mate – produced the album. I make a small cameo appearance in the 2013 BBC documentary David Bowie: Five Years, which focused on the five most important years in David’s career. I’m seen as a reflection in the mirror, busily taking photos of the star at work. The funny thing is, for the life of me, I cannot locate the original negatives from this session. What exists in my archive are the original contact-sheet prints and only one or two sets of negatives.

My work with David ended around then, for no significant reason except that I was spending a great deal of time in Los Angeles and he was touring the world and releasing album after album of extraordinary music. I followed his career closely, and I was always happy to see David at the occasional event. By the time the 1980s rolled around, another decade was behind us and a new era of music, celebrity and fashion would once again usher in a fresh roster of talent. In the 1980s and 1990s I found myself working with stars such as Tina Turner, U2, the Police and the other emerging talents arriving on the scene. Digital photography was just coming into fashion, but that really wasn’t for me. And more managers started to insert themselves into the artistic process. While I fully appreciate and respect their roles – I mean, if it wasn’t for managers I might not have received the calls that I did – I wasn’t ready to give up rights; I didn’t want to have my work retouched to the point of being unrecognizable from the subject, and I didn’t particularly like being told what I was able to release and what I wasn’t.

During the 1990s I received a call from an old friend. David wanted to know if I was available to take some portraits for a magazine interview. I hadn’t seen him in years and was surprised when he walked into the room. Yes, we were both much older; it had been a bit more than twenty years, in fact, from the first time we met at The Marquee. He looked terrific. Still tall, a bit lanky, but no longer a pale boy – the person in front of me was now an award-winning musician, actor and activist, who had lived through, thrived and survived those heady days of the 1970s. He was really at ease with himself. I wasn’t meeting with a character this time, there were no tricks to hide behind; it was just David, and he was happy with that. That polite boy I first met back in 1973 was still there. We laughed and shared a few memories of our time working together. He was married to a terrific woman, Iman, whom I would go on to work with as well. Things were good for him and he seemed very happy.

We all woke up in shock the morning that the news was announced. David was gone. He had released his final album only days prior; the outpouring of grief was instant and immense. People gathered at various sites that were meaningful to the legendary Bowie, candles in hand, singing. And the nation, the world, mourned the passing of a legend.

Since that day I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of his fans at different celebrations and events honouring his work. He has the most loyal fans I’ve ever seen. It shows you – it proved to me anyway – that he meant a great deal to people, and created through his work a real, lasting impact. I was encouraged to share my photography archive with the world, having amassed hundreds of images and contact sheets over the years. His fans connected with him – whether they were in the audience at a concert or play, a viewer of one of his many films or a fan of his music. He captured something very special and made it – whatever it was – meaningful. He was an artist. And I was lucky enough to pick up that phone and answer yes all those years ago.

There is no way to express the impact David Bowie had on people – from teenage fans to backstage friends, to working partners and fellow musicians. I was recently with the brilliant photographer Masayoshi Sukita. Sukita, as he is best known, worked with Bowie, along with scores of other musicians and actors, in the 1970s – around the same time I started working with him. It is Sukita’s portrait that graces the cover of the album Heroes (1977). In fact, Sukita worked with Bowie for nearly forty years – probably one of the closest and longest-lasting photographic relationships he had with anyone. I asked him why he thought Bowie had what he had, what made him different, and why his death had such a massive impact on so many people the world over. Sukita took his time and answered thoughtfully, “It is because he was curious.”

These images, many never before seen, help us all visually add to our memory scrapbook – and encourage future generations to be inspired by a man who played The Marquee.

The contact sheets on the following pages were unearthed from Terry’s collection. Some are being published here for the first time.

David Bowie posing as a dog, to be used as reference by the artist Guy Peellaert for the cover of the 1974 album Diamond Dogs. Terry laughs, “I even had to shoot the dog in the exact same pose as David.”

“All I have are a few printed contact sheets, not even the negatives,” remembers O’Neill. “This was done in Philadelphia, at the Sigma Sound Studios, with Tony Visconti.”

“Some of the recording sessions were filmed for the documentary Cracked Actor (1974). And yes, blink and you might miss my cameo in the documentary. I’m the one behind the camera.”