CHAPTER 3

THE PHOTO AS UNVEILING

If one makes a rock ’n’ roll group, one must eventually make some music. But before that, one must make a photograph of the group. The group photo will give an understanding of who you are and what your visual projection to the world will be. If the group is an actual creative aggregate and not just a random assembly based around a single “genius” creator, it will be considered very important for everyone to be “in” the photograph.

The group photo is very limited, like a Japanese brush painting or a woodcut. It must explain the group and encourage prospective acolytes even when it’s shrunken down to thumbnail size and placed in a tiny corner of a weekly newspaper. It insinuates a value system, a personality, an ideology, and an aesthetic. The group, when first formed, will not understand exactly what these qualities are or what program they are trying to wreak on humanity. But the photo—once taken—shall serve as a kind of reading of tea leaves.

Before the group can tell the world, “We Are,” it must ask itself, “Who Are We?” The flattening of the group makes it into a hieroglyph, a cartoon, a tattoo, or a piece of pornography. And since that’s what a group ultimately is, the photo will explain the group to itself.

Of course, the group might have a very specific idea of what it is before the image is struck. Will the photo corroborate the idea? Or will it collide headlong with the group’s self-image? How will the group in three dimensions negotiate its perception of “Who We Are” with the truth proposed by the photograph? This is a tricky process which can demand some mediation or spark a conflict. Also, if the photograph of the group determines its identity, does the group really have any control over it at all?

Just like a conscientious mother eats well before the birth of her child or a good archaeologist prepares at length for a “dig,” there are several steps a group can take before a pic is snapped which will help guide the eventual unveiling by the photographer. Afterward, there will be the decision of which picture, out of several probably taken, is the group photo. There are also some ways in which the group can steer its destiny against the seeming totalitarianism of the still photograph. The choice of the photographer, the choice of the setting, the positioning of the group members, and even the choice of a particular film stock are some.

Ultimately, a group is just a series of choices. “Talent” is sometimes cited, particularly in cases involving singers such as Freddie Mercury, the Everly Brothers, Neil Peart, Al Green, or just about any “soul” singer, but a typical rock ’n’ roll group won’t have any discernible talent. The group’s only power in controlling its destiny lies in the choices that it makes. Some people don’t believe in free will, but nevertheless, there will be compulsions that need to be acted upon. These will seem like choices.

The typical group will wander into a photo shoot sans concept, too shy to order the photographer about. They will have to accept what the image reveals, for better or for worse.

 

 

I. MISSING INSTRUMENTS

Since roles are completely undefined in the traditional photo—with the instruments being mysteriously missing—the central character of the group oftentimes won’t be the star of the group’s photographs. This was true in the early era of the Rolling Stones, of Bill Wyman, who more than any other member defined their grotesque, louche, and arrogant “leering pervert” image. The group photo may be of declining importance to the audience in the electromagnetic “Internet” age (with cyberspace at a premium, it’s possible to display many photographs and so there is less often an iconic, singular image), but it’s still central to promulgating ideology and of paramount importance for the group itself. A group without a photo is like a land without a map or a country with no flag.

The group photo is so culturally significant that the political establishment mimics the rock photo in their own portraits. Obama in leather and shades, Clinton with saxophone, and Bush in a Bowie-esque flight suit, helmet in hand, crotch engorged, a true “space oddity.” Photos of Bush’s cabinet regularly saw them posing as a Monkees-type combo. These shots, with the subjects dressed casually, walking and laughing, were unmistakably group photos, very much of the rock ’n’ roll type. It’s not hard to guess which instrument or role the various members played. Bush, selected for his everyman affability, is the singer. Cheney, not personable but notoriously controlling, is the lead guitarist. Rice, a team player known for her appearance and style, would be on bass; and Don Rumsfeld is the classic drummer—an idiotic megalomaniac showman, simmering with resentment at not being the top dog.

What was the purpose of the executive cabinet being photographed like the members of a rock group, strolling confidently and carelessly in shirtsleeves? To announce dynamism, playfulness, team spirit, and gang ethos into such gubernatorial activities as tax legislation and mass murder. American imperialism had secretly advanced the group as its covert agent throughout the Cold War, and often credits rock ’n’ roll for the spectacular triumph of debauched greed over the ideology of egalitarianism (e.g., Havel’s “Velvet Revolution”). Now, the political class seeks to appropriate the rock group’s celebrated mimicry of childhood narcissism in order to rehabilitate their own deprecated militarism and infanticide. Once, the rock group drew its aesthetic inspiration from political idols—the Beatles’ Mao jackets at Shea Stadium, Mike Watts’s Fidelista garb, and Johnny Rotten as a hunchbacked medieval despot. But the roles have reversed.

The photo lets the viewer know, indubitably, what kind of group you are. Are you standing in a line? Heavy metal and hardcore bands stand militaristically, shoulder to shoulder like troops on review, so as to reassure their acolytes there will be no dynamics, sexuality, or flexibility in the group’s presentation. The band will commit to bludgeoning force, aggression, and repetition. Funk groups like War slouch around the perimeters of the picture, insinuating a lack of leadership and a loose and lazy “groove” sensibility. If the group picks up props—umbrellas, rubber chickens—like the bands of the psychedelic era, it insinuates a sense of play, even a zaniness, and a disregard for accepted mores. And so on.

Like the entrails of an animal sacrifice read by an oracle, your photograph will be pored over by interested parties. Your decision to fold your cuffs in a particular manner, the badge you wore that day, the piece of tape stuck to your jacket in the shape of an arrow, the group logo sketched on your trousers—an army of voracious onlookers will use these clues like sharpened sticks covered in urine toward some action of their own.