Lynn Goldsmith has documented over five decades of American culture, photographing stars from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to David Bowie and Iggy Pop. She joins to talk about her legendary career behind the camera and new book, “Music in the ‘80s.”
Debbie Millman:
For some of us, the ’80s don’t feel so far away. In fact, we simply don’t understand where they went. Well, fear not. They are alive and well in Lynn Goldsmith’s new book of iconic photographs of musicians and performers, aptly titled Music in the ’80s, included our portraits of the era’s greatest artists, including Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Bob Marley, and Miles Davis at work in recording studios, glamming it up in concerts, out and about New York City, and lying around at home. Lynn Goldsmith is also a recording artist, so she knows that world intimately. Over her long and legendary career as a photographer, she has created a vast archive of images of which this book is only a shimmering sliver. Lynn Goldsmith, welcome to Design Matters.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Thank you. I’m really honored and humbled to be asked since you have done so many podcasts on people that I admire.
Debbie Millman:
Well, thank you, Lynn. I want to ask you, is it true that you were a semi-finalist in the 1964 Miss Teen America competition?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah, I have an actual piece of paper, like a diploma. Yeah, I was the runner up. If only the winner had died or something, then I would’ve been Miss Teenage America.
Debbie Millman:
That’s often the way I feel about being prom queen in my high school. I lost by one vote and I found out later that my date actually voted for the young woman that won. I’m still bitter over it, obviously.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, it’s not about being bitter. We all have a path that’s meant to lead us somewhere.
Debbie Millman:
You were born in Detroit, Michigan, between Seven Mile and West Outer Drive in what you’ve described as an ordinary middle class neighborhood. I understand growing up your nickname was Butterball?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yes, because I would sneak into the refrigerator whenever possible and take an entire pound of butter and try to eat it as fast as possible so that it wouldn’t get taken away from me. I did that probably for a number of years, yeah. So my family called me Butterball.
Debbie Millman:
What was it about butter that you liked so much?
Lynn Goldsmith:
I have no idea. It’s the same thing now why did I like peanut butter and jelly with a cold glass of milk so much that I ate it every day of my life for probably 13 years. I have no idea.
Debbie Millman:
Wow. Well, I know your parents divorced when you were four years old. After your dad left, you lost your appetite and became so skinny kids called you Lynn the Pin. This was also a time when divorce wasn’t talked about very much. I read that you sometimes felt ashamed about your parents’ divorce. My parents also divorced in 1969 when I was eight years old, and I felt the same way. How did you manage through that time?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, feelings aren’t as simple as just being ashamed, which at moments I was, going sometimes to girlfriends homes or having to explain something in school that my mother was at work. On the other side of the coin, I felt incredibly blessed because the household was my sister, my mother, myself. And then for a period of time, a woman who lived with us to take care of us and be there because my mother oftentimes had to work late or we needed to have a live-in person help out. But I felt that it was a really fun household of women. And oftentimes when I went to other kids’ homes, their parents argued or brothers and sisters argued. So I was really happy that I had this environment which was different from anybody else’s that I knew. In some ways I felt as blessed as I did sometimes feeling shame.
Debbie Millman:
When you were seven years old, you first heard songs like Fats Domino’s All By Myself and Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti. How did that affect you at the time when you first heard those tunes?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, well, music has always had a very powerful connectivity for me to the concept of love. When I was four years old, because they were getting a divorce and it was summertime, they sent me to overnight camp with my sister who was eight years old. I was the youngest and smallest kid in camp and I really missed my mother. And the counselor, because I would cry at night whimper in my bed and probably in part she didn’t want me to wake up the other campers in our cabin, she would take me out on a swing, sing to me until I would stop crying and fall asleep. So the connection of music to feeling an inner peace and a sense of belonging somewhere has always been quite powerful.
Debbie Millman:
Your mom brought you your first record case to keep the Forty Fives that you were collecting together. I know when she gave it to you, there was a record inside it already. What record was it?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Elvis Presley’s. I think it was Lovely Me Tender.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. You’ve written about how she would hum that song and you knew that you each understood the other in a special way. It was one of my favorite lines that I read in your work about how much music impacted you and what it did to you.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, to share something with a person who has the role of being a parent and yet you feel like they needed that song and those words as much as you do, creates a connection, at least it did for me, which is somewhat beyond just the natural mother-daughter connection. It was a connection of, that there’s pain in life and that what we really all want to get rid of that sense of isolation is love. I’ve always felt that my mother’s joy, that I could see her experience from music, dancing around the house to Xavier Cugat. There was music in our house to make us all feel a stronger bond of family and loved.
Debbie Millman:
On the weekends visiting with your dad, you and your sister spent time playing with his train set while he would take pictures of you. That’s when you first encountered a photography dark room. What was that first experience in the dark room like for you?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, my father always was a serious amateur, both photographer and filmmaker. So I even remember when we all lived together, my dad making movies or taking pictures for various events. When my mother and father divorced, he had more time to spend in the dark room. And because it was on weekends, that was my way of really being with him. So experiencing the act of a piece of paper going under a light in this small room alone with my dad, and then seeing my own face come up on the paper really imprinted on me the magic of photography. It became even more of a aspect of connection for me because it was my dad and this was the way I got his attention, was being in that room with him.
Debbie Millman:
He gave you your first camera. It was a Baby Brownie camera. What were your first photographic subjects about and where did you get your ideas at that time?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, I just would follow my dad pretty much in the very beginning. He’d go out in the garden. I’d go where he went and make pictures. And then we’d go in the dark room and I’d watch him process the film. I didn’t do that. My hands were too small. But I did learn to print at that time and to understand there were these different chemical baths that would make the picture appear.
So the whole idea of having art form to express myself in was much more conducive to who I was than when he gave me… I think one of the first gifts I ever got from him was like a science kit with all these tubes of things that I was supposed to create or do and I didn’t understand any of it. But photography felt very natural for me. It also meant that when I was alone, my imagination, if I wasn’t with my dad making pictures and my mom was working and my sister being four years older certainly didn’t want to hang out with such a little kid, I could take pictures of my dolls. My dolls were my friends and I could dress them up. And then when I went to my grandmother’s, we could make some new outfits for them. All of which when I look back on, those experiences are very clear directives for what ended up becoming celebrity portraiture of dressing people up and playing with them.
Debbie Millman:
Your dad thought your photographs were so wonderful. He got you a grownup camera. Shortly thereafter, your mom also got you a turquoise transistor radio.
Lynn Goldsmith:
I thought my dad got me that.
Debbie Millman:
Well, one of your parents.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah, my dad got me that radio.
Debbie Millman:
Who got you the Gibson guitar?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, my mother.
Debbie Millman:
When did you start performing and what kind of music were you making initially?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, before I ever had the Gibson guitar, I really wanted to play the piano, but we didn’t have room nor did my mother have the finances for piano lessons. So she got me this Magnus organ and I would play on that, but I felt it limited. I wanted something else. When I saw people… Like there was a folk singer by the name of Lynn Gold at the same time as like Joan Baez. They were heroes. The same thing for Ojeda. And so I wanted a guitar. My mom saved up. A guitar was cheaper than a piano.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve written about how listening to Bob Dylan made you feel that being alive was about seeing your own life as a chance to learn and that whatever emotion you might feel was temporary. I’m wondering if that impacted your approach to writing your own music.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, it totally impacted my life because prior to Bob Dylan, the biggest kind of entertainment influence on my thinking came from watching old Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger movies on TV, or pretty much any films then, but I really loved Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
What would happen within the storyline was two people fall in love and then there’s some sort of misunderstanding and their relationship flounders and in fact is in the danger zone of ending completely. But then something happens and the misunderstanding is cleared up and they dance off into the sunset to live on forever, happily ever after. And that’s what I thought. I thought problems in life will come up, but that they get solved. That’s the way that it worked. And then you dance off into the rest of life.
With Bob Dylan’s lyrics, I was able to understand and realize that what I thought was true was not accurate, that in life there will be continued problems, continued misunderstandings, and that you solve them hopefully, and then you move on and then more things happen. What does happen may not be just, it may not be fair. Life doesn’t play by some sort of rule book that you know you’re going to win on this journey. That’s not what it is. The journey is the journey. And that really I think was in part because of his lyrics and also because I was ready to hear it.
Debbie Millman:
On February 9th, 1964, the Beatles made their first live US television appearance. More than 70 million people watched these four young men from Liverpool make history on The Ed Sullivan Show. Lynn, you are the only person I’ve ever encountered who saw the Beatles perform live on that show that night. Can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yes. My stepfather… My mother remarried when I was about 14. So this is after 10 years of my mom being a single working mother and living in a household of three women in Detroit when suddenly I’m told we’re moving to Miami Beach and now I have this father. I wasn’t really receptive to that. I didn’t want to move. I was looking forward to starting at Mumford High School so I really didn’t care for George, who was my new stepfather, and to move to this place which was so different from where I had grown up. The world that I grew up in was racially diversified. Miami Beach was not, and it all looked so different to me and now we were wealthy. My stepfather owned hotels in Miami Beach. And because he wanted me to love him and to realize that he wanted to be a dad, he decided to get the opportunity for me to be in the lobby when the Beatles arrived at the Deauville Hotel before the show. I also had tickets for the show with him.
I didn’t want to go. My mother said that… I said, “George has no idea who I am. I’m a rhythm and blues girl. I’m Detroit. I’m [inaudible 00:17:13] city. I have no interest in these wimps, the Beatles.” My mother said, “Well, Lynn, if I have to choose between George and you, I’m choosing George so you better get your act together and go with George.”
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Lynn Goldsmith:
And so we went. I had my camera because I had already had a tour of hotels and was just floored by what they looked like. I mean, when you come from Detroit to go into the Fountain Blue or the Deauville or the Eden Rock, it was sort of some magical world of color and light. I’d never seen anything like that. So I went with my stepdad and my camera. I was very happy photographing the carpets of the Deauville Hotel that had these amazing designs. When the Beatles came through the door, I wasn’t as tall as the men that were there, it was all men photographers, my stepfather kind of pushed me forward and I took a picture of their feet on the carpet. But I didn’t want to really look at them. I somehow felt it would be a betrayal to the Rolling Stones. You know, you chose.
Debbie Millman:
Right. Back then you had to choose.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah, you chose. You were either Stones fan or a Beatles fan. What I remember was John Lennon grabbing my forearm and saying, “Don’t you want all of our faces?” And I just thought I had the cooties, like, “He touched me. Ugh.” And I just said no and I pulled my arm away. It was seen by someone from the local newspaper who asked if they could process my film and they ran a little story. That was really my first published photograph.
Debbie Millman:
You went to the University of Michigan. By the time you started your sophomore year, you were the lead singer of a five person band called The Walking Wounded. What kind of music did you play?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, I played bass and sang, but there was also another lead singer, the guy who played the lead guitar. We basically did cover songs. I would try to imitate Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. In order to do a Janis song, the whole night before I would get a pillow and just scream into it to try to have a horse voice, which probably was not good for my voice box. I knew that I could dance, but singing, I’m far more akin to folks singing or being a country singer, but that’s not what I wanted to be. I wanted to be Aretha. I wanted to be a soul singer and I just didn’t have it.
Debbie Millman:
At that time, did you want to be a professional musician performing in a band?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh yeah. Once I started singing and playing and also performing, I was clear that that was the path that I wanted to take. However, that’s not what was in store for me because the band, the Walking Wounded had traveled, we also did gigs in New York at the Cafe Wha? It opened for Frank Zappa at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit before Jim Osterberg or Iggy Pop went on. Before he was Iggy, he was Jim in a band called The Prime Movers. So I was clear that this was my tribe. I had thought about being an actress or directing being a filmmaker, but they didn’t give me that same kind of experience that making music did.
Unfortunately, on one of our trips to New York, we met at a band called Children of Paradise, Artie and Happy Traum. And so when they came to Ann Arbor to perform, my band and their band got together, and then there was something that came on the radio about flying saucers being seen in Ypsilanti, which is near the U of M, near Ann Arbor. I had a car, so we all got in my car and I didn’t know they had drugged on them. I got pulled over for driving too slowly because I was looking for flying saucers. And so I got pulled over and they searched the car, and then they found under the driver’s seat these drugs, which was a surprise to me. And so I was arrested. It was my car.
Debbie Millman:
The Children of Paradise dudes didn’t cop to this.
Lynn Goldsmith:
No.
Debbie Millman:
They let you take the blame.
Lynn Goldsmith:
That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
And you were charged with a felony.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah, and they left me in jail.
Debbie Millman:
Have you ever talked to them about this? Have you ever said, “Dudes, what were you thinking?”
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, decades and decades later, I had a home in Woodstock, and that’s where Artie and Happy Traum live. I ran into them on the street and told them what I thought of them, which made me feel better. And then since that time, I’ve run into people who know them that talk about how wonderful they are. Maybe they became wonderful people and maybe just they were scared and they wanted to get out of it. But in any case, I had to make a deal with my stepfather that I would no longer be in my band and no longer go after a career in music or he would not pay for my legal representation. So I thought, “Okay, well, I’ll be a filmmaker or I’ll be an actress and I’ll figure this out.”
They also made me promise, which then I had to have a heavier load of credits needed at school to also get my secondary teacher certificate, which means you can teach in high school and I chose to do English. So that’s why I say in life, things happened and I try to go with the flow. I really didn’t want to go to prison.
Debbie Millman:
Your legal representation was able to negotiate a misdemeanor.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
You were given probation. When you returned to Miami Beach, you worked as a substitute English teacher at the high school that you had graduated from.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, that was my agreement. I wanted to live in New York. I had agreed when I made this deal that I would stop doing music and that I would get, in addition to my Bachelor of Arts degree, that I would get from the School of Education a teacher’s degree that I would then commit to six months of teaching. I kept to my word. I went back to my own high school, Miami Beach High, and I was teaching there about three and a half years after I had graduated from that high school.
Debbie Millman:
When you moved to New York City, you arrived with, I believe, one $15 dress in a small suitcase.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yes, it was a white dress.
Debbie Millman:
What were you hoping to do once you arrived in New York?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, I was going to get a job, that this is what I thought, because by that time, having studied film and television directing at U of M and really falling in love with Jean Renoir, Godard, and many other French filmmakers in addition to people like Fellini, I wanted to get a job at a film production company and then figure out the pathway to directing feature films. When I went to all of these production companies, because that was what I wanted before going for television, I wanted just to make films, all the production companies because they saw that I had graduated in three years with two degrees, magna cum laude, they couldn’t imagine that I would be someone who just wanted to run for coffee. I think probably being female, they didn’t think I could lift equipment or do a variety of things.
So after being rejected by so many of them, I then tried to figure out, “Okay, well how do I get into television?” I had met someone who later on married Bill Murray, Mickey. She told me she’d gotten a job as a tour guide at NBC. And after six months, they move you into being a production assistant. Well, I’m someone who… I mean, to graduate in three years with two degrees and to also, during that time, have been on the road with a band, I’m not someone who wants to take six months as a tour guide.
So I did audition for the job and I got it, but it only took me 10 days then to get a job as a writer on a television show called Personality, because the guide job got me into the offices and on TV sets and I met the people on the show Personality, which was just about writing questions for contestants to answer. And so I kept bringing them questions, and then they finally just said, “Oh, let’s hire her.” So I had that job until I hated it and went looking for another aspect of TV that I could be in, or felt myself being drawn back to the world of music basically because that was where I felt my tribe was. Those were the people that I felt were most like me.
So from there, I knew that Iggy was then on Elektra Records on the MC5. There were only about 10 people who worked at Elektra Records at the time. I had heard that Danny Fields, their publicist who I had met back in Ann Arbor when he came to see bands there, and that’s how Iggy in the MC5 got signed, that he was leaving. So I thought I would try to get his job. If I was going to be writing, I’d rather be writing and maybe making films of the musicians because I had ideas about how to promote music with films. So I presented it to Jac Holzman and I got hired at a Elektra Records. And the story kind of goes on from there.
Debbie Millman:
I want to talk to you about your remarkable career in photography, but I also want to ask you about the work that you did with the band Grand Funk, because I think it’s a really remarkable story about one of the first times a band was very distinctly repositioned. We can look back on it now and say that’s what you were doing. I don’t know that anybody would’ve said it specifically in that way at that time, but it was really revolutionary. You came up with the idea to make an album focused on the theme of being an American band. You inspired them to write We’re An American Band, the song, the classic song, catapulted them to the top of the charts. You also worked on the design of their albums, the band’s visual identity, including all the graphics. Your work changed the trajectory of their career, but you had also never done that kind of work before.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, but sort of I had at Electra Records.
Debbie Millman:
But not to that scope. I mean, you really were-
Lynn Goldsmith:
But my experience at Electra, to me, everything is like common sense. You don’t have to be that smart. An example is this, at Elektra Records, I was the director of… My title was the director of publicity and marketing. I went around to what were the three trades at the time, Record World, Cash Box, and Billboard. I saw that all the record labels, much less independent publicity companies, when a record was going to come out, would leave or send a picture of the band and a written biography, that these people who worked at the places, Record World, Cash Box, the Billboard, were people my age and they just had this stack of papers to read. And I thought, “You know, my mom, when she would take a trip to the Caribbean, somehow she got her voice on a record that became a postcard.”
And so I did research and found out who made those things. I went to Jac Holzman and I said, “Listen, if I interview the artist, I can cut radio spots from it and I can make this thing that I want to call the [inaudible 00:31:53] and send it out to Record World, Cash Box, and Billboard. They’ve never gotten things like this before. So when they open it, they’re going to read it first. They’re going to look at it first.” And the same thing when I said to him on Delaney and Bonnie. There are places in Europe that show films. Delaney and Bonnie were basically popular in America, but they didn’t have European representation to the degree that they did in the US. It was helpful that Eric Clapton had joined them. So I said, “Let me make a little 16 millimeter film and send this out.”
Well, all of this led to, years later when I’m working on Grand Funk, I knew I needed an entire plan. I needed to look at who is Grand Funk’s audience, what will people respond to that’s different and yet feel familiar. In addition, the people who love Grand Funk, particularly at that time, were hardworking blue collar people. Even though we take it for so much less expensive than they are now, it’s still something to take a person out, take them for dinner and go to a show. And I wanted it to be a show, not just a band coming on stage playing in their blue jeans. I wanted to create something that people would go home and talk about and it would be an experience and that their money was well spent because they had this experience.
This is just the way that I think. If you work at putting yourself in other people’s shoes, the ideas will flow as to how to get them to do what it is you want them to do. Listen, if Grand Funk had been successful, they had lost their following when they put out the album Phoenix. My timing was such that people were ready to listen to me and especially Andy. But what motivated me to do that has really been something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to as of late, which is how much sex motivates us, the traction. That’s what I mean by sex. Because I don’t know, even though I was no longer happy, I had told Joshua White prior to working with Grand Funk, and the reason for working with Grand Funk ,was that I was directing a television show called ABC In Concert. That was really due to Joshua White, who is the founder, creator of the Joshua Light Show and then Joshua Television.
When I left Electra, I left it to go work with Joshua on Joshua Television. It was Joshua Television and Joshua who were approached by ABC. It was Joshua who insisted that I was part of it all. And that’s how I got in the Director’s Guild. I think part of that was not only because I was talented and Joshua recognized it and I was helpful to him, but I think it’s also because he was in his own ways in love with me. When I moved on to just do Grand Funk, it was really because Andy, the person who had become Grand Funk’s new manager and who knew nothing about marketing, he had only knew about touring, I was basically… Now the shoe was on my foot. I think I did that in part not only because of the creative opportunities that I felt were there and how I could be helpful and serve, but because I was attracted to Andy.
So how much of what we do or risk oftentimes has to do with that. And now that I’m going on 75, I can see how… And I’m happily married. I’m not the sexual… The attraction aspect of various things in work aren’t there for me. It’s powerful to note that, because it’s such an energy force that can get you going. It gets your creativity going. It’s not that you have to act on it, it acts on you. So I just wanted to address that now because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about.
Debbie Millman:
You have had a remarkable career and have photographed perhaps thousands of some of the world’s greatest, most interesting performers, artists. You’ve had friendships with some of those musicians, certainly your relationship and friendship with Patti Smith comes to mind. You also had romantic relationships with some of them, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, David Byrne. How much did those relationships impact the kind of portraiture you did with those specific people?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, I think that when you’re working with someone who is the friend, much less a lover, you have opportunities to just be shooting all the time, making pictures, being part of something. Also in the friendship or in the love relationship, feeling like you’re serving a purpose to help them, to help further them along. In par, my job, whether I know the person or I don’t know the person, is to help them in front of the camera to really feel comfortable and that they are in control. Because I think what scares many of the people who are in front of a camera, whether they’re famous or not, is that sense of being out of control. So I know that I have skillsets that have been honed and sharpened because I’ve been blessed with the opportunities to really just hang around and shoot people just because I love making pictures and they’re my dolls and this is playtime.
So all of that is incredibly fortunate. It’s true I have photographed thousand musicians over decades, but I’ve also photographed authors, not just people who are in entertainment in front of the camera. The camera has first and foremost been a way for me to connect to other people, to learn, and to have some sort of sense of purpose. “Why am I here? Why am I in the room? I want to be comfortable.” It took me a long time to be comfortable without having a camera on. A really long time. I always, always, always had a camera on.
Debbie Millman:
Why did you feel uncomfortable without one?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Because what was my purpose? I always could feel like, “Oh, well, I’m here to make art. I’m here to do this. I’m here to do…” You know? It also, having a piece of glass that you can bring up to your eye. Like with the cell phone, in my day, your face was hidden. The camera’s pretty big. You could be there, but not really be there. I’m in it, but I’m not of it. That’s always been a kind of protective layer for me.
Debbie Millman:
One thing that really struck me at the beginning of your career, you stated that you never really experienced what it meant to be a professional photographer until you got a call in 1976 to photograph Bob Dylan and Bette Midler. And you realized in that moment that you had to decide if you were going as a photographer or as a fan and did you come there to make the most of your time by creating a portrait or did you come there to meet Bob Dylan. How did you navigate being both a fan and there for a professional purpose?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, I knew I was a professional photographer, but more than that, I had a sense of self where for the most part when I photographed anybody, I felt like I had a lot to offer, that I’m very smart, very fun to be with, that I understand that time is valuable and I’m going to make the most of it for myself as well as for whoever is in front of the camera. That being said, there had only been two people in my life that I would have said I was a fan of. What I mean by being a fan of is that I would not know what to say. That’s not who I am. Those people were Fred Astaire and Bob Dylan. End of story. Nobody else ever intimidated me. I never thought anybody was better than me. In fact, obnoxiously, I felt I was smarter than most of the people that I photographed, that I had better taste in clothes, that I had a better life, that I had a better value system.
I didn’t yearn for fame. I just thought, “I always have something to learn here, but I have a pretty strong sense of self” I was concerned when I went to photograph Bob Dylan, because that shook me. I was in the back of the cab and I kept saying, “I’m going to shoot Bob Dylan.” I was trying to bring myself, “I’m going to shoot Bob Dylan,” say it out loud so I could hear it and get it in my head. The cab driver pulled over and said, “I don’t want no assassins in my car. Get out!” And I went, “No, no, no. I’m a photographer.” I knew when I was in the elevator and I knew that recording studio, that when the doors opened up, I’d be right there in the control room. I knew in that elevator I had to make that decision. Was I a fan or was I a photographer?
To walk in that room and to be a fan of Bob Dylan, I wouldn’t make the same kind of picture. It wouldn’t be my picture. And I realized that when I walked in and I knew I had to go right to Bob, otherwise somebody might stop me from shaving. And I didn’t know if the person who invited me there had actually asked Bob and I don’t make photographs of people who don’t want to be photographed.
So I walked right up to them and I said… I put my hand. And I always taught this to people who worked for me or who I trained in photography, no matter who it is, put your hand in their, shake their hand and say, “Hi. I’m so and so.” That I think puts you on a certain level with that person. And he said, “Hi.” And I said, “I’d like to make some pictures.” And Bob responded by saying, “I’m really sorry, but I have a photographer here, and no, you can’t make pictures.” So I said, “Well, with one photographer, you get one point of view. With two photographers, you’re going to get two points of view. So I can shoot, right?” I mean, that’s how I said it. He saw my determination. He saw I was smart. He saw I wasn’t going to be pushed around. And he went, “Yeah.”
I say, take a positive approach. Not like, “Oh, could I just wait here and then maybe later we could do some pictures or blah, blah, blah?” I don’t know where I get that from, but if you create the situation for a person to say yes, you’re far more likely to have them say yes. It just always made common sense to me.
Debbie Millman:
Talk about calling Miles Davis a bastard.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, that wasn’t my best moment.
Debbie Millman:
Would you rather not?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, no, no, no. It’s a fascinating memory for me because it’s always so clear an answer when I’m asked, “What’s the most horrible experience you had photographing the celebrity? What’s the best experience?” The most horrible and the best experience are the same experience, it was Miles Davis. It’s a rather long story because the shoot itself, it was like eight hours before I ever got off of the picture. He put me through a lot of testing. Finally, I really couldn’t take it any longer. We were supposedly ready to shoot, and I had our Bulgarian folk music and he said, “Take off that music.” That was when I said, “You really are a bastard, aren’t you?” And I hated him. I felt that I had kind of prostituted myself by hanging around for eight hours and letting this guy test me and not just do the work.
I was upset with myself. He said, his kid was here, “Son, get me my horn.” My heart was so filled with [inaudible 00:47:08], “I can’t wait to get out of here and get this shot. You disgust me.” He picked up his horn and he started playing right to my face, and I literally felt my hatred melt, literally melt. The skies broke loose because there were thunderstorm type skies and the sun bursts through. It was one of the most magical moments. It was going to the low of the low and then the high of the high where as he played and I shot, tears were running down my face because I was absolutely positive that I was seeing Gabriel, that this was Gabriel blowing his horn, and that I was the most blessed person in the universe to be there at that moment.
Debbie Millman:
And the photographs are beautiful, by the way.
Lynn Goldsmith:
The moment was even more beautiful.
Debbie Millman:
Before I let you go, I have to talk about your latest book Music in the ’80s. I read that when you were first approached by your publisher to produce a book on the photography and the music of the 1980s, you were less than enthusiastic.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, yeah. I didn’t want to do it. Anyone in my age group, and I proved it with the quotes that open up the book.
Debbie Millman:
My favorite is Chris Steins who said, “The ’80s murdered what was left of the ’60s.”
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah, Chris and I are the same age. It was really fascinating to me how I decided when it was my editor at Taschen who first asked me to do it. The book is published by Rizzoli. It only happened because Taschen had asked me to do a book on the ’80s, and I went, “Oh, the ’80s. I don’t want to do the ’80s.” And he said, “Please, just put something together that I can show Benedikt Taschen.”
And so as I started to think about it, I thought, “Wait a minute. Whenever I kind of lump something and have an overall attitude about it, I should really look more deeply into that.” And so I started putting together the pictures and I realized in the process of doing it, how many different kinds of music were all popular in that 10-year period, and that that’s the only 10-year period in history that I can think of where not only were the older forms like Rhythm and Blues successful, but where jazz, where hip hop, rap, electronic music, there’s so many different forms. Ska Music. All had popularity. Reggae. The music of the police. And then what Michael Jackson was doing, what Madonna was doing. Pop music. That changed. And so I really got into it.
Then I made a little presentation and he got back to me and he said, “Well, we love it, but we decided we don’t want to do anything on a decade.” And I went, “Wait a minute, now I’m sucked in and I love doing this. I have to complete this book.” And I’ve done enough books with Rizolli that fortunately for me, I could just call up and say, “You want a book on the ’80s?” and they go, “Yeah.” So that’s how it came to be. And then I thought, “My attitude about the ’80s, I’m going to ask various people who are my age and then I’m going to ask the next generation and then the next generation.” Those people who were 14, like I asked Ben Stiller about the ’80s and his answer was that of this was his decade just like the ’60s was my decade. That was really fun to do, to go around to different generations of artists, both artists in the book and then artists who were influenced by people in the book.
Debbie Millman:
What made you decide to design the book with artists alphabetically? I thought that was rather genius because you really do see the range of the ’80s.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, that was the point. Believe it or not, I shot more people than there are in the book that got left out because I already had too many pages and I wanted to give more pages to artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, the Police. They have more pages than some of the other artists, because that really was a strong decade for them. Whereas let’s say Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea who had jazz hits, but not throughout the whole decade. By putting them alphabetically, it was so clear how fashion as well as musical styles were so different. So under the Bs to C, Bananarama next to Barry Manilow. Yeah, you really-
Debbie Millman:
Barry Manilow.
Lynn Goldsmith:
You really get how different it was. Even to see Angela Bofill across from Apollonia.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. It was great to see photos of Apollonia.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Finding the alphabet, a way of really a vehicle to express how diversified the decade was, was fun to do.
Debbie Millman:
You said that when you met Michael Jackson, that he was like someone from another planet. I’m wondering if you can talk about in what way was he like someone from another planet.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, when Michael was five years old, The Jackson 5 were a cartoon on Saturday Morning TV. I so clearly remember being five years old and sitting as close to the TV as I could and disappearing into it basically, Michael grew up very differently than anyone I’ve ever known on this planet, besides the fact that he was seeing himself as an animated character in a TV and then he had this life as the Jackson 5. You can’t expect this person to behave and to view the world and to experience it like you would. So that’s why I say think of him as you would someone who’s really from a different planet than you.
Debbie Millman:
When you first saw Madonna, you didn’t think she had what it took to make it, what did you think she was missing?
Lynn Goldsmith:
It’s not that I didn’t think she had what it took. I thought she had a lot of chutzpah, except I didn’t think she had any talent. Her management was the same management as Michael Jackson. So they wanted me to work with her. At the time, Cindi Lauper, it was like, “Do you choose the Beatles or you choose the Stones?” Well, there was Cindi Lauper and there was Madonna. And it was like, Cindi can really sing, okay? Cindi can really write. I saw Madonna rolling around on the stage and I just kind of put my head in my hand. But her will, I’d seen her do a variety of things, and I had heard how she went after Seymour Stein when he was in the hospital because she wanted that record deal.
Debbie Millman:
That’s how she signed our contract.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah. I was in the office when she threw Freddy DeMann. I couldn’t believe it. Freddy and Ron Weisner managed Michael Jackson. She literally threw him up against the wall. She didn’t even acknowledge that I was in the room. She didn’t know me then, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I mean, the fact was she was doing this to her manager in front of another person, and she said, “Pay attention to me.” She was a real handful. And I just thought, “Ugh.” Do I wish that I had thought otherwise? Yes, because she’s a great subject. Listen, I regret that I didn’t acknowledge… I mean, these aren’t huge regrets in my life, but no, I was wrong about Madonna. I was wrong about the Beatles. As right as I am many times, I’m wrong. So who knows if I’m even 50/50?
Debbie Millman:
Well, you still took some great photos of Madonna.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yeah, but that’s just concert. A concert for me is a kind of execution how fast are you, your composition, especially back then when color was separating your camera from black and white and there weren’t zoom lenses. There were a number of things that you really had to be more technically evolved than many who make pictures today where digital cameras can do so much for you. And also where artists have much better lighting, much better everything, hair, makeup, styling. So Madonna was someone who was a great subject to either shoot in a documentary way or in the studio.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I do want to talk to you about the work you’ve done with Patti Smith. Your photographs of her are some of my favorite photographs in the world. The cover of Easter, the Night, her 1977 album Easter is really my favorite photograph of any celebrity, Lynn. I actually still remember first seeing it in a record store on Long Island. I was 15 years old and it just startled me. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d never seen a woman pose in that way. I’d never seen a woman with underarm hair in that way. I understand when you were shooting the cover, I think you were influenced by Dante Gabriel Rosseti’s palette that he used in the painting The Annunciation. How did that influence what you were doing? What was it like to shoot that photograph?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, when I shoot anything, I do research. That’s the fun part. I want to reflect the contents of the album and the intent of the artist who made it. With Patti and with actually many artists, when I shoot something, I might have something in mind, they might have something in mind, but I try a lot of different things. It’s not until the shoot is over and we’re going through it where some pictures that you might have thought would be the cover are better as publicity pictures and then other pictures just stand out as the cover. So I was being very, very conscious about picking a color palette that reflected the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the blood of Christ, the red, the white or the purity. Those colors, there are values, meanings assigned to them. From there, I think we were moving on to the publicity pictures. I really was intent on having the public be able to see Patti as feminine. I mean, she’s still Patti, that’s the underarm here. She’s authentic, natural. No one really knew, especially because of Mapplethorpe’s-
Debbie Millman:
On horses, yeah.
Lynn Goldsmith:
… first cover in the shirt and in other covers. After that, there was… I’m blanking. Oh, Radio Ethiopia. I had the back cover on that one. Judy Lynn shot the front cover, and Patti didn’t really look pretty. Again, she was very androgynous. Between that time, Patti had fallen and broken her neck. There were times where I helped to take care of her and would help bathe her. Patti had big boobs. She had boobs. I thought she had a great body and I wanted to show that. I wanted to express the girl in her, the feminine. And so she brought along that kind of leotarded… The undergarment.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I think that was given to her by Robert Mapplethorpe actually, from what I read, yeah.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Yes. Yeah, she brought that along. She was probably going to wear it under the white dress. So that’s how that happened. But my favorite pictures are always when the artist and I then look over them and we pick what the cover will be and give it to the record label.
Debbie Millman:
That photograph of Patti Smith has so much context and mystery and magnetism. How do you-
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, that’s Patti.
Debbie Millman:
Well, you capture that moment. Do you know in that moment that that’s the photo?
Lynn Goldsmith:
I think I do. I feel like I do. I think the artist does too, but it’s reaffirmed when you see the pictures. Sometimes I go, “I know I got it, and I’m done.”
Debbie Millman:
My last question today is about the future. What are you working on now? What is your next project?
Lynn Goldsmith:
Oh, I’ve got a couple of them. I’m doing a book with Bruce Springsteen for Taschen that will come out in fall of next year.
Debbie Millman:
Wonderful.
Lynn Goldsmith:
That’s my book lineup. I haven’t figured out what the book will be after that. I kind of want to take a break from that for a while maybe. Although there’s not much time left in my life, so maybe there’s no time for breaks.
Debbie Millman:
Lynn, I’d like to close the show today by sharing something you’ve written that truly moved me about the nature of your work and the power of music. You stated that you’ve realized how the music that flows through a person has little to do with their conscious awareness of what they’re singing about or playing and that it doesn’t matter, and you go on to write, “These are the bodies that carry the songs to us. These are the messengers chosen by us to play out our passions. These are people like the rest of us, some generous, some selfish, some genuine, some false. Fame adds to or subtracts from their beauty, their usefulness as artists, and often from their own humanity. They mirror our self projection. My work is that reflection,” and it’s really beautiful.
Lynn Goldsmith:
Well, thank you very much. It makes me think I ought to write more.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, absolutely. Lynn Goldsmith, thank you. Thank you for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Lynn Goldsmith:
I’m thankful that we’ve got this time to talk to each other.
Debbie Millman:
Lynn Goldsmith’s latest book of photographs is titled Music in the ’80s. You can find out lots more about everything Lynn is doing and has done at lynngoldsmith.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.