The Rolling Stones
I shot portraits of all of the Rolling Stones for the film, Stones in Exile in 2010. Charlie and Mick were shot in Stargroves, the house where they started to record the album, Exile on Main St. Ronnie and Anita Pallenberg were shot in London and Keith in New York. Charlie’s picture was exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery in London and I appeared on The Southbank Show talking about Ronnie’s pictures..
This was the first day of shooting the film, 'Stones in Exile.' We shot Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts at Stargroves, the house Mick bought in 1969. Within a year they would be living in the South of France as tax exiles, recording Exile on Main St. None of them had been back to the house since. This was 2010. It's a huge country mansion and we were there to make a film about the making of the album. Charlie arrived first. Polite. The people who now owned the place were in their eighties and a bit overexcited about Mick Jagger turning up. Charlie, in a perfect corduroy suit, was reminiscent walking around. He showed us where he'd set up his drum kit downstairs and how he'd had to layer rugs on the floor in the bay window to kill the sound. He said, "Mick was 27. He bought this place because he thought… I don't know what he thought, but he didn't buy any furniture and he didn't buy any food. There was nowhere to sit and there was never anything to eat." This picture was part of the Taylor Wessing Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in 2010.
When I met Anita she was enormously good fun. That's not patronising — she was very smart, very astute, but also selectively very trusting. She knew what she was about and she didn't take any prisoners. For so many people she was an icon of 'Care Not What Anyone Thinks'. It wasn't her mantra, it's just who she was. The last time I saw her I was outside a coffee shop in west London. There was a pub next door and she was going round the tables outside asking people for a light for her cigarette. Like so many ex-addicts she was a big smoker. I was on my own, but I remember thinking, 'That's Anita Pallenberg. If only those people knew.' I was going to go up to her and say something but I didn't, not being sure what to say. She got a light, saying, ' Thank you', and got back on her bike and like that, she was gone.
