Ready for my close up Mr Demille. We were driven out to some remote industrial wasteland near Manhattan, a big disused quarry of some sorts for our first label promo shots. The first ‘professional’ shoot was the complete opposite of the fun we had with Midori who took the shots of us drunk in the tuxedos .. it was - as I would discover, as dreadfully boring as all normal ‘shoots’ are. Shoot.. Reposition.. Shoot.. Make up …shoot.. Reposition..shoot..Stop everything & re- locate etc. etc. Hour after dragging hour. To this day still I can never look at a band photo without seeing the long day of tedium that went into it etched behind the grimacing musician’s faces. We’d first started sending the runner out for food.. Then cigarettes, but eventually gave up on the pretense of being professional and told them to come back with some hard liquor or we’d be off. later into the night it was absolutely fucking freezing and the only heat came off the huge lights being used for the shots which would eventually become the album cover. We kept being told to stand there in a certain position whilst the photographer tried to get the exact shot he wanted, but we were all shaking so much it must have looked like one big blur. No one really understood the ‘vision’ for the shoot .. Something to do with robots or fucking spacemen? Or God knows what? .. we just knew we’d all had enough and wanted to fuck off. Finally we all walked off to the Winnebago to get some warmth and more booze. As we made our way in silence across the pitch black quarry floor toward the Winnebago Ritchy passed me the bottle of Jack, swallowing a big glug then with teeth chattering he exclaimed “ well th..th..that was a load of ff..ff..ff..f.fucking bb..bb..bb.. Bollocks wasn’t it?” Yes Ritchy. It was.
— with Chris McCormack.
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