to move up and down
JIM HERRINGTON
photographer
nyc
Email
>Archive<
About
Joe Strummer, Smokey Hormel and Joe’s daughter - Rick Rubin’s garage - West Hollywood, CA
Beware, this story drops more names than a drunk mailman.
I was in Los Angeles shooting an album cover for a Russian bluegrass band… really… and after the photo shoot I was invited to their gig at the Roxy on Sunset Blvd. I went, and afterwards there was a big party for them next door at the infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill. There were people I knew from Nashville there, Tony Brown from MCA Records, he’d played piano with Elvis Presley in the ’70s, and some others. At one point Tony spun me around and said, “Jim, have you met Joe Strummer?” Well, no I hadn’t, and hello Joe. The night wears on and by the end of the evening it was just Joe and I left sitting at the bar drinking. I was living in Nashville at the time and Joe was digging whatever country music stories I was spewing out, he really liked old country music. I finally asked him, “So Joe, why are you in town?” He responded with, “Oh man, you won’t believe it… I’m in town to do sing a duet with Johnny Fucking Cash! In fact I did it earlier today already, up at Rick Rubin’s house.” Joe was beside himself, couldn’t believe his good fortune, thought he’d died and gone to heaven. We kept talking and drinking and finally Joe said, “I’m going back up there tomorrow, you want to come?” I said well sure and Joe proceeded to draw a “map” on the tiny corner of a napkin. I still have it, by the way… it looks like a chimpanzee tried to write the letter “Y” on the back of a postage stamp. Useless as maps go, but I feel now that it’s a cartographic oddity worth saving.
The next morning I arrived at the front gate of Rubin’s house a bit hungover, rang the intercom, “Jim Herrington for Joe Strummer”, and the giant iron gate slowly swung open and I drove in. The driveway circled around your typical Hollywood Hills 1920’s Mediterranean-style mansion, owned at some point by this or that silent film star, I forget which one, and I arrived at the back of the house where Joe comes strolling out of the garage with a big grin saying, “Hello mate, you made it!” Maybe he remembered the map and was surprised I’d actually found it.
I went into the garage with Joe and every horizontal surface was covered with large sheets of 13 x 19 sketching paper filled with song lyrics written in black Sharpie. On tables, on the floor, all across Rubin’s yellow Corvette, lyrics everywhere. I asked what he was up to and Joe said, “Well, I’ve really already done my bit with Johnny yesterday, I’m not even supposed to be here… now I’m just trying to write a song to pitch to him.” He rolled a joint, we smoked it and he started telling me about the song… that maybe it could be about Johnny Cash, or a guy like him… but Johnny could sing it. Kind of autobiographical. Lots of Southern imagery. Then he says, “You’re from the South, help me out.” So I threw out some lines and he liked one, “King Cotton’s down the road” and he wrote it down. At that point, Cash, who’d been inside recording with Rubin, was leaving and he came out through the garage, looking a bit more frail than when I’d last seen him. We said hello, I’d met him a couple of times before. After Cash was gone Joe and I took some photos then went to Rubin’s kitchen to make some tea - Joe: “Fuck, does he ONLY drink green tea?” and then went down to the studio and I met Rubin and Smokey Hormel, who was playing guitar on some of the tracks. The day goes on, we do some more photos, Joe records a demo of the song, finally it’s late afternoon and I have to leave.
I stayed in touch via email with Joe until his sad and untimely death less than a year later. I sent his wife a print of one of the photos I took of Joe, Smokey and Joe’s daughter, which she apparently displayed somewhere in their house because later on I got a call from Damien, a family friend who had seen the photo there and was touched by the picture of his friend and inquired if he might be able to buy a print for himself. Seeing as it was a family friend, and due to the circumstances involved, I charged a very nominal fee, basically the price of printing and shipping it over to England. A few weeks later he gave me another call to say he’d received it and thanks. He was calling from his house in Jamaica this time and I learned that “Damien” was, in fact, Damien Hirst, who with a net worth of around $300 million dollars is the richest artist in the history of art. And to think that I rounded off the FedEx charges in his favor.
More time goes by and I’m tucked into a booth in a crowded coffee shop one day, having lunch. A guy I vaguely know walks in and as he’s walking past my table looks at me and mumbles, “Your song’s on that album.”
“My song.? What song, what album?”
“The one you wrote with Joe Strummer.”
I’d apparently told him the story at a party one night and he’d remembered it. And sure enough, the song in question, Long Shadow, had shown up on a posthumous release of Joe’s last album with his band The Mescaleros. Now, I never claim I “co-wrote” a song with Joe, but I did go out and get the record and sure enough, there’s that line.
But years later I still can’t help wondering, did Johnny Cash ever record it, as Joe had intended, and did he sing my line?
Jeff Beck, DJ Fontana, Ron Wood - musicians - Ireland
Midnight, Ronnie Wood’s house in County Kildare, Ireland, 1996. Jeff Beck, Elvis Presley’s first drummer DJ Fontana and Mr. Wood fully invested in the retelling of some chestnut.
Carl Perkins - musician - Jackson, Tennessee
I had originally met Carl when I went to his home in Jackson, TN to photograph him for the cover of his biography. I was living in Nashville at the time and often drove back and forth to Memphis for work and fun, usually stopping for gas halfway in Jackson.
The next time I was driving through town I stopped at a service station, left the gas hose in the car, walked over to the pay phone and gave Carl a ring.
“Carl, it’s Jim… just gassing up in Jackson, on my way to Memphis, thought I’d say hello.”
“Heeeey, cat daddy! You don’t drive through Jackson without coming by the house and seeing me.”
“Carl, I’m just driving through, I don’t want to bother you.”
“Boy, it’s lunchtime, let’s go get some catfish.”
“Be there in 10 minutes.”
I left the gas station and arrived at his house where he immediately played a song on guitar that he’d just written. He told me that he wrote a song every day, good or bad. It was a good one that day. On the wall behind me was the framed piece of a torn brown paper bag upon which he wrote the original lyrics to “Blue Suede Shoes”.
After a while we went out a side door off of the kitchen and down some steps into the dark garage where his giant yellow Cadillac was parked. When he shut the kitchen door behind us I couldn’t see a thing. Feeling my way around the hood of the car I found the passenger door, opened it, and got inside. Carl slid inside the drivers side and shut his door. It was pitch black inside and so quiet I could hear my pulse.
Carl tapped his index finger on my top breast pocket, where I kept my cigs. “Don’t you want to smoke one of those?”
I told him I did, in fact, and I started to roll the window down. He said it was OK, just go ahead and light up.
“You don’t mind, Carl?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
The flame from my lighter briefly illuminated the interior of the Cadillac and I noticed Carl was sitting closer to me than I had imagined.
As it went dark again I inhaled the first puff and I heard Carl’s seat crackle as he shifted his body and leaned in very close to my face and spoke in a low, commanding monotone, “Now blow it into my face.”
I felt the pulse in my ear start beating faster.
As instructed, I turned my head towards his and let loose a long, slow pillar of smoke straight into Carl Perkin’s face, now no more than two inches from mine. In the inky black silence he inhaled deeply, right up to my mouth. Then, while turning the keys in the ignition said, “GOD, I miss those things… now let’s go get some catfish!”
Thus began a friendship that lasted a few short years until he finally succumbed to the throat cancer that was in remission when I’d met him.
Cover for John Paul Keith record
I shot this album cover in Nashville for my friend John Paul Keith recently. It always makes me happy when my photos end up gracing the cover of a really fantastic album, and that’s exactly what happened this time.
Mick Jagger - musician - Brooklyn Navy Yard
Jerry Lee Lewis’ piano in his home - Mississippi
Jerry Lee Lewis grew up dirt poor in Ferriday, Louisiana and had to play on the neighbor’s piano until his parents finally took out a mortgage on their farm to buy this Starck upright when he was 10 years old. This is the piano Jerry Lee learned on and on which he developed his style up until the time he walked into Sun Records in Memphis. His cousins Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart also learned on this piano.
Jerry Lee Lewis - musician - Mississippi
