Neil Preston has had what he has described as many fan’s “dream job” photographing the mighty Led Zeppelin during their 1970s glory years, but he has shot many other subjects, inside music and elsewhere, as well as served as a unit and special photographer for his lifelong friend and filmmaker, Cameron Crowe. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Newsweek, Time and Rolling Stone, as well as sporting events such as the Olympic Games, and legions of episodes of the groundbreaking VH-1 documentary series, Behind the Music, where he was the primary photographic source.
The photographer has also authored numerous collections of his work over the years, from large-scale coffee table books to his current illustrated volume, the all-digital, interactive book, Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury. The book offers an interactive experience, as well as an exploration of many unpublished Zeppelin photographs, plus some more iconic shots from on stage and backstage, and images shot on the band’s two private planes they chartered during the heady 70s—the Starship and Caesar’s Chariot.
Preston was the right photographer at the right time, but he stays humble about his work, knowing that many people have somehow took his images to heart for four decades, instilling a life-force in his work that he is only now beginning to understand. Indeed, the artist has been immersed in his body of work for so long that, while Sound and Fury offers the reader the opportunity to engage with his Zeppelin catalogue of imagery, it also gives its creator a unique chance to reassess his own craft and the impact it has had on not only music, but countless lives, while one gazes at his famous photos now and beyond.
RR: As Led Zeppelin has turned into myth over the years, I find myself returning to your photos of the band, as much as I listen to their music. Other than Jimmy Page, himself, I feel I can make an argument that your work has also been a key component in enhancing the Zeppelin mystique.
NP: Yeah, well, or, the legacy, if you will.
RR: Right. I am wondering if, at the time, in a parallel process to the music, you ever imagined that your work would have such a lasting impact.
NP: You know what? There was no way that I would have had any idea. And, in fact, it’s only really dawning on me now how much a part of the legacy of this band that I have created, at least visually. You don’t know when you are in the middle of it, you don’t know it when you are in the eye of the hurricane. Of course, back in the day, you know…well, you have to have the gift of hindsight because none of us knew that pictures were going to become as important as they’ve become today, or that the records were going to be as important today as they were to us back then. There is no way to know that, and I’ll tell you what—it’s been a little bit of a mindblower lately (laughs); hearing people talk about [the photos] in semi-reverential terms like you have done and other people have done is more than flattering; it’s mind-blowing.
RR: I’ve looked at your work quite a bit over the years, and what amazes me is that these were not setup shots. These were photographs that were taken in the moment, in a spontaneous way, and, for some reason, beyond your natural talent, you just had the ability to capture the rock ‘n roll spirit better than anyone else. I feel that much of that, of course, was due to the right subjects at the right time for you.
NP: Well, that is really nice of you to say. I’ve worked a long time in the business, and I’ve worked really hard. Mind you, I’m not finished working. I’m still relatively young, and I have no intention of stopping, and I still shoot. It may not all be music stuff, but I certainly still shoot. To be able to look, to go down in that room in my house where I’ve got all the file cabinets, and say that this is a significant body of work—I think I’ve done my job well, so it means a lot to me to be able to say that to myself. When other people notice it, it completely blows my mind. (laughs) I’m not kidding, and thank you.
RR: Let’s talk about your new work, Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury, and the platform and application you are using to show this work. I find the format to be innovative and refreshingly present, as always, with your other Led Zeppelin work. What fascinates me is that I’ve got some new Neal Preston work out there that I can also move and interact with, as well.
NP: This was a little bit of a leap of faith that I had to take in doing this project because there was no road map, there was no instruction booklets, or litmus tests to really compare it to. I had never really done anything like this, but no one had ever really done anything like this. It’s looking a little ahead into the future of publishing and where it is leading. It is inevitable; someone will have to do something like this, and I just decided that it might as well be me. There’s a bit of the ‘blazing a new trail’ aspect involved here. I certainly realized early on that there was going to be a learning curve involved. I didn’t quite realize how much of a learning curve it was going to be, to be perfectly honest, because there are inherent differences in doing this kind of a book, as opposed to the traditional coffee table book where you have ink on the page and you turn the pages.
Traditionally, you have an art director on a book who helps you with your layout and design and you look at galleys and that’s one kind of a process. This kind of a project, you have a software developer who, ultimately, acts as your art director. You are at the mercy of what the software can and cannot do and I’m not a real tech guy. I’m not a geek, or anything. I know enough about this stuff to be very, very dangerous. (laughs)
There was a certain amount of leaving the technical issues to the technical people because I’m not a guy who can step in and go, “Version 2.0 can do this, that, and the other thing.” You’ve already lost me. It’s fun and it’s been educational for me to do this, but it’s really been different, it’s way different than doing any kind of other project that I’ve ever done. It’s been crazy, man.
RR: For the older fans, it is a way for them to have access to the material they didn’t quite have before, and for new fans, Neal Preston’s Led Zeppelin work is right there. Also, this is a rare chance to look at your photographic gear and technique, which you have not really done in the past.
NP: No. That was a way to add a little more color and character to the book. Frankly, it allows me to put more of myself into this. This book and this project was never conceived as a biography of the band, or as a documentary, or “let’s tell the story of this band.” That’s not what this is. This is a look at them through my experience of having worked with them. I’ve worked with a lot of other bands. As you know, they are not the only ones I’ve worked with, but this was a way to bring the reader into my world. I’m the guy—a lot of people have told me that I’ve had the dream job: “You had the job that I always wanted. You were always at the places that I always wanted to be.” Well, this is as deep as you are going to be able to go and not be me. (laughter) I mean…I don’t know how else to put it. That was the prime goal that I wanted to achieve and I wanted to meet—give people the experience; have the whole project be experiential in nature. Come backstage with me. Come behind the velvet rope a little bit. Call it what you will. I like to say that everybody likes to ‘touch the guy who touched the guy’, and this is the way to do it, more so than with a traditional book.
RR: 30 years ago, August 1983, Cameron Crowe wrote the introduction to your first photography collection, Led Zeppelin: Portraits, which came out on Mirage Books.
NP: My little company, yes.
RR: Tell me about your relationship and friendship with Crowe back in the 70s as he covered the band as a young Rolling Stone scribe while you shot photos.
NP: Yeah, absolutely. Cameron is five years younger than me. From the day I met him in 1972, I believe it was, we’ve been together ever since then. Cameron was always older than his years. When you are five years older than someone, and you are 20 and they’re 15, that’s generally a bigger gulf than five years. And, yet, it wasn’t with him. We’ve always had the exact same sense of humor, and, I don’t know, we started working together on Rolling Stone assignments. Keep in mind, he couldn’t drive at the time. (laughs) He would take a Greyhound bus up from San Diego and I would pick him up from the bus station in downtown L.A. and we’d drive over to the Hyatt House or the Beverly Wiltshire or wherever and do the interview stuff. Sometimes, I would either drive down, or fly down on PSA Airlines to San Diego, and a girlfriend would pick me up there and take me to the Sports Arena in San Diego, just like in Almost Famous when the kid’s mom drives him over there. She said, “Don’t do drugs.” And that’s exactly how it was. We’d interview or photograph a Deep Purple concert and stuff like that.
We’ve always been very, very, very close, and he’s my closest friend in the world. There was a day in 1977, and I remember it like it was yesterday because we were in the lobby
of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I don’t remember who we were there to interview, or what have you, but he had broken up with a girlfriend of his, I had broken up with a girlfriend of mine, and I was living in a tiny little two-room house in Laurel Canyon. He needed a place to live, and I couldn’t last much longer in this little place I was living in, so we decided to get a place together, and we were roommates for six years—from ’77 to ’83. That was right around the time he wrote that little piece for me.
RR: Cameron Crowe traveled with the band during the ’75 tour, but his involvement goes back to the ’73 tour, right?
NP: Yes, I believe he wrote an L.A. Times story on the band in 1973.
RR: Page liked the piece and he was allowed into the inner circle in ’75.
NP: Yeah, that was his kind of his entrance. He came on the ’75 tour. He was invited to go on the 1977 tour, but didn’t. I don’t recall why.
RR: Do you feel he is lucky that he didn’t?
NP: No, I think I was bummed that he didn’t. I’m still bummed that he didn’t, but I honestly don’t remember what the circumstances were. But he certainly was able to crack the Rolling Stone nut. You know how Jimmy felt about that magazine.
RR: Right.
NP: And probably rightfully so.
RR: “Power, Mystery, and the Hammer of the Gods”—the quote which was attributed to Jimmy Page, and referenced in Crowe’s introduction in your debut book. Do you want to detail the story behind that legendary quote?
NP: Yes, it was said to me.
RR: Why was that aura and presence important to Page in regards to your work?
NP: You know I didn’t realize it was important to him until I literally had that conversation with him. The fact of the matter is that you have to understand that I was shooting everything that went on around me. That particular conversation with him (as iconic as it became as far as the language and verbiage that he used), don’t forget, was a result of a photo-editing session that I was having with him. It was an answer to a question that I had posed, which was “What are you looking for? I don’t get it.” I think the words I used were “Help me out here because I’m not clear on what you’re looking for.” And as a photographer hired to do a job, I want to know what the client wants to get out of it, whether it is Jimmy Page or Jimmy Smith.
It’s not like I altered the way I was shooting after that conversation to achieve what I had heard him say. I was already shootin’ that stuff; I just hadn’t been showin’ it to him. See—that’s the difference. Look, that was his way; what he said to me was his little flourish, but that’s the way he spoke. I remember after he said it, I remember going back down to the room and calling Cameron in his room and saying, “Wait until you hear what he said to me.” He would say stuff like that. If you read Cameron’s article about the ’75 tour in Rolling Stone where Jimmy talks about finding “an angel with a broken wing.” I think at the very end of the piece, he says, “It’s not easy to find at the Plaza Hotel.” That was Jimmy. They all kind of spoke…Robert [Plant] used to speak like that, too. Robert was a quote machine, an unparalleled quote machine, obviously.
RR: Speaking of Robert Plant, I was one of many teenagers that had your shot as a poster up on my wall—Plant on stage in 1973 at Kezar Stadium, holding a dove in one hand, and a cigarette and a bottle of Newcastle in the other. It is extraordinary your work has endured, as mentioned, but, back then, did you know how many of your photos had been turned into posters lining the walls of America?
NP: No, I didn’t. Not until I got married in 1989 that my ex-wife finally copped to me a year later that she had my Lynyrd Skynyrd photo on the wall. (laughter) I knew I had photos on posters. I knew I had photos in magazines. I knew that people read magazines. I knew that people would read Creem and Rolling Stone and Circus. What I didn’t realize or think about was how deeply some of that stuff is ingrained into people’s DNA.
Only now am I even realizing it. We did a movie called Almost Famous that covers a lot of that ground, and I was there for every one of those things that happened in real life in 1973. I’m just not written in as a character in the movie. It’s a movie about what it means to be a fan, and how family figures into that, but really about how important that music was to a lot of us. That’s what that movie is about. The photographs, and the stuff that I have done, is one part of that. It’s just one sidebar kind of issue that makes up the entire world of what music means to fans. It’s important and it’s just one component and if you want to look into that further then see the movie. That’s what I tell people.
RR: You probably saw your subjects change around you. Did you change, and how did you maintain your core and balance while doing all of this work?
NP: Oh, well, it depends on what you mean by balance. (laughter)
RR: Exactly.
NP: You know…I’ve…look…I managed to get out from behind a horrific cocaine problem and I’ve managed to keep my sanity, more or less, and I’ve managed to put together a body of work that I’m proud of. I’ve managed to go beyond rock music and shoot and photograph subjects in other areas of life like sports, hard news, and my People magazine contract that I had for years. I’m really proud of being able to do all that stuff and be alive and make it through what has been a very, very, very stressful career—more stressful than most people would think.
RR: Touching upon your other historical contributions, you’ve also had a distinct one with VH-1’s landmark series, Behind the Music.
NP: Yeah. That was an outgrowth of a deal I ended up doing with VH-1, which was almost done out of necessity. They were calling me for so many pictures and they were obviously doing a lot of those shows. I was dealing with so many producers and researchers and everyone going back and forth to my office that it was starting to be unwieldy. The mechanics of just getting them what they needed—photo-wise and print-wise and things like that—was starting to become very cumbersome, so I ended up saying, “Look, let’s just do a flat deal. You pay me so-and-so per show, and you can use however many photos that you want per episode. If it is episode on Madonna, or whomever, you could use 20 photos, or you could use 200, if you want.”
So, it became win/win for [VH-1] and for myself because they had the ultimate in photo source from which to draw upon, and I didn’t have to worry about “did we invoice the right thing? Are they fuckin’ me around on what they want to use? Do they really want to use more, but they don’t want to spend $300 more here, or $600 more there?” And that is why that deal was made. Happily enough, it became lucrative for me. People don’t realize that a lot of those photos are mine. I don’t expect them to realize. They might realize the odd ones—the photos of Jimmy and Robert, the photos of Fleetwood Mac, or the photos of Marvin Gaye, or whatever—but, I don’t expect, nor am I surprised, that people don’t recognize a lot of those photos of being mine. Why should they?
RR: Stevie Nicks, along with Dave Grohl, was on the cover of one of our recent Relix magazine issues. She also wrote a fine introduction in your new digital-only work, Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury.
NP: Yeah, I was supposed to shoot that cover, actually. We were supposed to shoot it in L.A., but Stevie got sick, so they shot it a week later in New York [by Danny Clinch]. Stevie has been a very close friend of mine for a lot of years, and probably the closest thing that I’ve ever had to an actual muse in my work life. She was the first person to actually sit in a chair and look at a collection of my prints of Led Zeppelin and say, “You know what? This stuff is beautiful. You’ve got to do a book. You’ve got to do this.” And that was back in 1980, 1981.
Therefore, from that first incarnation of that book, it’s all her fault. (laughter) So, when it came time to do this one, Cameron had done intros for me, and I thought, “I’m going to leave Cameron alone on this one. We worked together on enough stuff. I don’t want to go to the well one more time.” I said, “I think Stevie would be a great person to write this introduction” because she was one of the people who implored me to do a book because I
know she loved the band and I know she’s a great writer and I know that people may not have read examples of her long-form writing, as opposed to her lyrics. I called her up and said, “Do you want to do this?” And she said, “You bet.” And there it is.
RR: She was right about your work in 1980, 1981, and she is still right today.
NP: That is very, very sweet of you. I just want to say two things in closing and those things are that I know that the real Led Zeppelin fans out there can get their hands on this digital book and I know you have to have an iPad to see it and everything, at least now, but they are going to love it, and they are going to feel like they got to see something and experience something that they would not be able to see and experience otherwise.
And, the other thing is that there is a lot of myself in it. I put a lot of myself in this book—my writing, which I’m proud of, by the way, the photographs, my sense of humor, all that stuff is in it and it is as much of me as I have ever put in any project. It’s a little dicey to put yourself…you feel a little naked when you do that, but I’m really proud of it.
