Saturday, 6 November 2010
Back when they were great, I was a massive Stones fan and, like most people, my favourite Stone was always Keith. I was ecstatic to be asked to photograph him. And so was my wife Jo-Anne, who clearly harboured feelings for him that she never quite harboured for me.
On the day of the shoot, I was absolutely determined nothing would go wrong, so I spent ages cleaning and checking my gear. But when it was time to leave, I couldn’t find my car keys anywhere. I was about have a heart attack when Jo-Anne chanced to remember that our eight-year old daughter had been asked to take any “old and unused” keys she could find into school that day. The school was promptly rung up and my car keys were located and Jo-Anne more or less ran the half mile there and back to go and get them. Whilst Jo-Anne was running, I had to have a brief lie down to try to recover some modicum of calm.
We got down to the Savoy only a few minutes late. Unusually for such a big star, the whole time we were with Keith Richards there were no helpers or hangers-on trying to hurry us up. There was just him, his wife, his baby daughter and Mat Snow who was writing the article for NME. When me and Jo-Anne (who had bizarrely insisted on assisting me), were packing up my equipment, he said to us “Now you’re absolutely sure you’ve got enough?” And I honestly felt he meant it.
He’s a very, very nice bloke.