Danny Clifford: Snapper to the stars in the spotlight - at last - The Jewish Chronicle

"I am the most famous photographer that no one’s ever heard of.” Danny Clifford says this, quite casually, halfway through our conversation, without a trace of regret in his voice. “You mention Danny Clifford and they’ll go: ‘What? Never heard of him.’”

It’s true. By the age of 20, Danny Clifford had already been exposed to more musical talent than most people experience in their lifetimes. And that was before he was hired by Bob Dylan to be his official photographer.

Forty years later, it is easier to list the world-famous musicians he hasn’t taken pictures of, rather than vice-versa.

“I worked with most people,” he says. “I missed Elvis and John Lennon. But everybody else, I worked with.”

He’s not kidding. Clients listed on his website include Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, Madonna, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé… and, after the names of 60 of the most famous bands and singers on earth, it just says “and many more”. And yet, he is almost completely unknown outside the music world.

But that might be about to change. For the first time, Clifford’s work will be publicly exhibited in London, at the Heath Street Baptist Church in Hampstead. Over four million photographs taken over the course of his career have been whittled down to just a few of the many gems, some of them famous pictures, others never seen before.

“I spent my life photographing these people and I’ve not gone out of my way to publicise myself,” he says. “Now I’ve got to a time of my life where I thought really I should be letting people know and showing them these pictures.”

Born in the East End to a Jewish family before moving to North London, Danny Clifford was introduced to photography at the age of eight, when his grandmother bought him a camera.

It was as a teenager, however, that he really found his calling — music photography. “I found myself being a little bit of a cheeky chappie. I decided that it’s no good being a photographer who’s not in the front line; you need to be where it’s happening.” That is something of an understatement. At the time, venues often had house photographers, and did not react kindly to intruders — “I was getting thrown out a lot of the time.”

Take one Lou Reed concert. “I bought a ticket… had my camera under my arm and a lens down my trousers and a film in my socks.”

Managing to sneak backstage, he almost got hit by a glass bottle thrown by Lou Reed at a man the musician was arguing with — “it whistled past my head and smashed against the wall.”

At the show, he managed to get five pictures of Reed. “The last one is completely blurred, because I was picked up by security, taken to the side door and literally kicked out on to the Seven Sisters Road.”

This kind of chutzpah led to his big break with Bob Dylan, hitting on a strategy to get near the stage despite having bought only a cheap ticket for the very back of the venue. “I bought enough beers at the bar to make my hands completely preoccupied. I wandered back towards the security guard who asked me ‘where’s your ticket?’ I said, ‘it’s in my pocket… these beers are for Paul McCartney. Do you want one?’”

Having managed to talk his way past security, he persuaded the McCartneys, with whom he was friendly, to let him sit front and centre with them for long enough to take around ten shots of Bob Dylan. Meanwhile, “the press that were allowed in were way at the back with their long lenses.”

He managed to sell the pictures to the Evening Standard, which featured them prominently on page three.

Clifford had a strong relationship with The Who, in particular Keith Moon, the band’s drummer and, in another unpredictable twist, had been given an office by the band’s manager, Bill Curbishley, in his building.

“Keith Moon was in my office lying on the sofa, the band leaning in the doorway, chatting.

“The phone rang — someone called Paul Wasserman. ‘I’m Bob Dylan’s publicist. Bob loved your photographs. He wants a word with you.’

“I said to Roger Daltrey and Keith: ‘Bloody hell, it’s Bob Dylan, he wants to speak to me!’

“One of them grabbed the phone. And then the other grabs it, and all I could hear was those two trying to persuade Bob Dylan they are who they say they are.”

After subsequently photographing Dylan in Paris — he had to pay for his own trip, and describes taking “a £10 Magic Bus trip to Paris with a load of stinking hippies” — he took a leap of faith and decided to go to LA, having been told by Paul Wasserman to get in touch if he ever visited.

“I sold everything except my cameras and my shoes. My grandmother in Edgware, bless her, gave me 100 quid.

“I had a quick bite to eat with Keith Moon at his apartment behind the Hilton in Park Lane, then he and his driver dropped me off at Victoria Station.”

He managed to get a cheap flight to LA , landed the next day, and got into a car at the airport.“First thing I heard on the radio: ‘Rock star drummer Keith Moon has been found dead in his London apartment’.

“Oh my God. He dropped me at Victoria, he went home, he then went off to the Buddy Holly film premiere with Paul McCartney and everybody else, went back to his apartment that night and died from a prescription drug overdose.”

In LA, Clifford was offered the job as Bob Dylan’s photographer. “Are you free to come on Bob’s world tour — we’re leaving next Wednesday,” he remembers Paul Wasserman saying.

“And so I said, “No, I’m really sorry. I’m pretty busy.”

“He said, ‘Oh, that’s a shame, Bob really wants you to come.’ And I said, ‘Only joking’.

“He said: ‘Don’t joke with me. Be at my office at 10.30 today.’

“So I drove down there and we went through everything and the following Wednesday, we were off. I remember getting on that plane thinking ‘Bloody hell, how did I get on here?’ There’s a picture of me on the plane, which Bob Dylan took of me.”

There are more stories, of course — for example, on that flight, a conversation led to the photographer putting Bob Dylan in touch with Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. Together, they would work on an album — Slow Train Coming — “Two Jewish boys writing an album that’s all about Jesus.”

Each of the pictures at the exhibition will have its story alongside it, making it even more interesting for the audience.

That’s not all, though.

“We’re going to have a few bands come and play in the middle.

“A lot of them have said, ‘we’ll come along and do a bit of this or that.’ One of them — if he can come and do it, if he brings along members of his family, it will be rather phenomenal.’”

He’s hoping, after London, to take the show on the road. “We’re looking for companies that might want to associate themselves with us.”

In particular, he mentions Israel as a possible venue.

“I’ve never been there. I’d really like to go. I’d love to take this to Tel Aviv.”

 ‘Rock Stars Don’t Smile: Danny Clifford, a Retrospective’ is at the Heath Street Baptist Church, London NW3, from March 15 to April 11