Jill Furmanovsky doesn't look like one of the world's leading rock photographers. Actually, she doesn't even look much like a photographer - rock or otherwise. There's no ripped jeans or battered leather jacket, no souvenir band world tour T-shirt or baseball cap. In fact, she doesn't even carry a camera. The petite, attractive and conservatively dressed middle-aged woman sitting opposite me in the bar of the Clarence Hotel looks far more like a mild-mannered housewife or a schoolteacher than someone who has just come off the road with Oasis.
But Jill Furmanovsky has done just that, ending a three-year photographic relationship with the Manc megastars that has culminated in both the publication of a bestselling book Was There Then: An Oasis Photographic Journey and a touring exhibition of her photos of the Gallaghers and their gang which has just completed a run at the Gallery Of Photography in Temple Bar.
But Oasis are far from being the biggest act in Furmanovsky's CV. For the last 25 years, on stage, on tour, in hotel rooms and hallways, Jill has been taking pictures of most - if not all - of the world's main musical acts. From Clapton and The Cramps to Davis and Dylan, her chosen subjects pretty much cover the whole rock ... roll spectrum. As the in-house photographer at the legendary Rainbow rock venue in the '70s and then as a freelance she has captured all of rock's big names in her lens in her time - and quite a few of the lesser ones as well. Not bad going for a woman whose formal training in photography lasted just two weeks.
"When I was a student in London, at Art School doing textile design, I did a two-week photography course and I got really hooked on it straight away," she recalls. "I mean, never has anything ever struck me as strongly as it did when somebody put a camera in my hand at 18. So I was on this two-week course and halfway through it I went to the Rainbow Theatre as a punter and took the college camera along. And I managed to get into the pit, nobody stopped me, and I took some pictures of Yes, who were performing that night.
"I got chatting to some of the professional photographers who were there and at the end of it they said, 'Well, if you're a student you might be interested in taking our place for a while' because they were going off to make a film or something. So I found myself with an unpaid job but an access-all-areas pass to the Rainbow. I was well chuffed with that. So I went back to college and said, 'I've just got a job so you'd better teach me a bit more.' And then I worked at the Rainbow until it shut six months later. But I'd well and truly caught the bug by then."
exploding snowflake
After her stint at the Rainbow (which eventually reopened), Jill went on to work for the legendary punk fanzine Sniffing Glue. This led to regular work with the music press - and later The Face - and she would often accompany the likes of Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill to their interviews with the various stars of the day. She has fond memories of the punk era, though, despite all of the theatrics, there were still a few dodgy moments.
"I was injured once at an Ian Dury concert when an exploding snowflake machine landed on my head," she laughs. "But during punk it was often more theatrical than anything else. It really wasn't all that frightening. Though I did keep my distance from Sid Vicious whenever he was around. He was quite unpredictable, you never knew when he was going to go off.
"Patti Smith was quite dangerous as well. I mean, she had - or has - an ambivalent relationship with the press anyway. I remember photographing her at the Rainbow and she just suddenly got pissed off with the photographers and kicked one of them in the pit. And at another show at the Reading Festival she suddenly got irritated by photographers being there and sort of hinted to the audience that if they all pushed hard enough we might all vanish. I just shot out of there quick. I thought that was a bit on the irresponsible side."
Irresponsible or not, it probably helped prepare Furmanovsky for her time with the equally unpredictable Gallaghers. Her association with the band came about when she was putting the finishing touches to a book of her collected work and needed a band to bring her rock career full circle. Her first photograph of a world famous musician was taken when she was just a 14-year-old Beatles fan and she snapped two of her schoolfriends posing with Paul McCartney. Oasis were the obvious choice to close the book.
"I was trying very hard to get this book The Moment published and it actually took me 13 years to get it out," she explains. "It was finally published in 1995 but I didn't find a publisher until 1994. And because the book is in the form of a diary, I needed a band for the end of The Moment that would just finish off that diary from The Beatles to . . . something. I thought Oasis would be ideal to finish the book with and to finish a rock career as well. At the time I reckoned that when the book came out, that would be it - I'd have closed the book on rock 'n' roll photography. But of course, taking shots of Oasis started my relationship with the band and that lasted over three years."
famous rows
Furmanovsky was granted the kind of access to the band that most photographers can only dream of (and would gladly swap their firstborns for!). As Oasis' official photographer she was allowed to snap them in studio, in rehearsals, on tour and even during their time off. Now that the book has been published and the exhibition has gone on tour, has her association with the band ended?
"It's kind of on the back burner for me," she says. "I don't like to ever completely jump off. I decided I wasn't going to go on the world tour, I decided that I needed a break and Noel said to me, 'Well, you can hand in your laminate, you know!' And I said, 'Oh no, I'm not quite ready to do that yet.' So I'll see what happens."
And what did she think of the band?
"Well I obviously love them dearly. I spent three years having an absolute ball with them really. They're great subject matter for a photographer, wonderful. They're just perfect for music photography. Of all the bands I've worked with, they're in many ways the most interesting to photograph - mainly because of the Gallagher brothers."
Was she present at any of their famous rows?
"Yes," she nods, smiling. "Tension arises very quickly in Oasis, for no reason - or so it appears to an outsider. But I've never seen them strike each other. Never. And they tend not to give me the paparazzi-style photographs anyway - I tend to get co-operation from them. So I actually miss all that. I only get a V-sign if I ask for it."
Although The Moment more or less ends with her pictures of Oasis, it was actually U2's Bono who inadvertently gave the book its title when, during a Zooropa concert in 1993, he pulled Furmanovsky from the photographer's pit and kissed her during 'Even Better Than The Real Thing' (though, obviously, somebody else took that particular photograph).
"He gave the book its title - inadvertently," she giggles. "That was the moment but I didn't take it, somebody else did. No, I was looking for a title to the book and I was looking for an ending for the book. And in 1993 when I went to that U2 concert and that incident happened, I thought, 'well, that's the end of the book, that's the teenager kissed by the rock star.' That was my moment." n
* The Moment: 25 Years Of Rock Photography is published by Paper Tiger (#14.95 Stg). Was There Then is published by Ebury Press (#14.99).