‘Crazy times but fun’: shooting Bob Marley, David Bowie, Rolling Stones in ’70s – a rock photographer looks back
- Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young also among the big names shot in stark black and white, on and offstage, in From Abba to Zappa
- Hong Kong gallery showing a selection of images from the book by photographer Gijsbert Hanekroot, who recalls a ‘crazy and creative’ era in music
In one photograph we see a strung-out Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist sucking on a cigarette during a tour break in Belgium in 1976.
In another, Lou Reed enjoys a nicotine fix in the Netherlands in 1972, while nearby hangs a portrait of Canadian musical legend Leonard Cohen surrounded by pigeons on an Amsterdam pavement in 1972.
Other grainy black-and-white images of 1970s rock legends – David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and Neil Young – stare back from the pages of Abba ... Zappa: Seventies Rock Photography, and from the walls of the Blue Lotus Gallery in Hong Kong. Together, they create an impressive snapshot of an era in music dominated by rock and the rise of disco and heavy metal.
The photos in the book, a selection of which are on show at the gallery in the city’s Sheung Wan neighbourhood, are the work of Dutch rock photographer Gijsbert ‘Gilbert’ Hanekroot.
“Seeing all these pictures here [at the gallery] bring back great memories from a thrilling time,” says the 73-year-old, newly arrived from the Netherlands and keen to see how the city has changed since his first visit in 2010. “The concerts by Lou Reed, Neil Young, Creedence Clearwater … times I’ll never forget.”
The show, called “From Abba To Zappa”, is his first in Asia, since a Tokyo exhibition in 2015.