That title is actually slightly misleading because quite a
few of the stars between its covers have nothing to do with rocking or rolling
(there’s a big spread on Sinatra, who hated the genre). Don’t get too hung up
on that because there’s plenty that fits the bill from O’Neill’s earliest swinging
snaps of the Fabs, The Dave Clark Five, The Animals, and some very, very young
Stones through relatively recent artists such as Blur and Amy Winehouse. She’s
the most recent one in the lot because O’Neill admits in his introduction that
no one since her has had enough star power to ensnare his interest (I see what
he means).
The interesting thing about O’Neill’s work is the way it
often subverts our expectations. He’s the one who shot that famous picture of
Ozzy in which the evil one looks like he just paid his one hundred bucks at
Glamour Shots. He made Liza Minnelli look like Jagger. He made ol’ Lucifer Lips
look like a cuddly bear all wrapped up in his fur-lined anorak. Ringo appears
to be the lead Beatles as he leaps over the rest of the band in an
extraordinary action shot I’d never seen before. He filmed hellion Marc Bolan
in a very moving embrace with his infant son.
At other times, O’Neill captured the artists just as we
expect them to be, whether it’s Sir Elton posing in his giant wardrobe of
outrageous gear or Alice Cooper subverting that Bolan shot hilariously by
applying fright makeup to a sleeping baby. Really, there is no unifying style
or approach to perceive among the mass of photos in Terry O’Neill’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Album. Color or black and white,
candid or staged, funny or po-faced, action-packed or serene, bizarrely normal
or normally bizarre, the photos in this big, big, big book really have one
thing in common: big, big, big music stardom.
