NME might not be the household name it once was, but it’s hard to overstate the influence this magazine had on music. In its 1960s heyday, it sold 200,000 copies per week. It was central to the emergence of the punk era, and in the 90s, it was the bible for every music fan, making or breaking careers and catapulting new artists to fame. Listeners looked to it for guidance, fans pored over its every word, and right at the centre of it all was photography: the posters, front covers and cutouts that adorned bedroom walls.
In the 90s, Berlin-based photographer Martyn Goodacre was there for all of it: nights at sweat-soaked gigs, mornings in the darkroom and a growing archive of negatives that would come to define the visual memory of the era. Working exclusively in black and white, Goodacre photographed icons such as Björk, The Prodigy and Kurt Cobain, often for modest fees, retaining the copyrights that now benefit from a resurgent appetite for analogue nostalgia.
His recent book release, Working for the Enemy Vol: 1, is a collection of candid shots: renowned musicians on backstage sofas, leaning on house-party balconies and rolling a cigarette after a sell-out show, all at perfect ease in Goodacre’s company. Limited to only 500 copies, it documents the last pre-digital decade of music photography in an era when images were laboured over, not uploaded.
Did you always want to be a photographer when you grew up?
I never imagined it. The NME was published every week and the photos made such an impression on me. I remember constantly going through it and I said, “This is really what I want to do.” But it wasn’t really clicking. I went off skateboarding in America for a few months. I always thought I’d come back, because I was getting worried about my future. Then I did a quick technical course in photography, and then I moved back to London. I started working for the University of London Union and I went to proper gigs, which I hadn’t been to for years. And I thought, stupidly, that I could write about this, because I felt so passionate about this Henry Rollins gig. It was mind-blowing. I really want to write about it. But I spoke to the guy at the university magazine and he said, “Well, no, you told me you take photos. Why didn’t you photograph them?” That’s how it actually started.
When did you start working for the NME?
In 1990. I used to go up to the NME offices every Tuesday and hang out. They sort of gave me a job to make me go away. Also, you know, by doing that, it showed I was quite busy. And you know, if they’d see me there, they’d go, “Oh, Martin, do you want to go to New York next Tuesday?” And I’d go, “Oh, okay then.” You know, not knowing that I was probably further down the list of people to ask. I was never one of the main photographers like Kevin Cummins, Anton Corbijn, Pennie Smith, all of these were main cover artists. I was doing all the meat and vegetables inside, so to speak.
Lots of people are calling the 90s the last analogue decade because it preceded social media and digitalisation. Why do you think 90s nostalgia is thriving today?
Well, I think it was quite an extraordinary decade, although it started off quite boring. Apparently, there was a recession at the beginning of it. I didn’t even know. I was so busy going to gigs every night, getting boozed up, meeting bands, taking photos and writing stories that I totally missed the recession. Then Tony Blair got in in the middle [of the decade]; that changed everything. I mean, in my book, halfway through is when Oasis arrived, and that’s almost at the same time when Britain changed completely. The beginning of the book is sort of like a dark shoegazy sort of hangover from the 80s, and then it goes a bit brighter. I sort of miss those shoegazing bands, but at the time I’d really had enough of them. I needed some personality to come through, yet all we really got was Oasis and Paul Weller. So, never wish for too much.
Did you realise at the time how precious those negatives were and what they would become? Were you aware of the value of analogue?
I wasn’t really, no. The way I shot and the way I printed at the time was to match the NME’s newspaper paper. So I would shoot and print much more contrasty than a lot of people would. I didn’t really know, until I started looking at my sales. I received royalties on all of this stuff because most of my archive is with the Getty Agency. I’ve got some digital stuff, but it never sells. It’s all the old, black-and-white, nostalgia pictures, you know, from the 90s.
What’s your bestselling photograph from that decade?
Well, it’s not in this book, but it’s Kurt Cobain from Nirvana. I’ll just show it to you.
Oh yes – I used to have that as a giant poster on my bedroom wall.
Who else is catching up? Ozzy’s doing well. I just had another front cover for an Ozzy and Black Sabbath photo for Uncut, I think.
I suppose death sells. So, why a book? Why now?
Well, I wanted to do a book, just to get it out of the way, because people kept hassling me that you should do a book, blah, blah, blah, you know. I thought, well, the longer I leave it, the better the pictures will look anyway.
What was your resistance? Why didn’t you feel that the time was ready until now?
I was so busy going to gigs every night, getting boozed up, meeting bands, taking photos and writing stories that I totally missed the recession.
I spoke to a lot of publishers and nobody wanted a book from a fairly unknown photographer with a mixture of pictures. You know, if I’d got 20 pictures – I mean, sorry, 200 pictures – of Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones, or Bruce Springsteen, or the Beatles, that would be okay, because these are the books that, if you go to a bookshop, you’ll see. These people weren’t interested in doing a compilation, so I sort of gave up. Then I started thinking about it more and more. I started getting hassle from Dario [Adamic] who I go to a pub quiz with in Berlin. He’s the quiz master at Posh Teckel. He publishes books and he was going to do it. And I thought, oh, that’s probably the easiest, you know – local, trustworthy and I can do what I want. But I couldn’t get all of the pictures into one book, so I had to cut it down. This is the indie one; I call this one ‘my struggle’. It’s the low-life indie stuff into Britpop into a bit of dance, you know, when everybody started putting dance beats in their songs and remixes to a bit of DJ stuff.
Do the images in your book serve as a way of locating memory in ways that you probably wouldn’t have done otherwise?
Yeah, well, certainly. I had to blow away quite a lot of cobwebs. I mean, it’s a long time ago now. I had to go through some of the pictures to get the dates absolutely correct. I was very lucky because I worked on the design of the book with Stefanie Hamer, who’s a Berlin artist. She was very meticulous in getting the dates of things completely accurate, and I realised that the dates I had for a lot of these pictures were completely wrong by two or three years.
Why did you leave the NME?
Unbelievably – you wouldn’t know it if you met me now – but I did actually work quite hard for a few years. At the end of the 90s, I was really burnt out about the whole thing, and the NME had changed a lot. When I started working for the NME, it was still a weekly print. Towards the end of the 90s, it changed. It tried to become more poppy and more sort of Smash Hits, more colourful and everything. I wanted the NME to be black and white. I felt like I just hit a bit of a brick wall. I was still doing some music stuff and I was working with Channel 4, but I was just ticking along. You know, I’m really old now, but I felt I was getting on then. So I thought, well let’s do something different, and I moved to Thailand. I found that it was quite simple to do something different. When I got to Thailand, of course, it was quite boring. There’s not much to do apart from swimming and climbing in the mountains and going to bars.
What happened to your archive?
They’re all still at my mother’s house, out of order and all still taped up in this box. I dread going back there.
I wonder if people forget about the labour behind the analogue image…
Yeah, exactly. Obviously, now we’re digital, people are sending image files straight off to agencies from anywhere in the world. Back then… take Glastonbury Festival, for example: you’re staying in a tent, for a start; you’re covered in shit, mud and everything. And you’re tired. You have to get home, then you’ve got like 15 rolls of film to process. Each one of those takes about an hour, but you can do three or four at a time. I used black and white. I never used a lab. You’d have to make sure there’s no mess on the negative, because when it dries, there’s chalk stains and stuff sometimes. Then I would have to print it, which is another three-paper process, at the right temperatures, blah, blah, blah, mixing the chemicals. Then you’d have to dry them, and then I’ll have to take them into the office.
That’s a lot of work. Are you using digital cameras now? And what’s your relationship to social media in regard to your images?
Well, I don’t really take many photos anymore. I’ve got a digital camera, which will probably last me the rest of my lifetime. And I don’t really have any need to go into the dark room and print unless I suddenly get an urge to be very, very creative again. I mean, I just use my camera now to get in, so I can photograph the odd gig. I still really enjoy it. If they’ve got a [mosh] pit, I’m not in it anymore. I’m too old to be crushed up at the front. But if they’ve got a pit, it’s the most exciting thing to be between the crowd and the stage, you know, when a band comes on. I’ve got some brilliant memories of gigs like that, especially at things like Glastonbury, when you’ve got REM or The Prodigy coming on, and you’ve got almost a quarter of a million people on one side of you, then this massive stage, and the ground is virtually ready to move. It’s incredible.
In our digital age, do you think photographers are losing control of their images?
If that were true, I wouldn’t be able to make this book. You know, when I took this picture of Liam Gallagher, or almost all of these pictures in here, I earned about £25 per picture, sometimes a little bit more. A small picture would be £25, half a page would be £50, a whole page would be about £80 or £100, and the front cover would be £500. Sometimes to get that £25 picture, you know, I’d go to Scotland and back for it, or sometimes to New York, maybe. So it’d be like a three- or four-day thing just to make that small amount of money. But I kept the copyright, and now I can sell prints or I can make books with it. You know, if someone wants to control their image so much now that they have to make a contract for everything, it’s going to ruin the future, not only for other photographers, but for music fans, too.
Working for the Enemy, Photographs and footnotes from the 90s Music scene: Vol 1 is available through Goodwill Records and Rough Trade Berlin.
